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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Nimrod and the Return of the Nephilim
Genesis 10
Introduction
Last fall I did an episode asking “What was the big deal about a tower that reaches to heaven?”
And that episode ended up setting records. At the time, it was probably my most popular episode ever, and it held that position for many months. If I were smart, I probably would have followed it up with 10 more episodes right then about the Tower of Babel. There was clearly a lot of interest in this subject to know what exactly was going on there.
And yet, for me, that was one of my not-so-favorite episodes. Why? Because I really asked more questions than I provided answers. I was questioning why the builders at Babel thought they could somehow make it to heaven by building a tower all the way up there. Were they really that stupid- or was there something more spiritual going on with this tower?
And most puzzling to me of all: what was it about this structure that caused God to say in
Genesis 11:6
…this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
That’s a big claim. Made by no less than God Himself.
So I had a lot of questions about this Babel incident, and I didn’t want to explore them further on the podcast until I had time to do. my. research. And that’s what I’ve been up to, for a whole year now, preparing for this series- until today. And here we go.
And it starts with a look at the architect of Babel, a guy named Nimrod, who shows up in a few verses in a genealogy of Genesis 10. And yet—if you listen all the way to the end of today’s episode—you will find out why he is actually one of the most significant figures of the story of the Old Testament.
Genesis 10:8 says
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
A mighty man, huh? He sounds important, but on first glance, that description is kinda mysterious and vague.
Until we look at what these words mean in the original Hebrew and in the Septuagint; then, you’ll know exactly why I find Nimrod to be weird—very weird—and I’d like to explore what he’s doing in the Bible.
Turn with me to Genesis 10, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
[continued]
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor.
I believe the whole Bible.
But I don’t understand the whole Bible.
But I also believe, with enough prayer and study, that I can understand anything the Bible says.
And if I can understand it, you can, too.
This is a big month for the podcast. I might even say this: I believe it will potentially be the best month ever for the podcast.
And it comes at a great time because this month is the three-year anniversary of WSITB. I launched it in October of 2023. And as I do every anniversary, I have recorded a few interviews I want to share this month. I’m going to try to give you three—and since I don’t want to derail my current podcast series on Babel, I’ll be releasing those episodes on Fridays. So you get some bonus episodes this month, and it all starts this Friday, featuring Derrick Warfel (waur-FELL), and we’ll be talking about the UFO phenomenon.
So keep an eye out for that. I’m doing it that way because I want to get this Babel series wrapped up by Thanksgiving. Which means no weeks off, and we get started right now.
The Genesis 10 Context
Nimrod appears in the genealogy of Genesis 10. And we need to talk about Nimrod before we talk about the Tower of Babel in the weeks ahead. Why? Because of Nimrod, it says in
Genesis 10:10
The beginning of his kingdom was Babel
Nimrod was the first world leader; the first globalist; the first guy who wanted to unite all peoples into a one-world government.
For some context—and this context will be important to understanding Nimrod’s story, so I need to refresh us all on this—Genesis 6 through 8 described the flood of Noah, the ark, and the giants (or Nephilim, depending on which translation of the Bible you’re using; but Nephilim simply means “giant” [citation: Michael Heiser has proven this]). And if you’ve been listening to this podcast before, then you know well by now that the giants were a major reason for the flood.
Genesis 6:4 says
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,
I take that to mean “and also after the flood,” because we know that there were giants on the earth before and after the flood. Somehow, the Nephilim returned. [start the verse over]
when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
The Sons of God were heavenly beings, a high class of angel that are also known as the Watchers. They married and produced children with human women, which is what created the giants.
If you’re new to the podcast today and you aren’t already aware of this information, I encourage you to go back to the beginning of this podcast and check out episodes 5-8, where I explain it all; or you could go back and listen to the Book of Enoch series that I started in January of this year.
So the giants were these hybrid beings—half-human, half-angel—and they had messed up genetics, which is why they were so huge. They’re also depicted as very bloodthirsty and wicked in Scripture.
When it says they were “mighty men of old,” it means “you’ve heard the stories of these guys. Everybody knows about the giants.” And truly, in just about every ancient culture, just like they all have stories of the ancient flood, you can also find stories of the ancient giants. Scripture, of course, tells the true story. But Scripture also sometimes includes these little side-comments about how these were essentially pop culture icons for the original readers. The giants had made a name for themselves, which is why it says “men of renown.”
But these were not just famous; they were infamous. Scripture says that the pre-flood world corrupted all flesh, which implies that there was some kind of genetic tampering going on, probably through procreation. And God is grieved even over the animals, and God says that He wants to wipe them out as well (Genesis 6:7). It can make us question: what was going on with the animals back then? We discussed some possibilities when talking about the sins of the Watchers in the Enoch series this year.
I know that genetic tampering or experimentation sounds very sci-fi and like it wouldn’t fit in an ancient context. I get that; but I’m honestly not sure how else to explain what’s going on. It sounds like the Watchers, or perhaps the giants themselves, were messing with human and animal genetics.
So Noah brought two of every animal onto the ark, “according to its kind.” And Noah was perfect in his generations, meaning his bloodline was uncorrupted (Genesis 6:9 NKJV). Genesis 6 through 8, again, were about the flood. The floodwaters abate at the end of chapter 8. And Noah and his sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth—restart life on planet earth in chapter 9. Ham turns out to be a rotten son, and his descendants would become frequent enemies of God and the Israelites.
And that brings us to Genesis 10. This chapter is one of the dreaded genealogy chapters of your Bible. But if you’re an experienced Bible reader, you’re going to recognize a lot of the names in this list. Genesis is giving us their origin story.
Genesis 10:6 says
The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.
Like, Egypt right there; we’re all familiar with the nation of Egypt, it endures to this day. It all started with a man named Egypt, who was born of Ham.
We’re also familiar with Canaan; the Canaanites are famously the enemies of Israel who they do a lot of battle with them in the book of Joshua.
Meet Nimrod
And then there’s this guy Cush (bear with me on this list of names for a moment):
Genesis 10:7-9
7 The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
If you read the whole chapter, it’s essentially a list of names. But when you get to Nimrod, he gets singled out with special treatment for a few verses. He’s called a mighty hunter. And then the Bible does that thing again where it turns to the audience and says, “you’ve heard of this guy.”
Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
In other words: you know who I’m talking about. This guy’s a pop culture reference. He’s legendary. Nimrod, the famous mighty hunter.
I was just explaining to my son a few minutes ago a little bit of film history, because he was watching that scene at the beginning of the Lion King where Rafiki holds up baby Simba in front of all the animals. He’s seen that scene parodied in a bunch of things before like George of the Jungle and Chicken Little; I explained that those scenes were just copying The Lion King because the opening scene in the Lion King is so iconic. It’s embedded in the cultural consciousness. Everybody knows that scene.
And that’s basically what’s going on in verse 9; the author of Genesis, Moses, is saying to the audience: everybody knows who Nimrod is. He’s iconic. Let’s see why.
Verses 10-12
10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
And Babel’s story is told in the next chapter, Genesis 11. Now, you kind of have to read Genesis chapters 10 and 11 next to each other, not necessarily as one happening after the other. Genesis 10 gives us all the clans or nations that came from Noah’s sons; Genesis 11 tells us how they all got their individual languages and why they spread out. So in Genesis 11, you get that story, and we’ll be diving into it in the weeks ahead. For now, I want to just focus on Babel’s architect, this guy named Nimrod.
A Mighty Man
So verses 8 and 9 said
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.
We’re going to break these sentences down today, starting with the word “mighty.” Nimrod was a “mighty man.” This is the Hebrew word gibbowr. It’s technically an adjective. It’s a very common word in the Old Testament, showing up more than 150 times. But early on in your Bible, it’s pretty rare.
It only shows up in one other place in Genesis besides chapter 10. Where is that? We already read it today, talking about the giants.
Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men [gibborim] who were of old, the men of renown.
We only see gibbowr in two places in Genesis; once, to talk about the giants in Genesis 6; and then twice in chapter 10 to talk about Nimrod (Genesis 10:8-9). Now technically, it’s gibborim in Genesis 6, but that’s just the plural form of the word gibbowr. In Hebrew, you add a -im to the end of a word to make it plural.
Then you don’t see the word again until the book of Deuteronomy, where it’s used to describe God (Deuteronomy 10:17). After that it starts to explode in use in the Bible; it’s used several times to describe giants or giant-killers, like Goliath in I Samuel 17, or David’s mighty men in II Samuel 23—who defeated several giants. But also, around this time it starts to become more of a generic word for a mighty man or a champion. Again, in Genesis, it was used for the giants of Genesis 6, and then it’s used twice here for Nimrod.
So…is the text in Genesis saying that Nimrod was himself some kind of giant? The Law of First Mention—which says that the way the Bible uses a word the first time is how it should be understood after—would say yes. The Law of Immediate Context—which says that if you want to understand what a word means, you should give priority to how that word is used in the same biblical book—would also say yes. But I don’t think of those as hard-and-fast rules, even though they are called “laws.” They’re just helpful guidelines for Bible study. We need more data.
So let’s look at the Septuagint. You might hear Bible teachers refer to this document known as the Septuagint sometimes. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Septuagint came out in the third century BC. After Alexander the Great and the Greeks conquered the Middle East, the Jews of those days said, “You know what, everybody is speaking Greek now; we need to have a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible so that we can preserve the Bible’s teachings in our culture.” Exactly the same mentality behind our modern Bible translations today.
So a group of approximately 70 Jewish scholars got together and started translating the Old Testament—which was the only part of the Bible that had been written at that time—into Greek. And that’s how the Septuagint was born. And you will sometimes see the Septuagint cited in theology books with the letters LXX, or it might be in the footnote of some of your Bibles where it will say “the LXX reads this way” on a particular verse. That’s because LXX are the Roman Numerals for 70, so that’s become the shorthand for Septuagint. The Septuagint is the version of the Bible that existed at the time of Jesus. In fact, when Paul would quote from the Old Testament, he quoted directly from the Septuagint.
It’s very helpful for us to have the Septuagint today because when we’re confused about how something should be understood in the Hebrew, we can look at how it was translated in the Greek Septuagint, and it can help shed a lot of light on how that word should be understood.
For example, some people will try to say that Nephilim in Genesis 6:4 can’t mean “giant,” because “that’s too weird." They’ll say that a Nephilim just meant a scary bad guy, but not a literal giant. However, the Septuagint of Genesis 6:4 says gigantes (hard gs) in the place of the word Nephilim. [spell gigantes] Gigantes, of course, meaning giant.
Now let’s look at what the Septuagint says about Nimrod.
Genesis 10:8 in the LXX reads:
8 And Chus [Cush] begot Nebrod [Nimrod]: he began to be a giant upon the earth. 9 He was a giant hunter before the Lord God; therefore they say, As Nebrod [Nimrod] the giant hunter before the Lord.
Woah. Woah. The Septuagint says Nimrod was a giant. It uses the same word- gigas (hard gs), the singular form of gigantes- to describe Nimrod.
Nimrod was one of the Nephilim. Nimrod was a giant.
[musical interlude]
Began to Be
I don’t know about you, but for me, learning this was a revelation. This recontextualizes Genesis 10 and 11 for me. We knew from Genesis 6:4 that the Nephilim were on the earth in the days before the flood, “and also afterward”—but we didn’t know exactly how they came back. We know we see them in the land of Canaan in Numbers 13—but how did they get there?
Well, now we see the earliest appearance of the giants after the flood—this guy Nimrod. But wait—why was he a giant? Well let’s dig into this a little deeper.
Genesis 10:8 said
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
And the Septuagint said
he began to be a giant upon the earth.
So it sounds like he didn’t start as a giant. The text says he “began to be one,” or he became one. How do you become a giant? I mean, it’s not like there’s a listing for that on ZipRecruiter.
The Hebrew word for “began” here is chalal (hall-lell, with phlegm in the hall). I looked this up on the Blue Letter Bible. It can be used many different ways in Scripture. If it has the niphal verb stem, it means “to profane, defile, pollute, desecrate; begin”; in fact, most of the meanings have something to do with defilement or a violation. This use in Genesis 10:8 has the hiphil verb stem. When it has the hiphil stem, that narrows it down to two possible meanings: "to let be profaned; to begin” (citation: Blue Letter Bible, Lexicon :: Strong’s H2490)
So you could read this in two ways: one, that he simply became a gibbowr. Or two, that he was profaned or defiled so that he could become a gibbowr.
Now, let me be clear: You don’t have to read it that way. That’s a way to interpret it. The text doesn’t force you to read it that way, and most translators would say that he simply “began” to be a gibbowr. So you can read it that way if you want. My question is, if gibbowr means giant, then how does one become a giant? I’d think it would be through some kind of profane act.
Here’s what’s interesting about this word chalal with the hiphil stem. If you read it with the “profaning” meaning, it’s an active verb, but it’s describing something that happened to him. Meaning, he didn’t make himself a giant, but that he was an active participant in it; he allowed it to happen to him.
In Doug Van Dorn’s book Giants: Sons of the Gods, he says, “The grammar allows for this translation, ‘Nimrod began to become a giant.’ In other words, like Seth Brundle in the 80s horror classic, The Fly, Nimrod was a willing participant in some grotesque genetic experiment.” (Giants: Sons of the Gods, Van Dorn, page 69) Now, I haven’t seen The Fly, but I’ll take his word for it.
Now, that’s just an interpretation of these words; you don’t have to read it that way; you could just read it that he became a powerful guy. I don’t think you could prove it one way or the other based on the Hebrew alone. But when you add in the fact that the Septuagint translates “mighty man” as gigas, or giant, this becomes difficult to explain what exactly happened to him in natural terms.
And I’ll add this: the Septuagint only uses gigas/gigantes one more time in Genesis, and it’s to describe a clan of giants in Genesis 14 called the Rephaim. Then you don’t see the word gigantes used again until Numbers 13 where you see the Anakim, another tribe of giants, and then again to talk about the giant Rephaim in Deuteronomy 2-3. But it doesn’t use the word gigantes for God. The Pentateuch only uses this word for giants and for Nimrod.
Hunter
What else are we told about him? That he was a hunter. A gibbowr tsayid (sigh-yid). The Septuagint called him a “giant hunter,” but it doesn’t mean he hunted giants. It means he was a giant who was a hunter.
What was Nimrod a hunter of? I’ve heard everything from being a hunter of people to being a hunter of dinosaurs, and that this is what happened to the dinosaurs. After looking into it, I really have no idea. (I don’t think it was the dinosaur thing)
I think the theological significance is that he prefigures the Antichrist. In Revelation 6, the Antichrist appears carrying a bow. This is symbolic, but it does kind of link the Antichrist with hunting. Nimrod was the first world leader who attempted to take over the world; the Antichrist will be the final tyrant who tries to take over the world.
And there is a popular archetype of “the hunter” in ancient stories. Probably the clearest is Orion in Greek mythology. There’s a constellation of Orion where he’s carrying a bow. In fact, many ancient Jews believed Orion was Nimrod. Another is Gilgamesh; you might remember hearing of the ancient poem called The Epic of Gilgamesh. Brian Godawa, who I’ve interviewed on this podcast before, has taken that story and merged it with Biblical and Jewish history and made a novel out of it. According to the legends, Gilgamesh was the hunter king of Uruk. Genesis 10 told us that Nimrod founded the city of Erech—same city, it’s just spelled with an E in our English bibles.
Other famous hunters in history include Ninurta of the Mesopotamians, Hercules of the Greeks and Elmer Fudd of the Looney Tunes.
Now, you probably think I’m joking about that last one but there is kind of a funny story I wanted to bring up from that. Bugs Bunny would famously call Elmer Fudd “Nimrod,” and people took it as Bugs Bunny calling him an idiot. However, Bugs Bunny wasn’t calling him stupid; he was mocking his hunting ability, since Nimrod was known as a hunter. But general audiences didn’t understand the reference, so now the word Nimrod has become an insult in modern times for a moron. So if you ever thought that Nimrod meant “dummy,” that’s why. It’s the Looney Tunes influence.
By the way, Nimrod’s name actually means “rebel” or “we will revolt.” It has the same consonants as the word “rebel,” which are M-R-D. Which brings us to this last phrase I want to look at…
Before the Lord
Genesis 10:9
He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
And when it says “before the Lord,” the word “before” is the Hebrew Paniym (paw-neem), it’s an extremely common preposition in Hebrew. It means “in front of,” which is usually translated “before,” but it has the idea of “in the face of.” It means Nimrod did these things in open rebellion against God. Not that he was a hunter in service of God; he did the things he did to spite God.
Like Numbers 16:2, where it says Korah and his fellow rebels “rose up before Moses,” it also means they rose up against him. Joshua 7:12 says that the Israelites “cannot stand before their enemies.” It means to stand “against” them in both of those places; so you can see how the word paniym can mean “before” or “against.” And the Septuagint’s Greek equivalent word does the same thing- it can be translated as “before” or “against.”
In Judgment of the Nephilim, Ryan Pitterson says, “Nimrod’s hunting and military prowess was ‘before the Lord,’ meaning in opposition and defiance of God.” (Page 253)
So in recap, here is another way you could understand Genesis 10:8-10. (Again, this is my theory, my interpretation, of what’s being said.)
“Cush fathered Nimrod, who name means ‘rebel’; and Nimrod was the first person on earth who allowed himself to be profaned, defiled and became a giant. He was a giant hunter against the Lord. And whether it was by the name Orion, Gilgamesh, or something else, everybody knows the story of Nimrod, a giant hunter against the Lord. His kingdom began with the city of Babel…”
Next Time
And next time on this podcast we’ll start looking at the tower that was built there. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
Actually, that’s next Wednesday. This Friday, you get a bonus episode, an interview I did recently with Derrick Warfel (waur-FELL).
And by the way, a shoutout to Casey, who is a new official weirdo. That means she’s listened to at least 25 episodes and then shot me an email and let me know. And she said she’s actually up to about 35. Welcome to the club, Casey! And if anyone else wants to get in touch with me or notify me of their weirdo status, my email is WeirdStuffInTheBible@gmail.com
The First on Earth
Closing thought—we watched The Rise of Skywalker a few weeks ago. Don’t ask me why. I can’t really explain it. I think it’s because every time I’ve watched it, I scrubbed it from my memory, and then I forgot why it’s so terrible, so I watch it again to remind myself. I don’t know. What else am I gonna do, watch a movie called The Fly?
Well anyway, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker brings back the Emperor Palpatine from the old movies—or as my son likes to call him, “Lightning Bad Guy.” And last time we saw Lightning Bad Guy, he was getting thrown down a shaft in the Death Star. And then he exploded. And then the whole Death Star exploded. And they never even both to explain in the movie how he’s suddenly back.
In fact, the infamous line related to this scene is simply: “Somehow, Palpatine returned.” That’s it. No flashback, no backstory, just (quote-unquote) “somehow.”
Well, you have a similar plot hole in your Bible. “Somehow, the Nephilim returned.” They were there before the flood. They didn’t get on the Ark. The Bible clearly says all life was wiped out by the waters of the flood (Genesis 7:21-22). But then Noah gets off the ark and a few books later, we see Nephilim in the land of Canaan in Numbers 13, with no explanation of how they came back. That feels like a big oversight, a major plot hole in the storyline of Scripture.
And there are some theories out there as to how the giants returned. Some have suggested that the waters of the flood didn’t literally cover the whole earth, though I disagree with that view. Others have the idea that one of Noah’s son’s wives—usually thought to be Ham’s wife—had the Nephilim genetics, and passed that into their bloodline. I’m not a fan of that idea either; I feel like God would have said something if that was the case, as that kind of negates the whole purpose of the flood if they come off the Ark and 1/3 of humanity is already corrupted. And then another theory out there is called the multiple incursion theory, and that’s where I’ve always lined up on it; that more Watchers descended and created the Nephilim again, just like the first time. But frankly, we don’t have any biblical accounts of a second incursion, not even outside of Scripture.
Or so I thought. Because as I was studying about Nimrod this week, here is what jumped off the page at me:
Genesis 10:8
Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
The first on earth. See, we could say with the gibbowr context and the Septuagint translation that it means he became a giant. And therefore, something must have happened to him to make him a giant. But wait a minute, there was one more detail there that Scripture specified:
“He was the first on earth to be a gibbowr.”
“The first on earth.” Well, there were other gibbowr on earth before the flood. So he wasn’t the first gibbowr. He was the first person on earth to become a gibbowr.
Guys: if this theory about Nimrod is true, it solves the mystery of when the nephilim returned. And it was right there in our Bibles all along.
Nimrod was the first Nephilim after the flood. His father Cush was not a giant. His grandfather Ham wasn’t either. Nimrod was somehow altered to become a giant.
But here’s the next mystery: what was that? Was this before the Babel incident—or is this why he built the Tower of Babel?
These are questions we’ll dig into next week as we get into Genesis 11. But I’m warning you—it’ll be weird.
And if you’re ready to get weird with me, I hope you’ll be back next time. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next week on Weird Stuff in the Bible.