Section 1, Nimrod and the Giborrim

To understand the nature of Babylon and God’s hatred for her, we must understand a little about its roots at Babel. Admittedly, the more one gets into the details of this, the stranger things get. However it is important to have at least an overview of this topic in order to understand God’s feelings regarding this entity.

Babel shows up in Genesis 11 and was the first world empire that was led in organized opposition to God. This empire is really the root of all the successive world empires which comprise what the Bible identifies as the “World System”, which has Satan as its prince. It’s first inception, Babel, was headed up by Nimrod whose name means “to rebel.” The Bible describes him as a “mighty hunter before the Lord”. A more true translation would be a “mighty hunter -against the lord” which is how the greek septuagent translates it. He was described in the Talmud as a “hunter of the souls of men,” Indicating that he was able to subdue men and subvert their souls from the worship of God. He was apparently very outspoken against God and persuaded the people to follow him in His rebellion against Him.

Furthermore, the Bible says that Nimrod “began to be a mighty man” in Genesis Chapter 10 verse 8. The Hebrew word used for “mighty one” is Gibborim. This is the same word that the Bible used in Genesis 6 when it talks about the strange events leading up to the flood, where the fallen angels cohabited with the daughters of men and produced a supernatural offspring called the Nephilim. The Bible says that at that time there were “giants” in the earth – “gibborim” – which were “the mighty men of renown.”

The legends of the pantheons of the postflood empires, such as the Greco-Roman pantheon echo back to these days. Hercules is a well known example, born of Zeus (a fallen angelic being that was worshiped as a God and a woman named Alceme. These “giants” had incredible strengths and fought great wars, commemorated as the “wars of God’s and men” and remembered in such tales as the battles of the Titans. In Greek Mythology, the Titans were a race of giants – large and powerful children of the “God,” Uranus. The word Titan interestingly comes from the Chaldean word, Shitan, which springs from Hebrew, Satan. Greek Mythology especially reveals the wicked and violent character of the Fallen Angels and the Nephilim (Gods and Demigods). In the stories of Greek Mythology the Satanic character of the “gods” is expressed in greed, avarice, slander and deceit, incest, rape and murder.

It’s difficult to imagine, but giants and tyrant demigod’s which were the supernatural offspring of fallen Angels intermingling with the human race ruled the earth during Noah’s day. According to the Bible, these strange hybrids filled the world with violence and wickedness.

Things got so bad that the Bible says “all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth”, and “every imagination of the hearts was only wicked continually.”

Some Christians find this background hard to believe. But remember that the Bible requires that we believe that the first man that was created by God and walked with Him in Eden was on the earth for nearly 1000 years after the fall, and all the humans that were alive were descended from him. Their lifetimes spanned centuries, and every single one of them that were on earth at the time Noah entered the ark perished in a flood of judgement that destroyed the world. The same Bible also gives us this extraordinary record of the Nephilim in Genesis, confirming it again in both Second Peter and Jude. Strange as it all is, we are safely in biblical territory when we discuss these things.

Although the myths of the world cultures are a genre in themselves spun further and further out into fancy and fable, the genre itself commemorates and celebrates a time which the Bible describes and confirms. So while the myths themselves may be fanciful, the nature of the preflood time which they describe is accurately characterized, and the Bible confirms that this period did indeed see the open involvement of rebellious angels in the affairs of men accompanied with displays of supernatural power.

While the Bible tells us of the wickedness that characterized the preflood time, occultists look back at those days with longing, believing that time to be a utopia in which superior races of men had access to powers and technologies that have been largely unavailable since. There is a highly sophisticated belief system revolving around this period embodied in such tales as the story of Atlantis, the great pre-flood civilization that was in their view superior to our own, which was eventually destroyed by the flood. In their accounts, the angels that the Bible tells us were sinning against God and openly rebelling against him, are portrayed as the early teachers of mankind in both spiritual and material terms. To occultists, Nimrod is a hero, perhaps one of the first after the flood to share their feeling and longing for this preflood age.

When the Bible says that Nimrod became a gibborim it is putting his nature in this context. Nimrod, born after the flood, was the son of Cush, Noah’s grandson by Noah’s firstborn Ham (who had already rebelled and lost the birthright in Genesis 9). Occultists believe that somehow through contact with the supernatural realm (some kind of interaction with fallen angels), he experienced “apotheosis” – where he was transformed to become like a God on earth with supernatural powers.
Nimrod’s motivation was Satanic, and he led men in an open rebellion against God. The Bible notes that Babel was built with bricks burned with fire and covered with bitumen. Bible commentators have said that this burning would have made them able to endure extreme pressure, and bitumen was used as a waterproofing agent. We get the notion that Babel was constructed in such a way as to specifically thwart another flood of judgement, although God had promised by covenant with Noah that he would never do this again. The non-canonical book of Jasher, mentioned in the Old Testament, says that when they built the “tower of Babel” their intention was actually to open up a gate to heaven and take up weapons against God:

Quote: “And the building of the tower was unto them a transgression and a sin, and they began to build it, and whilst they were building against the Lord God of heaven, they imagined in their hearts to war against him and to ascend into heaven. And all these people and all the families divided themselves in three parts; the first said We will ascend into heaven and fight against him; the second said, We will ascend to heaven and place our own gods there and serve them; and the third part said, We will ascend to heaven and smite him with bows and spears; and God knew all their works and all their evil thoughts, and he saw the city and the tower which they were building.”

So here we can see the brazen opposition and emnity towards God that characterized the first postflood empire from which all the others proceeded.