Continuing from part 1, we need to ask ourselves a question, “If we are dealing with naming and inheritance issues, where did Nimrod come from?” This is of critical importance in our study because it will begin to reveal to us the roots of an issue that we must face in our walk of intimacy with God.

Let’s look back in Genesis at chapter 9 verse 18, “And the sons of Noah…were Shem, Ham, and Japheth…” Noah had 3 sons and from Ham springs the lineage of Nimrod. In Chapter 10 verse 6, “And the sons of Ham;Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut and Canaan.” Then on to Verse 8, “ And Cush beget Nimrod…”

We need to look at these names maybe more like monikers than names, as God is trying to communicate to us an intimate story in minute detail, but we’ve been too focused for years on the trees to see the forest. In any case, whatever these names are they are very descriptive of the qualities found within each person and are crucial to our correctly understanding the real story God wants us to know in our spiritual relationship with Him.

So let’s look at the rest of the “Players” in this story:

Noah – means Rest, but more specifically here it would mean one who is “at rest”, so to speak, in the doing of the righteous labors of God. He is comfortable, happy, peaceful, and content in his intimate relationship with his God and his family. This is very descriptive in the instance when the Dove comes to the Ark and brings the olive branch. God is saying to him that you are now at rest and at peace; you are “Kosher” or fit for God’s purpose. There is a New Testament parallel if you remember.

Ham means anger, hotness, and volatile. He is rebellious in his intimate relationship, such that one can have when they are eaten up with hatred and jealousy.

Shem can mean several things like name, reputation, designation, but here its best translation may be the embodiment of the revealed character of YHWH (God’s name).

Japheth can mean expansive, extensive, and open, but probably means in its best sense here compliant. He hears and obeys in his intimate relationship out of love.

Now let’s look at the tragedy in Chapter 9 verses 21 ff and see if you can begin to get a better understanding of the story.

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. 24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done unto him.

What we see here at first is a story of Violence, but yet in the end, something quite amazing. A son of the most righteous man on earth at the time becomes a perpetrator of the most violent act, outside of physical murder, against both Ham’s earthly creator and his heavenly creator; but it is also the most destructive act against Noah’s intimacy with God and the peace which God had bestowed upon him and his family.

Ham goes to his Father’s wife’s tent, (the actual meaning of the text) into Noah’s marriage bed and forever defiles his father * and murders his relationship with his family and defies God. In Ham’s mind, to take away Noah’s joy and peace and family relationship would forever damage the special relationship God and Noah and his family had. It forever changed the structure of Noah’s family. *(Refer to Leviticus 18:8 where seeing nakedness is a Hebrew idiom that means to have sex)

Ham’s mind and spirit man was corrupted! It was incapable of anything else but hatred and violence as it had been eaten up in the dwelling on the earthly desires. Sin had produced the addictive mind!

But, even through the most violent of acts of man against man and man against God, we see the hand of God in this new picture arising in the situation with Noah.

After the violent Rape of Noah by Ham, Shem who embodies the totality of God and Japheth who embodies mankind in his relationship with God (one who hears and obeys God) come in to Noah in love and in respect for his relationship with God and cover his shame and defilement. This is and early representation of the acts of the Messiah.

Shem and Japheth bring comfort and healing to Noah in the name of God. What we see here is a perfect picture of the fruits our intimate relationship with God, we also are to represent the totality of God dwelling within us in obedience to God and with respect for man and thereby bring healing, comfort, restoration and salvation to all mankind. It is also 180 degrees opposite of all that Ham’s lineage in the embodiment of his grandson Nimrod desires.

In Chapter 11 verse 2, we see the descendants of Ham wandering. They had fled their family and the retribution that was upon them in the curse pronounced upon them by Noah, in chapter 9 verse 25, “…a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” These people didn’t want anything to do with being servants to anyone or any God; they desired greater things for themselves upon the face of the earth as they never understood who they were and what God really wanted of them. They were eaten up with earthly desires, hatred of those who are godly, a desire to reverse their family’s servitude and an overwhelming desire to reject the God and the spiritual heritage of Noah and all that He represents.

But why are they trying to make a name for themselves and why is making a name going to prevent them from being scattered around? And what does this have to do with intimacy?

And the sons of Noah were standing seemingly unified in purpose against Ham and his descendants.

Deuteronomy 5:9 (King James Version)

Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, ……

Continuing from part 2 we need to take a look at Canaan. Why did God via Noah put the curse on Canaan and not Ham? Simple, God had blessed all those who had come out from the Ark and Noah wasn’t about to try and reverse what God had declared, but Canaan was probably the first born of Ham and the next one in inheritable lineage so he was the obvious recipient of Noah’s curse.

Again, the answer to what is going on appears to be hidden in the moniker of Canaan- כנען. In Hebrew we can clearly see two compounds again kun –כון meaning a base or something established and ahnan –ענן meaning to practice soothsaying. So you have the off shoot of Ham, the man who was a rapist of his father and a destroyer of God’s commandments, coming forth to be the establisher of sorcery and soothsaying.

One of the substantiations to this theory is to look at what comes forth from Canaan, so we can simply look at the religion again of the Canaanites. The Canaanites worship included human sacrifice as well as witchcraft and sorcery. One may recall the story of the witch of Endor, 1Samuel 28:7ff, which occurred in the Canaanite city of Endor in the Jezreel Valley. The Canaanite worship also included cult prostitution. However there was a twist with the Canaanites, their cult prostitutes were men who were dressing up as women and then having sex with other men. Do you wonder where this oddity came from? Deuteronomy18:10ff may make a bit more sense now.

Ok, now we have the outcast clan of Ham, Canaan, and Nimrod, all deviants, occultic practitioners and power hungry orators, seeking to overtake and overwhelm their own families and enslave them. Again, sound familiar?

Take in this case the man “called” Nimrod. It is a descriptive, but not his name, or at least not the one he desired. Nimrod and the other relatives of Ham around him had a purpose in mind as they began wandering. They wanted to make a new name for themselves. But why? Because they were rejecting the name that God had given them in the Gan Eden – the Garden of Eden, Adam!

Did you ever wonder why they were trying to make a new name for themselves? Let me ask you a question, “Who are you?” Mary, Bob, Ari, Moshe? Names grant you special privileges. They can grant you inheritances, power, authority, rank, etc. Just as a son has power granted from the Father, so the Father can take it away if he so chooses and give it to whom he wills. Think Jacob and Esau.

What happens when we are born? We are a some body for sure, but we are nameless. We have not acquired an identity. Only after our parents name us do we have an identity in the world. It may take years for us to have a complete understanding of our identity as we learn intimately about who we are from our Father, Mother and God. Some people go through their entire lives never truly understanding themselves because they have never learned who they are from their parents and God, or they learned a False Identity from others.

This seems to be the problem here, they learned a false identity from the one who provides them, HaNachash, the deceiver or HaSatan.

Whatever your name is, you have certain attributes and power associated with your name. You have rights of inheritance because you are the son or daughter of your parents and there are certain things expected of you as inheritors. In the same way, Adam’s name had a power and authority associated with it. These wanderers were to be inheritors of the totality of all that God had bestowed upon Adam and his lineage upon this Earth. God was to give them rights and dominion as inheritors of Adam. Further study on the name ADAM will come in another article.

Needless to say, this bunch wanted to reject the totality of all that God was in their being progeny of Adam. They did not want intimacy with the creator. They were rejecting their God given being and purpose and they were busy wandering, not being satisfied with God’s rest, looking for another purpose and another identity. They were going to usurp the creator’s role and their family’s position and become a society of narcissistic self worshippers and create a name, to be feared by other men, for themselves. This relates exactly to the destruction of the family structure.

And here in Babel, for one thing they are trying to rename themselves because they didn’t want to be named by God as servants of anyone especially their brothers. They didn’t want to do penance for the sins against their family or God. They are trying to regain Power and Authority that was taken from them due to the acts of Ham. They attempt this by forcing others to abrogate their Power and Authority to their oppressors.

God, however, won’t allow righteousness to be destroyed.

Verse 4, “And they said: ‘Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

וַיֹּאמְרוּ הָבָה נִבְנֶה-לָּנוּ עִיר, וּמִגְדָּל וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם, וְנַעֲשֶׂה-לָּנוּ, שֵׁם: פֶּן-נָפוּץ, עַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָאָרֶץ.

In Babel, there is a problem. While they build a walled city and high imposing fortress tower, it is manifest that it displays a total lack of dependence on God and the protection of His Name. They no longer believed in the power of the family name Adam and all that imbued.

One question it seems no one has ever asked is who were these people who Nimrod and his clan were trying to kill off and enslave, and why? Just as Cain killed the righteous, this group of God hating people was killing the God loving people, the righteous, the sons of Noah who had survived the flood. They were setting up a self styled fascist empire, just like Hitler.

Historically, many kingdoms were built upon the enslavement of others and the theft of the inheritances of others. Wealth back then was the same as today, tied up in the families and their possessions and that is exactly who and what was targeted by Nimrod and his cronies.

As the people of Babel built their Tower, the higher they placed themselves upon the earthly throne it was designed to send a message to all the other peoples of the earth that they are the Dominant Power on the earth. You must fear us and bow down and worship us. This is much like the ancient Egyptians and their Pyramids.

They separated themselves away from God’s creative purpose and they fell further from God and the other people. No intimacy. Their love of self was separating man from man and man from God as it causes a loss in unity and empathy and a birth of hatred because it caused a focus on only their own wants and desires.

When you revolt against God and his creation, God and his creation will revolt against you and you will find yourself being scattered, in more ways than one.

The higher they put themselves up in their own minds; God turns them over to a reprobate mind. Since they are no longer renewing their minds in God and in that intimate creative relationship with Him, their minds becomes seared; sickly and unable to hear words intelligently. Let him that hath an ear hear what the spirit says to the churches.

When a person becomes addicted to anything, be it drugs, sex, power or self, the mind changes tremendously. At Dr. Amen’s Clinic in California, he has shown definitively how the brain atrophies and becomes abnormal in long term addictive patients. They become confused and it becomes very difficult for them to make cognitive decisions. Because of the brains confusion it would become difficult to communicate with others in a rational and purposeful way. To see if what I’m telling you is true all you have to do is try and hold a rational conversation with an addictive person.

As these people at Babel built their city God wasn’t pleased at all. He knew what was in their hearts, sin. Their lawlessness in every form was abounding. They manifested the totality of all that was evil in their very plan to destroy the righteous off the face of the earth. This forced God to mandate the consequences for breaking His Law, a scattering. And here is the keys again, misunderstood because of the past failure to see the path of God’s word.

6) And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה, הֵן עַם אֶחָד וְשָׂפָה אַחַת לְכֻלָּם, וְזֶה, הַחִלָּם לַעֲשׂוֹת;וְעַתָּה לֹא-יִבָּצֵר מֵהֶם, כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יָזְמוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת.

From the Hebrew we can see that these people were unified in purpose and speech, but in what? In the creating of false prophecies and dreams. The word HaChelam- הַחִלָּם has the meaning of dream or vision of a prophetic nature. Here it would be a dream or vision of a false prophet such as in Deuteronomy 13:1ff. They were fabricating a false vision of what they were to do and in the word Yezmu -יָזְמו we see where it was leading. Yezmu means to devise evil, specifically wicked acts such as murder, incest, unchastity, adultery, idolatry, etc.

These evil people were building a kingdom based on the exact opposite of what God had created and asked us to uphold. Right after Noah and his family had been saved from destruction; the evil seed had found fertile soil and threatened the righteous of the earth again! But God had a plan and it was implemented.

7) Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8) So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9) Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The Hebrew word that is important here is yaphets– יפץ. Yaphets means here to scatter as an army routs an enemy. It had nothing to do with God creating all sorts of languages or races and this causing a dispersal. God allowed them to suffer defeat at the hands of his righteous inheritors. They had failed to repent and turn towards God and they suffered as a result.

God confused their unified purpose found within their everyday speech. Because they were confused they couldn’t work towards a common goal any longer and therefore they became weak and were scattered, and by who, by the real inheritors of the blessings of God, Shem and Japheth’s family as agents of God.

Intimacy with God had seen one attack after another, yet God always prevailed over the evil that had tried to obliterate the righteous that were being intimate with YHWH.

And Abraham who loved God and was intimate with Him came forth from the line of the Righteous Shem. Deuteronomy 5:10,And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

This is a story of family and what can happen even to the best of families when sin creeps in and true intimacy is compromised. They lost everything when their focus turned from YHWH and turned inward to self, even to their lives.

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