Esau Was a Total Nimrod

Yesterday, I was reading my son's "Bible Stories for Jewish Children" book… because I'm that kind  of silly. And I found myself glancing at  Esau and Jacob.  Which has always seemed like a complicated story to me.  Unfair.  Even if Esau was a total ass, Jacob pulled a dick move for sure.

But that's not the point of this post.

When I was done, I wanted to know more… so I googled "Esau" to see what I could find on him, and discovered that (among other things), he killed Nimrod:

On the day of Abraham’s death, Esau had been out in the fields as usual. He had lost his way and was trying to find his way back, when King Nimrod arrived with two servants. Esau hid behind a rock, and when Nimrod was left unguarded, he killed him and fought the two servants who rushed to the aid of their master. Esau escaped with King Nimrod’s clothes. These were Adam’s garments which later became the property of Noah…

Ummmm… okay. That's pretty crazy, inheriting Adam's clothes.  But that's not my point here either.  And neither is the fact that there were seven generations between Abraham and Nimrod, despite the fact that they died the same day.

My point?

Simply that I want to know who the hell Nimrod was!  Beyond being a Mesopotamian king and possibly the builder of the Tower of Babel.

See, when I was a kid, "Nimrod" meant something else.  It meant a dummy. A moron. Remember that? How'd that happen?  The bible is full of sluts and freaks and liars and thieves, but we don't use their names to indicate that a person has such attributes.  Nobody is going to call you a "David" or an "Abraham" when you get jiggy with your half-sister…  And I'm not even sure Nimrod was dumb, anyway…

So why does "Nimrod" suggest idiocy?

CHECK THIS OUT!  It turns out it's all…

a wide-spread misunderstanding emanating from Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs is wont to refer to his sometime nemesis, Elmer Fudd, as "poor little Nimrod” when Elmer is hunting him. Since Elmer is not 'vewy bwight', many have taken nimrod to mean a silly person.

How funny is that?  Elmer happened to be dumb, and a hunter.  And so when Bugs called him a "Nimrod" in reference to his hunting, we all misapplied the term. Wow.

Of course, this clues us in that Esau WAS, in fact, a total Nimrod.  He was one badass hunter, after all…