Akkadian period bronze head in the Nineveh Temple built by King Manishtusu (British Museum). The head may be depicting his father, Sargon of Akkad.
Nimrod, Mighty Hunter and King - Who Was He?
Nimrod’s bio begins in the 23rd century B.C.E. with King Sargon of Akkad and his grandson Naram-Sin.
Published October 20, 2020
Editor’s note: For more on segmented genealogies, see Aaron Demsky, “Reading Biblical Genealogies,” TheTorah (2016); idem, “Manasseh’s Genealogies: Why They Change Between Numbers, Joshua, and Chronicles,” TheTorah (2019).
The identification of some of the names in the Table with names of countries is a bit obscured in many translations, because they are transliterated rather than translated—for example “Mizraim” rather than “Egypt.” This tradition of transliteration goes as far back as the Septuagint, which renders this name as Μεσραιμ rather than Αἴγυπτον.
Editor’s note: For an argument that the geographic perspective here makes the Transjordan, and not Canaan, into the center of the world, see David Ben-Gad HaCohen, “Decoding the Table of Nations: Reading it as a Map,” TheTorah (2015).
For example:
בראשית י:לא אֵלֶּה בְנֵי שֵׁם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם לִלְשֹׁנֹתָם בְּאַרְצֹתָם לְגוֹיֵהֶם.
Gen 10:31 These are the descendants of Shem according to their clans and languages, by their lands, according to their nations.
Micah 5:5 [Eng.6] mentions a “land of Nimrod,” apparently referring to Babylon, perhaps showing that the eighth-century B.C.E. prophet was familiar with some form of the story recorded in Genesis.
Many scholars assume that “Shinʿar” is in fact derived from the name “Sumer,” but not all agree. See Ran Zadok, “The Origin of the Name Shinar,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 74.2 (1984): 240-244.
The spelling used in this article here for names such as Accad, Cush, Calah, and so on, in which the Hebrew Kaph is transliterated with an English C, is traditionally used by most Bible translations. The more familiar “academic” spellings, Kush, Kalah, Akkad etc. will be used when not quoting biblical passages.
William F. Albright, “The End of ‘Calneh in Shinar,’” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3 (1944): 254–255.
The phrase “from that land (יצא) he/it went out.” This could be a reference to Nimrod himself (last mentioned by name in verse 9), i.e., Nimrod went forth from Shinar to Assyria, as I translated above. Nevertheless, while it could be Ashur (“Assyria”), it could also refer to Ashur son of Shem (cf. verse 22), “from that land Ashur went out.” This only works, however, if the reference is to the person Ashur (m.) as opposed to either the land or the city (f.), which is very unlikely in this J text.
Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “In Search of Resen (Genesis 10:12): Dūr-Šarrukīn?” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, edited by Chaim Cohen, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 511–524.
Verse 6 lists the four sons of Ham—Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. Verse 7 then lists the five sons of Cush, Ham’s eldest, and two of his grandsons. Verse 12 continues with the sons of “Mizraim,” Ham’s second son. The passage above interrupts this flow, adding another son of Cush who wasn’t mentioned in the previous verse.
Not all scholars agree that “J” was actually ever an independent document. These scholars use “P” and “non-P”.
Logically, if the “Nimrod the mighty hunter” story was originally set in Nubia, vv. 10–12, where Nimrod moves from being a hunter to being a king, should be understood as an artificial graft onto it, since an African ruler living in Shinʿar and establishing cities in that region and in Assyria makes little sense. Nevertheless, this has not stopped several scholars from “identifying” Nimrod with an African or Egyptian ruler, despite all of the cities being in the wrong part of the world.
Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, “In Search of Nimrod,” Eretz-Israel 5 (1958): 32-36.
Around 2300 B.C.E., a certain Lugal-zagesi claimed not just priority as the most important king in Sumer, but suzerainty over the cities of Uruk, Ur, Umma and Lagash as the king of all Sumer.
The location of this town is unknown.
The parallels to Moses have long been noted by scholarship. See, Hugh Gressmann, Mose und seine Zeit: ein Kommentar zu den Mose-Sagen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913), 1–16; Brian Lewis, The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth, ASOR Dissertation series 4 (Cambridge, MA: ASOR, 1980).
Šarru-kîn of Akkad is not mentioned by name in the Bible, but his 1,400-year-later namesake, Šarru-kîn II of Assyria is, just once, in Isaiah 20:1. However, to the 8th century B.C.E. Judahites, the way that name was pronounced by the contemporary Assyrians sounded more like “Sarugun,” which they spelled סרגון and later vocalized “Sargon.” By convention, when Mesopotamian names have biblical spellings, these spellings are used in English. Thus, we call Sargon II’s son Sennacherib rather than Sîn-aḫḫē-erība, Nebuchadnezzar rather than Nabû-kudurri-uṣur, and so on.
The identification of Nimrod with either Sargon or Naram-Sin has been brought up in the past, generally only in passing.
This is the very document that supplies us with most of the “hard” information about the Sargonic period (such as names and reigns of kings).
For example, a fragment of the Gilgamesh story was found at Megiddo, and a fragment of the Sargon epic at El-Amarna. These are just two examples of such cultural contact. Editor’s note: For another such contact, with regard to the flood story, see Guy Darshan, “The Motif of Releasing Birds in ANE Flood Stories,” TheTorah (2017).
This is assuming Resen really did represent Dur-Šarru-kin, the new capital built by Sargon II.
A previous Šarru-kin (Sargon I), about whom very little is known, ruled Assyria around 1900 B.C.E.
Similarly, according to a cuneiform document called the Weidner Chronicle, extant copies of which date from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, Sargon “built” the city of Babylon. This is very unlikely, but if this claim derives from the Babylonians, it would point to their attempt to connect this great figure of the past to their city. The biblical authors were apparently aware of this tradition, since Babylon is put first in the list.
In many English Bibles, this is verse 6.
Jewish legend pictures him as having thrown a young Abram into a fiery furnace when he was young, since he was a fire worshiper and Abram was a worshiper of the one true God. Editor’s note: For a discussion of how this midrash developed, see Yishai Kiel, “Why the Midrash Has Abraham Thrown into Nimrod's Furnace,” TheTorah (2015).
