Genesis 10:10

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel,.... The city of Babel, or Babylon, which was built by his direction; for though Babylon is by some writers said to be built by Semiramis, the wife of

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. The beginning of his kingdom.

The beginning of his kingdom, i.e. either his chief and royal city, or the place where his dominion began, and from whence it was extended to other parts. Babel; which being not built till the confusion of languages, , showeth that this, though here mentioned upon occasion of the genealogy, was not executed till afterward; it being very usual in Scripture to neglect the order of time in historical relations. Calneh, called Calno, ; and Canneh, ; and as it is here, Cabneh, ; where it is mentioned amongst the eminent cities. The land of Shinar, i.e. in Mesopotamia. This clause belongs to all the cities here named; and is added for distinction sake, because there is a Babylon in the land of Egypt, and there might be other cities of the same name with the rest in other countries.

Genesis 10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.Ver. 10. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.] But not the end of it. Ambition is boundless, rides without reins, builds itself on the ruins of others, and cares not to swim to its design, though in a sea of blood. Crescit interea Roma Albae ruinis , begins one of Livy’ s Decades.

(10) The beginning of his kingdom.—Nimrod’s empire began with the cities enumerated in this verse, and thence extended into Assyria, as is mentioned in Genesis 10:11. First, then, he established his sovereignty “in the land of Shinar: “that is, in Babylonia, the lower portion of Mesopotamia, as distinguished from Assyria, the upper portion. It is called Sumir in the cuneiform inscriptions. In Micah 5:6 Babylonia is called “the land of Nimrod.” His cities there were four. Babel.—That is, Bab-ili, “the gate of God,” the literal translation in Assyrian of its previous Accadian name, Ca-dimirra (Chald. Gen., p. 168). In Genesis 11:9 the word is derisively derived from a Hebrew root meaning confusion, because of the confusion of tongues there. Erech.—“At the time of the opening of the Izdubar legends, the great city of the south of Babylonia was Urak, called in Genesis Erech” (Chald. Gen., p. 192). It was ravaged by Kudur-nankhunte, king of Elam, in the year B.C. 2280, according to an inscription of Assurbanipal (B.C. 670). It lies about thirty leagues to the south-east of Babylon, and is now called Warka. From the numerous mounds and remains of coffins discovered there, it is supposed to have been the early burial-place of the Assyrian kings. (See also Rawlin-son’s Ancient Monarchies, 1, pp. 18, 156.) Accad.—This name, which was meaningless fifty years ago, is now a household word in the mouth of Assyriologers; for in deciphering the cuneiform literature it was found that many of the works, especially in the library of Sargon, were translations from an extinct language; and as these were deciphered it gradually became evident that before any inhabitants of the Semitic stock had entered Chaldea it had been peopled by the Accadians, a black race, who had been “the builders of its cities, the inventors of the cuneiform system of writing, and the founders of the culture and civilisation afterwards borrowed by the Semites” (Chald. Gen., p. 19). This Sargon, who was king of Agané, in Babylonia, about B.C. 1800. is of course a different person from the Ninevite Sargon mentioned in Isaiah 20:1, who also was the founder of a noble library about B.C. 721; and as the Accadian language was already in his days passing away, this earlier or Babylonian Sargon caused translations to be made, especially of those works in which the Accadians had recorded their astronomical and astrological observations, and placed them in his library at Agané. Previously also “Semitic translations of Accadian works had been made for the library of Erech, one of the earliest seats of Semitic power” (Ibid, p. 21). Mr. Sayce places the conquest of Shinar by the Semites at some period two or three thousand years before the Christian era, and thus the founding of these cities and the empire of the Accadians goes back to a still more remote date, especially as the struggle between them and their conquerors was a very prolonged one (Ibid, p. 20). Calneh.—The Caino of Isa 10:9, where the LXX.

Verse 10. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel] בבל babel signifies confusion; and it seems to have been a very proper name for the commencement of a kingdom that appears to have been founded in apostasy from God, and to have been supported by tyranny, rapine, and oppression. In the land of Shinar.] The same as mentioned Genesis 11:2. It appears that, as Babylon was built on the river Euphrates, and the tower of Babel was in the land of Shinar, consequently Shinar itself must have been in the southern part of Mesopotamia.

10. the beginning of his kingdom] Nimrod is represented, not as the founder of the Babylonian cities, but as their king. His four cities are enumerated: 1. Babel, i.e. Babylon, as the Hebrew is rendered in the Greek: Assyrian Babilu, possibly = “the gate of God.” This was the capital of the Babylonian empire from the time of Hammurabi who founded that empire, circ. 2130 b.c. 2. Erech, the Uruk of the inscriptions. LXX Ὀ ?ñÝ÷, the modern Warka, was the principal seat of the Babylonian deities Anu and Istar, and the scene of the exploits of the mythical hero Gilgames. 3. Accad, the Agade of the inscriptions, the chief town in ancient northern Babylonia, and the capital of Sargon the First, one of the earliest Babylonian kings. 4. Calneh, of doubtful identification; not to be identified with the Syrian town Calneh (Amos 6:2). Jensen conjectures that there is an error of one Hebrew letter, and that we should read for Calneh Cullaba, an important town in Babylonia. Another conjecture is Nippur. in the land of Shinar] i.e. in Babylonia, which comprised both northern Babylonia or Accad, and southern Babylonia or Sumer.

10. The beginning of his kingdom — He was the first to build great cities, the seats of luxury and idolatry, which have crushed the masses of mankind by bloody despotisms, whereas the primary design