We shall take the family of Ham in two sections, briefly commenting on
certain items:

 

    The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush: Seba,
Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. Cush
became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He
was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty
hunter before the Lord." The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and
Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria,
and built Nineveh, RehobothIr, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that
is the great city. Egypt became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim,
Pathrusim, Casluhim (whence came the Philistines), and Caphtorim. {Gen 10:6-14
RSV}

 

The four sons of Ham are relatively easy to trace in history: Cush is
applesociated with the peoples of Southern Arabia and Ethiopia. Ethiopians still
trace their ancestry back to Cush. Egypt is self explanatory. Egypt (or Mizraim
in Hebrew, an ancient name for Egypt) became the father of the Egyptian Empire,
settling in the Nile Valley. Put is applesociated with Lydia, on the west of Egypt,
in North Africa. Canaan centered largely in and around Palestine, though the
Canaanites later became much more widespread, as this account tells us further
on.

 

The account zooms in on an individual named Nimrod, who is called a great
hunter. He is a rather mysterious figure, of great importance in ancient
history. He is the founder, as we are told, of both Babylon and Nineveh, the two
great cities of antiquity which ultimately became enemies of Israel. The
prominent thing said about him here is that he was a mighty man, "a mighty
hunter before the LORD." Now it was the work of kings in those ancient days to
be hunters. This was a time when civilization was sparse and wild animals were a
constant threat to the peoples. Kings, having nothing much else to do, organized
hunting parties and acted as the protectors of their people by killing wild
animals. Nimrod evidently gained a great reputation as such a hunter, but he was
more than a hunter of wild animals. The Jewish Talmud helps us here, for it says
that he was "a hunter of the souls of men." By the founding of Babylon and
Nineveh we have a hint given of the nature of this man. We are told here that he
was "the first mighty man on earth," i.e., after the Flood. That phrase, "mighty
man," takes us back to Genesis 6 where, in that strange story of the invasion of
the "sons of God" into the human race, there resulted a race of giants called
Nephilim. We are told that, "these were the mighty men that were of old, the men
of renown." This was evidently a demonic invasion of the race, with sexual
overtones, which brought into being a race of giants that were morally degraded.
These also appear later on in the Canaanite tribes. We have found this
suggestive line of thought running through the Scriptural account up to this
point. It now suggests that Nimrod was one of these "mighty men," and therefore
introduced a perverted, degraded form of religion into the world. It began at
Babylon, spread to Nineveh, and can be traced in history as it subsequently
spread throughout the whole of the earth. Thus, in this man Nimrod, we have the
seed of idolatry and false religion coming in again after the Flood.

 

If you drop the first consonant of Nimrod's name and take the others -- M,
R, D -- you will have the basic root of the god of Babylon, whose name was
Marduk, and whom most scholars identify with Nimrod. In the Babylonian religion,
Nimrod (or Marduk) held a unique place. His wife was Semiramis. (Some of you who
have been at Cairo have stayed at the Semiramis Hotel, which is named after
her.) Marduk and Semiramis were the ancient god and goddess of Babylon. They had
a son whom Semiramis claimed was virgin-born, and they founded the mother and
child cult. This was the central character of the religion of ancient Babylon,
the worship of a mother and child, supposedly virgin born. You can see in this a
clever attempt on the part of Satan to anticipate the genuine virgin birth and
thus to cast disrepute upon the story when the Lord Jesus would later be born
into history. This has been the effect of it.