Nimrod was the great-grandson of Noah. According to Genesis 10:1, 6, 8-12, Nimrod became known as “a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.”a He was the leader in building the religious Tower of Babel to counteract God’s command that the people spread out and fill the earth. Obedience to this command would have established strongholds of true worship throughout the earth. (Gen. 9:1) But Nimrod appeared as a hero to his followers. According to the Jewish historian Josephus: “[Nimrod] gradually changed the government into tyranny,​—seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! . . . Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower.”​—Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, chap. IV, pars. 2, 3.

Religious tradition recounts that Nimrod was executed for his rebelliousness against Jehovah, the God of Noah.

The Bible says of Nimrod that “the beginning of his kingdom came to be Babel [or Babylon] and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land he went forth into Assyria and set himself to building Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: this is the great city.” (Gen. 10:10-12) Thus Nimrod was the founder of cities and of political systems of rule, contrary to the will of Jehovah God. All false religion stemmed from Babylon after the flood of the days of Noah. Genesis 10:8, 9 says that “he [Nimrod] displayed himself a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.”