Not normally. But this one was. Today, the equivalent would be a man who would rise up and protect the nations from the spread of militant Islam. In my childhood, the world was just recovering from one who protected the German people from sinking into a financial pit. Protectors are always elevated by the people of a nation. War heroes. They were saying “I like Ike” when I was a boy. Ike was Eisenhower, Dwight D. Presidential candidate. General Eisenhower, WW II hero. We love men who keep us safe.

Nimrod’s claim to fame was warding off the swarms of animals that threatened the people of his day. Mighty hunter became mighty hero. So much so that his fame evolved into legend. He is the man behind the myths of Babylon and even other cultures.

Unfortunately, his prowess was on the wrong side. David could kill giants and lions and bears in the name of Jehovah. Daniel and his three friends could claim that God would see them through the ordeals of furnaces and dens of wild cats. Big cats. Man-eating Cats. In these men, God received all the glory.

Nimrod was of a different ilk. He was the grandson of the man who had despised his father Noah. The entire line of that family did not seem well-disposed to God and was in rebellion against him, even hundreds of years later.

It is roughly 2,000 B.C. It is quite possible that Abraham is alive and is being called out of Nimrod’s world, a world that included the founding of both Babylon and Nineveh! Legend has it that he confronted Abraham!

The beginnings of world domination are recorded in these five verses of Genesis.

No, not just a hunter was Nimrod. Verse ten makes it clear he was a king. An emperor. A mighty man “before the Lord”. Commentators believe that this “before” is in the sense of “against”, in front of in a challenging menacing way.

Here we can do no better than to quote renowned Jewish historian Josephus to complete the story of Nimrod:

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than anyone could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ...

Wikipedia, online encyclopedia, claims that certain sources allege that he actually told his followers that he was a god and allowed them to worship him. The well-known Semiaramis, also real but equally legendary, is his consort and fellow divinity.

In rabbinical writings up to the present, he is almost invariably referred to as "Nimrod the Evil" (Hebrew: נמרודהרשע‎).

But, says Wikipedia, Nimrod is also referenced in the main theological work of Baha’i. And some call him Zoroaster, a founder of yet another ancient – and present – faith. He is Sargon of Assyria to others. Our Genesis account rings with louder and louder peals of truth!

As to his death, many legends have arisen, none verifiable. At least one mentions death by sword at the hands of Esau. All seem to indicate violence in his last moments.

Let’s sum it up. We are looking at a king who ruled a significant, even world-wide, kingdom. A kings fit for a “woman” of false religion to ride, as in Revelation. He was anti-Jew (Abraham). He believed he was a god and therefore worthy of worship. He hated God and wanted power over all the earth so as to protect earth from the possibility of another flood. He was the first king of Babylon, the city that is finally destroyed in the end times.