And Cush begot Nimrod;
he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said: “Like
Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.”
And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and
Calneh, in the land of Shinnar.
(Bereishit 10:9-11)
[Aside:
Did Terry Brooks base the name of the Shannara trilogy on the biblical
Shinnar? I hope so.]
In last week’s parsha we have Tuval-Cain (one
of Lemech’s sons):
And Zillah, she also
bore Tuval-cain, the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron; and
the sister of Tuval-cain was Na’amah. (4:22)
A
midrash explains that Tuval-cain was a hunter and would take his blind father
hunting. While this is not portrayed
directly in a negative way, it leads to negative consequences during an
accident that kills both his ancestor Cain and Tuval-cain himself. Yet in this week’s parsha, I am inclined to read of Nimrod as a hero, someone special. He is glorified as a “hunter before the
Lord.” But Jewish tradition remembers him
quite differently. Why?
After
Nimrod is introduced the kingdom of Babel was established. We are most familiar with Babel from the
story that comes next in the Torah: the Tower of Babel that resulted from the
collaboration of men to build a tower that would reach the heavens. The people said to one another, God has no right to choose the upper world
for Himself, and to leave the lower world for us. Therefore, we will build a tower with an idol
on top holding a sword, so that it may seem as if it intended a war with God
(Genesis Rabbah 38:7). This is viewed as
a very negative quest to build a structure that is God-defying. But still, it appears to me that the first
mention of Babel is quite the opposite.
The city may not have been dedicated to God, but it was at least
established under Nimrod who was a man of God.
Its mention seems to be meant to show just how great Nimrod was. Jewish commentaries, however, bear this out
differently. The city started off with
Nimrod “hunter before the Lord” and subsequently the Torah does not mention
Nimrod again. But Rashi explains that
Nimrod “hunted” the minds of men to turn them away from God and was the
progenitor of the Tower of Babel. Midrash
Rabbah relates a shocking turn away from God in the face of his descendent
Abraham:
He [Avraham] was given
over to Nimrod. [Nimrod] told him: Worship the Fire! Avraham said to him: Shall I then worship the water, which puts
off the fire! Nimrod told him: Worship
the water! [Avraham] said to him: If
so, shall I worship the cloud, which carries the water? [Nimrod] told him: Worship the cloud! [Avraham] said to
him: If so, shall I worship the wind,
which scatters the clouds? [Nimrod] said to him: Worship the wind! [Avraham] said to him: And shall we worship the human, who withstands the wind? Said
[Nimrod] to him: You pile words upon
words, I bow to none but the fire - in it shall I throw you, and let the God to
whom you bow come and save you from it!
Haran [Avraham's
brother] was standing there. He said [to himself]: what shall I do? If Avraham
wins, I shall say: "I am of Avraham's [followers]", if Nimrod wins I
shall say "I am of Nimrod's [followers]". When Avraham went into
the furnace and survived, Haran was asked: "Whose
[follower] are you?" and he answered: I am Avraham's! [Then] they took him and threw him into the
furnace, and his belly opened and he died and predeceased Terach, his father.
How
is it that Nimrod, who appears to be a positive figure in the Torah, has become
the model villain in Judaism? Rabbi
Mordecai Elon has a similar question: How
does [Rashi] come to the firm conclusion that Nimrod was wicked? Furthermore, the words “before the Lord”
always appear in a positive sense. It is
said of Hannah, “And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the
Lord.” Yet in the text before us we read
“a might hunter before the Lord” – how can we reconcile the two?
Of
all the commentators on the Torah that I have encountered, Rabbi Elon is placed
right at the top and he certainly did not disappoint me this week. [Recommended reading: http://www.elon.org/shiur_english/noach60.htm]
I am not going to completely relate his answer
to our question here, but I would like to expound upon a portion of it:
There
is a gemarra (Chullin 89a) that states:
God said to Israel: I
desire you because even when I affect you greatly, you humble yourselves before
Me. I gave greatness to Avraham who
said, I am dust; to Moses and Aharon
who said, what are we?; to David who
said, I am a worm, not a man. But idolaters are not like this. I gave greatness to Nimrod who said, let us build a city; to Pharaoh who
said, who is this God?; to
Sennacherib who said ,who of all the gods
of the lands…; to Nebuchadnezzar who said, I will raise upon my throne; to Hiram, king of Tyre, who said, I sat on the throne of God in the heart of
the seas.
God
gives greatness to many, but we all do something different with it. Our patriarchs, the guests who we invited
into our Sukkah just a couple weeks ago, were humbled by the blessings God
bestowed upon them. Others were not
so. And yet it still seems odd that
Nimrod, who was “a might hunter before the Lord,” is placed amongst the
obviously evil rulers such as Pharaoh.
Rabbi Elon clarifies in noting that later in the Torah, Nimrod appears
in the guise of Amraphel, King of Shinar, and goes to war against Avraham. The spark of the battle is idolatry, but
Rabbi Elon says:
It was a war over diametrically opposed perceptions of the world. Nimrod rules. Nowhere is it written that he spoke like Sennacherib, Pharaoh, or Nebuchadnezzar. But in the end it was apparent that King Nimrod joined the black list of kings who thought they were god. Pharaoh told his people that the Nile was god, but it took someone as perceptive as Moses to observe that when Pharaoh came to worship at the Nile he was in reality worshiping his own reflected image.
Nimrod was not as directly defiant of God as others,
but just as dangerous through his manipulative ways. He didn’t espouse himself as a god, but he
used his vast kingdom to make the statement for him. The Tower of Babel was then to be the
centerpiece representing his almighty-ness.
But like Moses did with Pharaoh, Avraham was able to see through Nimrod’s
façade of being a strong leader. As
Rabbi Elon sums it up, based on another midrash:
Avraham says to the
people who built the Tower of Babel: You have abandoned a world with both
God and man at its center – because man has the ability to reveal God to the
whole world, but only if He stands at the center together with man. But instead you decided to build a Tower, so
that you could make a name for yourself.
I cannot be part of such a Tower, with its ‘head in the heavens’, while
around it people continue to dream of a new world order, always in a difference
guise. As Rabbi Shimshon Raphael
Hirsch states: You abandoned a strong tower named God – and you lost
everything.
What
was meant to replace God and show the dominance of man in actuality exposed
mankind as fallible. God created a world
for mankind and that world was left imperfect, in order to allow us to be His
partner in continuing and perfecting creation.
We were given the godly gift of free choice and creativity. With this comes the ability to choose if we
use those for positive or negative, to reveal God to the whole world or build
a tower…with its ‘head in the heavens’.
Nimrod chose wrong. Avraham
provides the model for withstanding the influence of those who would willingly
lead us down the same path as Nimrod.
Shabbat
Shalom.
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