Jared’s company left Babylon (Map 2, F-4) in a northerly direction (Ether 1:42) and entered a valley named after Nimrod. The mighty hunter was famous for more than just hunting. He was a leader in the building of the tower of Babel, and excited his people to rebel against God. “He persuaded them not to ascribe [their prosperity] to God, as if it was through his means they were happy…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! And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers! 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.” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, chap. IV, v. 2-3)
Hugh Nibley
"This Nimrod seems to be the original arch-type of the Mad Hunter. His name is for the Jews at all times the very symbol of rebellion against God and of usurped authority; he it was ’who became a hunter of men,‘ established false priesthood and false kingship in the earth in imitation of God’s rule and ’made all men to sin.’…There is another common tradition that Nimrod’s crown was a fake, and that he ruled without right ’in the earth over all the sons of Noah, and they were all under his power and counsel’; he ’did not go in the ways of the Lord, and was more wicked than all the men that were before him.’
“…In the book of Ether the name of Nimrod is attached to ’the valley which was northward,‘ and which led ’into that quarter where there never had man been’ (v. 2,5), which suits very well with the legendary character of Nimrod as the Mad Hunter of the Steppes’” (Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites, p. 156-7)