What Does Nahum 1:14 Mean?
And the LORD has commanded concerning you, let no more of your name be sown. From the house of your god I will cut off the hewn image and the poured image. I will set your grave, for you are light.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD hath given a commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave; for thou art vile.THE KEY
Your name is treated as seed: the decree ends the planting of your nature into any future generation.
THE MEANING
The decree speaks directly to you: the name carrying your nature is no longer sown; the carved and cast forms of your gods are cut from their house, and your grave is made. Its verdict is blunt: you are vile, slight and contemptible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse dissolves is that a name and the images built around it can secure a future: here the name’s planting stops, the images are removed, and the grave is made.
THE ROOT
יִזָּרַע
yizzāraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow or scatter seed.
“let no more of your name be sown” in this verse is yizzāraʿ. The name is what gets planted: the nature and lineage carried forward by its bearers. The decree ends that planting, so the name has no future generation in which to take root.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: Seed; by extension, offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
This branch makes the verse’s image concrete: what is sown can mean a line of descendants.
mizrāʿ: A planted field or the act of sowing.
מִזְרָע
It shows sowing as an act that establishes what will grow later, the very future this decree closes.
אַכְרִית
ʾakhrīt
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
To cut or sever.
“I will cut off” in this verse is ʾakhrīt. The verb names a decisive severing: the images are removed from the gods’ house, and the line of the name is left without another planting. The same root appears in the Hebrew expression for “cutting” a covenant, language that makes a bond through a deliberate act of separation and joining.
ALSO GROWS
kārat: To cut, sever, or cut off.
כָּרַת
This is the verb behind the decree’s forceful removal of the images.
kārat berit: A Hebrew expression for making a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same root can mark a binding boundary; here it marks an ending that cannot be carried forward.
קַלּוֹתָ
qallōtā
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
To be light, slight, or insignificant; in related forms, to treat as contemptible or curse.
“Vile” carries the sense of being made light or insignificant. The verse’s final judgment names the addressee as contemptible even as it declares the destruction of the images and the end of the name’s future.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light in weight; slight or insignificant.
קַל
It reveals the weightless quality beneath the verdict translated “vile.”
qillēl: To curse, dishonor, or make contemptible.
קִלֵּל
This related form shows how the root’s sense of lightness can become an expression of contempt.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays legacy as seed: its future can be cut off or made fruitful.
For the LORD loves judgment and does not leave his faithful ones. They are guarded for the ages, but the seed of the wicked will be cut off.Truly, truly, I say to you. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.THE THREAD
For I will rise up against them, says the LORD of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name and the remnant, the son and the offspring, says the LORD.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root כרת (kārat, to cut or sever) for cutting off the name. It spells out what Nahum’s seed image implies: the severing reaches the name, the remnant, and the generations that would carry it forward.
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