In the midst of the list of names given
in Genesis x. we are arrested by one or two
digressions. One son of Cush became so
great that his name and prowess became a proverb, “Wherefore it is said, Even
as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord”.
The other digressions in this chapter are the references to the
Canaanites (18, 19); the statement that
Shem was the father of all the children of Eber (21); the division of the earth in the days of
Peleg (25); and the dwelling of the sons
of Joktan (29, 30). We propose to
consider the place that Nimrod occupies in the outworking of the purpose of
God.
The name Nimrod is from the Hebrew marad, to rebel. The Merodach of the Bible (Jeremiah l. 2) is
the name Nimrod. The Accadian Merodach
was called Amaruduk or Amarudu, and became in Assyrion-Babylonian, Marduk. The suffix uk is dropped in the Hebrew, and the prefix ni, assimilating the name “to a certain extent to the initial forms
of the Hebrew verbs”, was added giving us the Hebrew name Ni-marad or
Nimrod. We would not say that all error is counterfeit truth, simply
because our limited knowledge would not justify the assertion, but we do say
that much error, much vital error, is
counterfeit truth, this is seen in the lies of Satan spoken in Eden and
incarnate in Nimrod.
Merodach (i.e. Nimrod deified) is creator
and saviour in the whole unholy parody.
He it is who undertakes to do battle with Tiamat, and to him it was
spoken, "Fear not, and make merry, for
thou shalt bruise the head of Tiamat".
Here is one of the primal declarations concerning the Seed diverted from
its true object. Merodach, as a result
of his decision to become the avenger and the redeemer, is exalted above all
gods. "Among the high gods thou art highest; thy command is the command of Anu, O
Merodach, our avenger, we give thee sovereignty over the entire universe. Thy weapon will ever be
irresistible". "May Merodach,
the mighty overseer of the heavenly spirits, exalt thy head."
What is true concerning the usurpation of
the glory and offices of Christ in this satanic scheme, is true also of all
that is associated with His gospel. A
complete religion dealing with life,
death, and judgment, salvation by works, penances and rites, a Christless
creed, and the very mystery of iniquity.
With Nimrod, Babylon and all that Babylon stands for are associated
together. “Babylon is taken: Bel is confounded: Merodach is broken in pieces” (Jer. l.
2).
Nimrod, the rebel, is the first one that
Scripture records as founding a kingdom.
“The beginning of his kingdom was Babel”. Up to this time an earthly king was unknown; how suggestive if the character and purpose
of human kingdoms it is, that the first king was a rebel and the first kingdom
began at Babylon! The line of Divine
purpose was to flow and develop through Shem, that is evident by a comparison of
the generations given in Genesis x.
& xi. Nimrod was therefore the next
great satanic attack upon that purpose, and from its first mention in Genesis
until its final mention in Revelation Babel or Babylon has been the seat of all
the rebellion and opposition to the Divine purpose.
Before we proceed to the more detailed account
of the origin of the name Babel, as given in
Genesis.xi., we will endeavour to
show how the great rebel has been foisted upon mankind in the endeavour of
Satan to usurp the glory and the kingdom of the Son of God. Bunsen states that the religious system of
Egypt was derived from "the primitive empire of Babel". Birch, dealing with the Babylonian cylinders,
is quoted by Layard as saying, "The zodiacal signs … show unequivocally
that the Greeks derived their notions and arrangements of the zodiac (and
consequently their mythology, that was intertwined with it), from the
Chaldees". Ouvaroff in his work on
the Eleusinian mysteries states that these mysteries were transplanted from
Egypt, which in turn received them from the East, “the centre of science and
civilization”. Not only did Egypt and
Greece derive their religion from Babylon, but so also did the Phœnicians, so
Macrobius says in his Saturnalia; and
wherever man is found and religion is professed, beneath the superficial
differences of names and ritual lies the one great primitive lie originated at
Babylon and linked with Nimrod.
Egypt, under the titles Isis and Osiris; India
under the titles Isi and Iswara; Asia as Cybele and Deoius; Pagan
Rome as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer (the boy Jupiter); Greece
as Ceres, the great Mother with the babe at her beast; China
as Shing Moo with her child in her arms;
and Papal Rome as the Madonna and
child, all these and many more are the
result of the original idolatry set up at Babylon to turn the minds of men away
from the first promise of the true Seed of the woman to Satan’s
counterfeit. The Babylonians worshipped
Semiramis under the name of the great Goddess
Mother, and it was from her son that she derived all the glory and claim to
deity. By a strange process the husband
of Semiramis came to be worshipped as the seed (her son), and that son and
husband was NIMROD himself. Babylon,
both in Old and New Testaments, stands forward as the great symbol of Anti-God,
even as Nimrod usurps all the titles and prerogatives of Christ. (For fuller details as to these titles, the
reader is referred to that master-work, The
Two Babylons by Hislop).
Let us now trace the story of Babylon, to
see its place in the order of things.
Babylon does not come into the page of Scripture (after the two
references of Genesis x. & xi.) until the time of Israel’s deposition draws
near. God’s king, David, and God’s city,
Jerusalem, had been chosen, but until David’s greater Son should reign the
purpose of God must flow in other channels.
Universal sovereignty goes back by Divine appointment to Babylon, to be
retained in Gentile succession until Babylon and Babylonianism should be
destroyed. Read Daniel for this. Isaiah xiii.
contains “the burden of Babylon”, “and Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,
the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom
and Gomorrah”. In
chapter xiv. 4, the king of
Babylon is addressed, and what is said is prophetic of the future antichrist
who said, “I will be like the Most High”.
Again, in “the burden of the desert of the sea”, come the words,
“Babylon is fallen, is fallen” (xxi. 9).
In Isa. xlvii. 1-15 we have another prophecy of Babylon’s
doom. Babylon is addressed as a woman
that had been called, “the lady of kingdoms”, and which had usurped the Divine
prerogative of saying, “I AM, and none else beside Me”.
Jeremiah speaks the word of the Lord
against Babylon, and occupies chapters
l. & li. with threatenings of wrath
to come. The vengeance that falls upon
Babylon is “the vengeance of His temple”.
“Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand that made all the
earth drunken: the nations have drunk
her wine; therefore the nations are
mad”. Babylon is addressed as a “destroying
mountain” in li. 25, and is threatened with judgment. “I will make thee a burnt mountain”. “As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel
to fall, so also at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth”. Many similar passages of great importance come
in these two chapters of Jeremiah which we cannot stay to quote. Jeremiah concludes with a solemn charge to
Seraiah, who was going to Babylon to take the book wherein all these judgments
were written, to read them there, to bind a stone to it, and to cast it into
the Euphrates, and say, “Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the
evil that I will bring upon her: and
they shall be weary”.
Just as in Isaiah we have history
intertwined with prophecy, a literal Sennacherib foreshadowing the future
Antichrist in his blasphemy and his doom, so Jeremiah’s prophecy concerning
Babylon had reference partly to the overthrow of Babylon of the Medes (Jer. li.
11), and partly to the future overthrow of the Babylon yet to be revived again
in these last days. The book of the
Revelation devotes considerable space to the fall of Babylon. Six times Babylon is mentioned, and five
times out of the six she is spoken of as being “great”. Let us notice what is said in this last
prophecy of the Word. “And there
followed another angel saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city,
because she made all nations drunk
with the wine of her fornication” (Rev.xiv.8). This utterance has on the one side the aionian gospel, with its call to “worship Him that made heaven and earth,
and the sea, and the fountains of waters”.
On the other there is the threat of awful judgment upon any one who worships the beast and his image, and
who receives his mark in his forehead, or in his hand.
The next reference is in Rev. xvi. 19,
“… and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her
the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath”. A most mighty earthquakes shakes the earth at
the pouring out of the seventh vial, the great city is divided into three
parts, the cities of the nations fall, every island flees away, and mountains
are not found. The judgment of Babylon
is in a setting of world-wide judgment.
Then follows in Revelation
xvii. a description of this great city,
and its judgment. It is likened to a
woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast having seven heads and full of the
names of blasphemy. The woman was
arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, precious stones and
pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of
her fornication: and upon her forehead
was a name written, “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and
abominations of the earth”. The woman
was drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of
Jesus. Her destruction is brought about
by the ten horns which the beast carried, who are ten kings who reign for the
brief hour of the Beast’s dominion.
Revelation xviii. follows with a further description of the character
and fall of Babylon. Again an angel
cries, “Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of demons,
and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every hateful and unclean
bird”. As
chapter xvii. tells of the kings
of the earth, so chapter xviii. links all nations and kings in the
participation in Babylon’s impure vintage.
Jeremiah’s command to Seraiah is taken up and amplified:--
“A mighty angel took up a stone like a
great millstone and cast it into the sea saying, Thus with violence shall the
great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers and musicians, and
of pipers and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee, and no
craftsman of whatever craft he be shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard
no more at all in thee; and the light of
a candle shall shine no more at all in thee;
and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more
at all in thee; for thy merchants were
the great men of the earth; for by thy
sorceries were all nations deceived. And
in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were
slain upon the earth.”
Let us note these closing words; they may be a figure of speech, they may,
however, be very awfully true. All the
blood! not only of prophets, saints and martyrs, but every murder and every
execution, every war and every assassination, all traceable back to the system
of iniquity and the father of lies, who, to thwart the purpose of the Most
High, made his seat at Babylon. Not only
is the influence and the judgment of Babylon world-wide in its effect (the very
heavens resound with Hallelujahs at her downfall), heaven itself can hold the
glorious Son of God no longer. He rides
forth to conquer and to rule, and the reign of peace and righteousness follows
swiftly on the destruction of that city which symbolized the dread authority of
the prince of darkness.
We must now return to the book of Genesis,
to learn somewhat more of the beginnings of Babel. Although the division of the earth among the
sons of Noah comes before the record of the building of the tower of Babel, the
scattering that took place at the confusion of tongues was the cause of the
division recorded in Genesis x. There in
Gen. x. 5, 20 & 31, the
descendants of Japheth, Ham, and Shem are divided according to their tongues.
This therefore must have come after the record of Genesis.xi., for there we read, “The whole earth was of one
language and one speech” (“one lip, and one in words”). The idea that the tower of Babel was built
“to reach unto heaven” is not scriptural.
The words are more correctly rendered, “whose top with the heavens”, and
far more likely denote a tower like the ancient temples of Denderah and Esneh
which have the signs of the zodiac represented on them. What possible object there could have been to
build such a tower with the Zodiac thereon we must reserve for the series
entitles, Sidelights on the Scriptures,
as the subject is too vast altogether for this article. Suffice it to say that it meditated a direct
attack upon the primeval witness given by God to man, and pictured for his
memory in the heavens. The builders also
desired to make a name. This too was an
intrusion into the purpose of God. That
which could not be obtained by such means was promised by God to Abraham, “I
will make of thee a great nation, and make thy name great”. Seeing that the imagination of man’s heart is
evil, the greater the number, and the easier the means of communication, the
greater the possibilities of evil. The
Lord does not destroy these men; no
judgments fall. He simply confounds
their language. They were scattered
abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Nimrod did not build Babel (the beginning of
his kingdom was Babel), he went back it would appear to that deserted city,
finished it, and sought to overthrow the purpose of God by becoming the first earthly
king. From this, apparently, small
beginning has spread all the harlot abominations of the earth, and as we saw by
reading the Revelation, no millennium is possible until that city and its
system is judged before heaven and earth.
Babylon is Satan’s metropolis, even as Jerusalem is God’s. Babylon and Shinar are about to revive before
our very eyes.
As we see these things, we know the hour
of our glory and hope is near. Readers,
lift up your heads.
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