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1 Chronicles1:10

✦ Public-domain source — quoted & attributed⚙ AI synthesis — generated, verify

1 Chronicles 1:10 — . Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

10

Cush was the father of Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one on the earth.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wə·ḵūš yā·laḏ ’eṯ- nim·rō·wḏ hū hê·ḥêl lih·yō·wṯ gib·bō·wr bā·’ā·reṣ

Word by word9 · parsed
וְכ֖וּשׁwə·ḵūšCushH3568
√ Kûwsh — Cush (or Ethiopia), the name of a son of Ham, and of his territoryConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Kûwsh: Cush (or Ethiopia), the name of a son of Ham, and of his territory The lexicon itself holds person and place together, and that ambiguity is the interpretive crux of the verse. Cambridge lays out the difficulty plainly: Genesis makes Nimrod's kingdom Babylonian and Assyrian, yet 1 Chronicles 1:17 assigns Asshur and Arphaxad to Shem, so either Nimrod stands for pre-Semitic (perhaps Hamitic) inhabitants, or this Cush is not Ham's son at all but the Kassite "Kasi" of Babylonia. Cambridge judges the second more probable. The Chronicler does not tell us, and we should not pretend he does.
יָלַ֣דyā·laḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbQalPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young A Qal perfect, the ordinary generative verb of every genealogy. Its appearance here is structurally loaded: K&D notes that the register switches from ûbenê to yālad precisely at this verse and back again at 1 Chronicles 1:17, following Genesis 10 seam for seam. The verb is the hinge on which the list stops listing and starts narrating.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
Untranslatable object marker; it fixes Nimrod as the definite object of the begetting.
נִמְר֑וֹדnim·rō·wḏNimrodH5248
√ Nimrôwd — Nimrod, a son of CushNounpropermasculine singular
Nimrôwd: Nimrod, a son of Cush The Verifier records this lexeme in only four verses of the whole Hebrew Bible (Genesis 10:8, Genesis 10:9, this verse, Micah 5:6), which makes it genuinely rare and therefore a solid basis for a verbal link to the Genesis table. The Chronicler keeps the name while dropping everything Genesis says Nimrod built: K&D lists the omitted material as the founding of a kingdom in Babel and the notices of Genesis 10:9-12. What remains is a man, a beginning, and a sphere.
ה֣וּאhūwhoH1931
√ hûwʼ — he (she or it)Pronounthird person masculine singular
Resumptive pronoun hûʼ, which throws the weight of the sentence forward onto what this one man began.
הֵחֵ֔לhê·ḥêlbeganH2490
√ châlal — properly, to bore, iVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
châlal: properly, to bore In the Hifil this root yields the inceptive "he began," and that is the sense here. Worth stating honestly: the same consonantal root elsewhere carries the sense of piercing and of profaning, and interpreters have often leaned on that overlap to darken Nimrod, but the parse before us (Hifil perfect, third person masculine singular) supports only "he began." The verse's judgment on Nimrod, if there is one, has to come from what he began, not from the etymology of the verb.
לִהְי֥וֹתlih·yō·wṯto beH1961
√ hâyâh — to exist, iPreposition-lVerbQalInfinitive construct
Preposition l with the Qal infinitive construct of hâyâh: he began to be, not to do. The periphrasis describes a change of status rather than a project.
גִּבּ֖וֹרgib·bō·wra mighty oneH1368
√ gibbôwr — powerfulAdjectivemasculine singular
gibbôwr: powerful An anarthrous adjective doing the work of a noun, common enough (the Verifier counts it in 152 verses) that it cannot by itself carry a verbal link. The Septuagint tradition felt the gap the Chronicler leaves: Pulpit reports that the LXX supplies κυνηγός (hunter) after γίγας, importing from Genesis 10:9 the description this verse withholds. Geneva supplies the moral judgment the Hebrew withholds, reading the beginning of might as the beginning of self-elevation over others.
בָּאָֽרֶץ׃סbā·’ā·reṣon the earthH776
√ ʼerets — the earth (at large, or partitively a land)Preposition-b, ArticleNounfeminine singular
ʼerets: the earth (at large, or partitively a land) Because Genesis 10:10-12 (the kingdom in Shinar, the move into Assyria) has been cut, this preposition plus noun is the only spatial information left, and the lexicon will not decide between "in the land" and "on the earth." The clause is deliberately unbounded in Chronicles in a way it is not in Genesis. The word ends with the scribal samekh section marker.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. The verse where a list stops listing — 1 Chronicles 1:10

K&D makes the structural observation on which everything else in this verse rests: the Chronicler's register is stitched together with וּבְנֵי ("and the sons of") through 1 Chronicles 1:5-9, switches to יָלַד at 1 Chronicles 1:10, returns to bᵉnê at 1 Chronicles 1:17, and takes up yālad again at 1 Chronicles 1:18, matching Genesis 10 joint for joint. That is why this single verse feels different from its neighbours: for one line the catalogue becomes a sentence with a subject, a verb and a predicate. Matthew Henry, writing over the whole span 1:1-27, gives the reason such lists are worth reading at all, granting that comparison with other places turns up differences and urging that we not stumble at the word but bless God that what is necessary to salvation is plain enough. ⚙ The seam K&D identifies is the only place in the Table of Nations where the Chronicler lets a person become an actor.

ii. What the Chronicler cut, and what the Greek put back — 1 Chronicles 1:10

Read against Genesis 10 this verse is mostly an absence. K&D enumerates the cuts: the framing and closing remarks of Genesis 10:1, 21 and 32, the distribution notices, and specifically the historical account of the founding of a kingdom in Babel by Nimrod along with Genesis 10:9-12. Genesis calls Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD and names Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh; Chronicles keeps the name and the beginning and drops the empire. The Pulpit Commentary records that the Septuagint tradition felt the loss and restored κυνηγός (hunter) after γίγας, and notes that the Greek then moves straight to Shem, omitting Ham's grandsons through Mizraim and Cainan. Pulpit also gives the caution that governs this whole stretch: several of these names are not individuals but tribes or nations. ⚙ So the ancient translators were already doing what every later reader does here, reaching back into Genesis to fill a silence Chronicles chose.

iii. Whose Cush, and how mighty — 1 Chronicles 1:10

Two honest problems sit in nine Hebrew words. First, identity: Cambridge argues that since 1 Chronicles 1:17 assigns Asshur and Arphaxad to Shem while Nimrod's kingdom in Genesis is Babylonian and Assyrian, either Nimrod represents pre-Semitic inhabitants or, more probably in Cambridge's judgment, the Cush who fathers Nimrod is wrongly identified with Cush son of Ham and may stand for the Kassite "Kasi." Cambridge's supporting dates come from Sayce and are dated scholarship, and its own cross-reference is misprinted, so the argument is worth weighing, not swallowing. Second, character: the Hebrew says only גִּבּוֹר, a mighty one, with no article and no verdict. Geneva supplies the verdict, glossing Nimrod as the one who first lifted himself above others. JFB, on the wider paragraph, gives the Chronicler's reason for carrying Noah's three sons at all: they founded the new world, and Noah's prophecy of Genesis 9:25-27 could not otherwise be seen to have been fulfilled. ⚙ Held together: Chronicles reports a beginning of power inside a genealogy whose point, on JFB's reading, is that an earlier word about power and servitude was coming true.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Genealogies are the Bible's way of saying that history is carried by ordinary begetting, and a genealogy notices a man only when something breaks the rhythm. Here the rhythm breaks once: Cush begat Nimrod, and he began. Everyone else in the chapter receives life and passes it on; Nimrod starts something. What he starts, the Chronicler will not say. He cut Babel out (K&D lists the cut), he cut the hunting out (the Greek put it back, per Pulpit), and he left a bare clause: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. Two readings are available and the verse itself does not adjudicate. Geneva's is the old one: the first beginning of might is the first lifting of self above others, and the silence is contempt. The other is simpler: Chronicles is written for a returned and unimpressive people, and it is quietly recording that greatness in the earth has existed since the third generation after the flood and has never once been the line through which God kept his promise. That line runs on through Shem, through Eber, through names nobody built cities for. Gill says outright that the whole genealogy is given for the sake of the Messiah who was to come. If that is right, then this verse is the Chronicler's single glance at worldly power, taken in passing, on the way to someone else. The line printed below is the tool's own interpretive summary and is not Scripture.

The Chronicler names the first mighty man in the earth, then walks past him, and the walking past is the verdict.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

The Chronicler copying the Table of Nations verbal / quotation: confirmed

1 Chronicles 1:10 reproduces Genesis 10:8 almost word for word, and the Verifier's basis is strong: the shared lexemes include נִמְרוֹד (H5248 Nimrôwd), which occurs in only four verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, together with H2490 châlal and H3568 Kûwsh in the same clause order. K&D states the dependence directly, noting that the register from 1 Chronicles 1:10 onward is connected by yālad exactly as in Genesis 10:8, and that the correspondence of names and of plan and form places the derivation beyond doubt. This is quotation of a source text, not allusion.

Genesis 10:8

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5248 Nimrôwd (in 4 vv, rare), H2490 châlal (in 132 vv), H3568 Kûwsh (in 30 vv); the rare proper noun plus identical clause order and K&D's stated derivation from Genesis 10 make this a verbal dependence

The half-verse that was left behind verbal / quotation: confirmed

Genesis 10:9 continues the sentence Chronicles stops: Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the LORD. The Verifier pairs the two verses on H5248 Nimrôwd (four verses) and H1368 gibbôwr (152 verses), so the link is verbal on the rare name; but the point of the thread is what is absent. K&D lists Genesis 10:9-12 among the historical notices the Chronicler omitted, and Pulpit records that the Septuagint restored the hunter by supplying κυνηγός after γίγας. Cambridge simply refers the reader onward to Genesis 10:9-12. ⚙ Three witnesses in this brief independently treat the verse as incomplete without Genesis.

Genesis 10:9

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5248 Nimrôwd (in 4 vv, rare) and H1368 gibbôwr (in 152 vv); the rare proper noun carries the verbal tier, gibbôwr alone could not

Nimrod as a country, and the ruler who breaks it structural / thematic: confirmed

The fourth and last occurrence of נִמְרוֹד in the Hebrew Bible is Micah 5:6, where the man has become a map: the prophet speaks of the land of Nimrod, a territory, alongside Assyria, rather than of a person. The Verifier's basis is the shared rare lexeme alone, and that is all this thread rests on. That is deliberately not tiered verbal here, because Micah is not citing the genealogy; he is using a name the genealogy helped make proverbial. Cambridge's difficulty about Nimrod's Babylonian and Assyrian kingdom being assigned in Chronicles to Shem's line is the same geography seen from the other end.

Micah 5:6

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5248 Nimrôwd (in 4 vv, rare); rare enough to be a real link, but Micah uses the name as a toponym rather than quoting Genesis or Chronicles, so no quotation is claimed

Which Cush, and where the rivers run flagged: verify source

The Verifier links this verse to Genesis 2:13, where the Gihon encircles the whole land of Cush, on the shared lexeme H3568 Kûwsh. The link is real at the level of the word and unsettled at the level of geography, which is exactly Cambridge's problem: Cambridge holds it more probable that the Cush who fathers Nimrod is wrongly identified with Cush son of Ham, and may instead stand for the Kassite "Kasi" of Babylonia, citing Sayce. Since Kûwsh occurs in thirty verses and covers at least a Mesopotamian and an African referent (Isaiah 18:1, Jeremiah 46:9, Esther 1:1 pull in different directions), this pairing is recorded but not relied on.

Genesis 2:13 · Genesis 10:7

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3568 Kûwsh (in 30 vv), a common name whose referent is disputed; Cambridge (1880s, following Sayce) argues the Cush of this verse may not be Ham's son at all, so the geographical identification behind the link is contested

Beginning to be mighty, and being brought down structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ Mary's song describes God scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts and putting down the mighty from their thrones. The motif is the same one this verse opens: a man begins to be a mighty one in the earth. Geneva's gloss, that Nimrod first lifted himself above others, is the hinge that makes the pairing visible. No verbal basis is possible or claimed here: Luke is Greek and this verse is Hebrew, so no shared Strong's lexeme can exist across the pair, and the connection is a pattern of exaltation and reversal, not a citation. Offered as structure, and nothing stronger.

Luke 1:51-52

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition and no verbal tier is available; the recorded basis is the shared motif of a man beginning to be mighty in the earth and of the mighty being put down, with Geneva's self-exaltation gloss as the link at this end

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

Why the list is being kept at all ancient/widely-held

Gill states the purpose of the whole genealogy in the entry this brief carries at this chapter: the posterity of Shem is placed last because from him, in the line of Heber, sprang Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish nation, of whom the Messiah was to come, and for whose sake this genealogy is given. JFB adds the other half: Noah's three sons are enumerated because the fulfilment of Noah's prophecy in Genesis 9:25-27 could not otherwise appear to have been verified. ⚙ On that reading, Nimrod's verse is one of the places where the register shows what it is not following. The line being traced is not the line of the mighty; it bends away from Ham toward Shem, toward Abraham, and the New Testament genealogies pick it up at exactly that point. Matthew Henry, on the same chapter, sounds the note that keeps this from becoming ethnic pride: God has created of one blood all nations of men, all descended from one Adam, one Noah, and he closes with Malachi 2:10, have we not all one father.

Genesis 9:25-27 · Matthew 1:1 · Luke 3:36-38

Two beginnings of dominion novel

⚙ This verse says of Nimrod that he began to be a mighty one in the earth: the sphere is named, the power is self-started (a Hifil, a causative beginning), and Geneva reads it as lifting himself above others. The risen Christ says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him: the sphere is wider, and the verb is a receiving, not a beginning. Paul sets out the route between the two, one who did not grasp at equality but emptied himself and was therefore exalted. ⚙ Read that way, Nimrod is a type by contrast rather than by likeness. This pairing is our own framing and should be tested; none of the commentators in this brief draws it, and the Hebrew of this verse pronounces no verdict on Nimrod at all.

Matthew 28:18 · Philippians 2:6-8

The land of Nimrod and the ruler from Bethlehem novel

⚙ The only other place the name Nimrod survives in the Hebrew Bible is Micah 5:6, and it stands inside the oracle that begins at Micah 5:2 with the ruler who comes out of Bethlehem Ephrathah, whose goings forth are from of old. In Micah the name survives only as a territory named beside Assyria, inside an oracle whose subject is that promised ruler and the security of his people. That Micah 5:2 speaks of the Messiah is an ancient and widely-held reading; the specific observation that the genealogy's one named strongman resurfaces there as territory to be subdued is ours and is marked accordingly. The Verifier supplies only the shared rare lexeme H5248 between the two verses, nothing more, and no more than that is claimed.

Micah 5:2-6

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Geneva Study Bible, Marginal Notes (1599)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB (CC0) with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbers for the nine Hebrew words of 1 Chronicles 1:10; the Hebrew line closes with a samekh (ס) section marker, which is a scribal paragraph division and not part of the wording. This unit is a single verse, so the coverage here is deep rather than wide.

Sources, honestly described: most of the commentary the brief carries at this verse is block comment on a wider span, not verse-specific exposition. Matthew Henry's note covers 1:1-27; JFB's covers verses 4-23; Gill's entry begins at the sons of Japheth (1 Chronicles 1:5) and reaches this verse only by running text; Barnes' entry here is a one-line cross-reference about Dodanim belonging to 1 Chronicles 1:7 and says nothing about Nimrod, so it is not used; Matthew Poole has no note on this verse at all. The four quoted voices (Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit, K&D) are the ones that actually address this verse, and they are quoted verbatim as contiguous substrings.

What is uncertain: (1) the identity of Cush here is genuinely contested, and Cambridge's preferred solution (that this Cush may be the Kassite "Kasi" rather than Ham's son) rests on 1880s Assyriology, cites Sayce for dates of b.c. 1806 to 1230 that later chronology has revised, and contains a misprinted cross-reference to "1 Chronicles 10:10-11" where Genesis 10:10-11 is meant; we record the argument and flag the dating. (2) Whether בָּאָרֶץ means "in the land" or "on the earth" cannot be settled from this verse, since the Chronicler omitted the Genesis city list that would localise it. (3) The verse itself passes no moral judgment on Nimrod; Geneva's reading of self-exaltation is Geneva's, and the darker etymological readings of châlal (to bore, to profane) are not supported by the Hifil inceptive parse recorded here. (4) The two cross-Testament readings (Luke 1:51-52 and Micah 5:2-6 as pointing to Christ) are marked as our own framing, not as anything the quoted commentators assert.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)