Genesis 10:11-12

11, 12. Went forth Asshur Rather, [Nimrod] went forth to Asshur [Assyria . ] So reads the margin, after the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan; (so Baumgarten, De Wette, A . Clarke, Delitzsch, and Knobel . ) This is certainly the meaning of the text, for the author would not here describe the person Asshur, who is not introduced till Genesis 10:22; and besides, if Asshur be not here a place, the locality of these four cities would not be designated in the text at all . Nimrod first founded Babylon, (Genesis 10:10,) and then he (or his descendants) ascended the Tigris valley and founded the Assyrian kingdom, (Asshur,) whose capital city was Nineveh, identified of late years with the mass of ruins on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite Mosul.

And the city Rehoboth This should be rendered either Rehoboth, a city, or as a compound name, Rehoboth-Ir, so called, perhaps, from being the market places of the city Nineveh. Genesis 10:11-12 should accordingly be translated: “From that land he went forth unto Assyria, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah. This was the great city.” As Rehoboth, Calah, and Resen have not been identified, it is very possible that they became a part of Nineveh, and the pronoun הוא , this, (common version, the same,) is to be understood not of Calah, the last named city, but Nineveh, called great, because thus composed of four cities, the name Nineveh being in the first instance applied in a restricted sense to the city whose ruins lie opposite Mosul, and then being extended to other cities along the east bank of the Tigris, so as to embrace the whole region where are now found the ruins called Nimroud, south of Mosul, Konyunjik and Nebbi Yunus, opposite Mosul, and Khorsabad, to thenorth . This is the opinion of those most eminent Assyrian scholars, Rawlinson, Layard, and Grote, and also of Delitzsch, Knobel, and Ewald .