Quando el Rey Nimrod

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Quando el Rey Nimrod or Cuando el Rey Nimrod (When King Nimrod) is a Jewish folk song. It is supposed to have originated in Spain in the Middle Ages. After the expulsion of the Jews from that country, it became popular in the Sephardi communities in Morocco, Turkey, Greece, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It is sung in Ladino, the Jewish-Spanish language, and tells the story of the birth of Abraham, the biblical prophet.

[edit] Lyrics

Quando el Rey Nimrod (Adaptation)

Quando el Rey Nimrod al campo salía

mirava en el cielo y en la estrellería

vido una luz santa en la judería

que havía de nascer Abraham Avinu.

Chorus:

Abraham Avinu, Padre querido

Padre bendicho, luz de Yisrael.

Luego a las comadres encomendava

que toda mujer que preñada quedasse

si no pariera al punto, la matasse

que havía de nascer Abraham Avinu.

(chorus)

La mujer de Terach quedó preñada

y de día en día le preguntava

¿De qué teneix la cara tan demudada?

ella ya sabía el bien qué tenía.

(chorus)

En fin de nueve meses parir quería

iva caminando por campos y viñas,

a su marido tal ni le descubría

topó una meara, allí lo pariría

(chorus)

En aquella hora el nascido fablava

"Andávos mi madre, de la meara

yo ya topo quen me alexasse

mandará del cielo ken me acompañará

porque só criado de El Dio Barukh."

(chorus)

When King Nimrod (translation)

When King Nimrod was going out to the fields

He was looking at heaven and at the stars

He saw a holy light in the Jewish quarter

[A sign] that Abraham, our father, must have been born.

Abraham Avinu [our Father], dear father

Blessed Father, light of Israel. (chorus)

Then he was telling all the midwives

That every pregnant woman

Who did not give birth at once was going to be killed

because Abraham our father was going to born.

(chorus)

Terach's wife was pregnant

and each day he would ask her

Why do you look so distraught?

She already knew very well what she had.

(chorus)

After nine months she wanted to give birth

She was walking through the fields and vineyards

Such would not even reach her husband

She found a manger; there, she would give birth.

(chorus)

In that hour the newborn was speaking

'Get away from the manger, my mother

I will somebody to take me out

He will send from the heaven the one that will go with me

Because I am a servant of the blessed God.'

(chorus)

[edit] Interpretations

Anachronistically, Abraham—who in the Bible is the very first Jew and the ancestor of all who followed, hence his appellation "Avinu" (Our Father)—is in the Judaeo-Spanish song already born, in the "Judería", the Jewish quarter. This makes Terach and his wife into Jews, as are the parents of other babies killed by Nimrod. In essence, unlike its Biblical model, the song is about a Jewish community persecuted by a cruel king and witnessing the birth of a miraculous saviour—a subject of obvious interest and attraction to the Jewish people who composed and sang it in Medieval Spain.

The song attributes to Abraham elements from the story of Moses's birth (the cruel king killing innocent babies, with the midwives ordered to kill them) and from the careers of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who emerged unscathed from the fiery furnace. Nimrod is thus made to conflate the roles and attributes of two archetypal cruel and persecuting kings—Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh. For more information, see Nimrod.

It is also suggested that the song borrows from the Christian nativity story. For example, the miraculous light that signaled the birth, the birth in a manger, and the massacre of the innocents.