Begetting - Genesis 10

10:1-9 - After Noah died, his sons and their families dispersed throughout the land, I was going to do a big chart thing with all the people listed, but I don’t want to. There’s several good ones online, so I just left it at that. There are a couple of items of note in chapter 10 that I want to cover, first is Nimrod, the son of Cush, who was the son of Ham. Nimrod only gets 2 verses but it appears that he was pivotal in the reestablishment of wickedness among humanity. Nimrod’s verses, 8-9 simply say, “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” The important part comes from a JST that changes “a mighty hunter before the Lord” to “a mighty hunter in the land.” Ok, still doesn’t seem to be that big of a change, why is he so important? Hugh Nibley, a scriptural scholar, studied the ancient Jewish traditions and apocrypha that gave a distinctly different portrayal of Nimrod that is quoted in the IM. In one of the books of the apocrypha cited as 1 Chron.i.10, says, “Nimrod before to be a mighty man in sin, a murderer of innocent men, and a rebel before the Lord.” There is also a note that the Hebrew word “hunter” used to describe Nimrod is better translated to “prey” meaning it “is applied in the Scriptures to the hunting of men by persecution, oppression, and tyranny. Hence it is likely that Nimrod, having acquired power, used it in tyranny and oppression; and by rapine and violence founded that domination which was the first distinguished by the name of a kingdom on the face to the earth.” The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes Louis Ginzberg from The Legends of the Jews, who gives an enchanting account of how Nimrod was given the animal skin garments we talked about yesterday by his father Cush, who had received them from his father Ham, who had stolen them from Noah. With these sacred garments, Nimrod “was both invincible and irresistible,” which led to people naturally deferring to him and giving him power over them. The story also says “the beasts and birds of the woods fell down before Nimrod as soon as they caught sight of him arrayed in them, and he was equally victorious in his combat with men. The source of his unconquerable strength was not known to them. They attributed it to his personal prowess, and therefore they appointed him king over themselves.” Personally, I think the whole “animals flocked to him” is just a little bit too Cinderella for me to believe, and the fact that he won battles simply based on the fact that he was wearing sacred relics flies in the face of God protecting the righteous. There’s no way that Nimrod, as a wicked man, would have been victorious over worshippers of God just because he was wearing clothes that had at one point been sacred. By that logic, all anyone would need to do to be a wicked ruler in the world today is to steal temple clothing and wear it and suddenly be ruler of all. It’s a cop out, it’s easier to blame a piece of magical cloth for man’s descent into evil than it is to really consider the complexities of human nature and out penchant for wickedness. 10:10-32 – There are two smaller points in the rest of the chapter and the first one is that many of the names listed as descendants of Noah are referenced in the book of Ezekiel chapter 38 when he is prophesying about the last days. Names such as Magog, Mechech, Tubal, Gomer, and Togarmah. The article says, “Ezekiel seems to be referencing latter-day nations by their original settlers. These are the nations which come against Israel in the battle of Gog and Magog. All of a sudden, knowing where the descendants of Japheth settled becomes important!” The second point comes in verse 25 where we meet Peleg, “for in his days was the earth divided.” Many of the sources that have studied this verse are under the impression that this is a figurative dividing, more cultural and a dividing of people than a physical separating of the actual ground. The IM says, “The dividing of the earth was not an act of division by the inhabitants of the earth by tribes and peoples, but a breaking asunder of the continents, thus dividing the land surface and creating the Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere… Of course, there have been many changes on the earth’s surface since the beginning. We are informed by revelation that the time will come when this condition will be changed and that the land surface of the earth will come back again as it was in the beginning and all be in one place. This is definitely stated in the Doctrine and Covenants.” I think we discussed it yesterday, but the splitting of lands and continents would have probably taken a really long time to accomplish from Pangea to what we have today, my guess is millions of years, so did it happen during the space of one lifetime, Peleg, regardless of the amount of time that he actually lived, or was this something else? The IM suggests that this is a literal thing, so I’m going to chalk this one up to “I’ll understand it in the next life.”