The Strength of Collective Man: Nimrod and the Tower of Babel

Abstract

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is one of Western literature’s earliest and most famous accounts of “the strength of Collective Man.” In the story’s history of interpretation, the tale becomes Nimrod’s story. Nimrod is implicated in the project of Babel because of his association with Babel and the land of Shinar in the preceding chapter of Genesis. The biblical theologian Gerhard Von Rad insisted that “chapters [10 and 11] must be read together because they are intentionally placed next to each other,”¹ and ancient commentators read the two chapters together in their unanimous identification of Nimrod as the principal architect of the Tower of Babel. Chapter 10 features the so-called Table of Nations: the lineage of “the generations of Noah” (10:1), the genealogical list of the descendants of Noah’s three sons, Japheth Ham, and Shem, as the forebears of all the nations of the earth. Ham’s son Cush, the eponymous ancestor of the Cushites or Ethiopians, is the father of Nimrod. According to Genesis 10, Babel in the land of Shinar—the region of Babylonia as it is referred to in Egyptian and other ancient sources²—is “the beginning” of Nimrod’s kingdom (Gen. 10:6–10), and Babel heads the list of cities in the land of Shinar according to Genesis 10. Thus Nimrod, the founder of a kingdom in the land of the Babylonians, is a king of African descent—a son of Ethiopia.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism’s face

And the international wrong.

—W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”