John Gill Commentary Nahum 1:14

"And Jehovah hath given 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." — Nahum 1:14 (ASV)

And the Lord has given a commandment concerning you
This is directed to Sennacherib king of Assyria, as the Targum expresses it; and so Jarchi and Kimchi; and signifies the decree of God concerning him, what he had determined to do with him, and how things would be ordered in Providence towards him, agreeably to his design and resolution: [that] no more of your name be sown;
which is not to be understood that he should have no son and heir to succeed him; for Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead, (2 Kings 19:37); and after him, according to Ptolemy's canon, Saosduchinus and Chyniladanus but the memory of his name should no be spread in the earth; or the fame of it, with any marks of honour and glory, but of shame and disgrace.

So the Targum,

``neither shall be any memory of your name any more:'' out of the house of your gods will I cut of the graven image and the
molten image ;
called "the house of Nisroch his god", (2 Kings 19:37); where he was slain; and some say that after that it ceased to be a place of worship, being polluted with his blood. Josephus ^F20 calls it his own temple, where he usually worshipped, for which he had a peculiar regard, and for his god Nisroch; but who this deity was is not certain. Selden says ^F21 , he knew nothing, nor had read anything of him, but what is mentioned in the Scripture. Some of the Jewish writers

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``there will I put your grave;'' that is, in the house of your god, as Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, interpret it; where he was slain by two of his sons, as before observed; and this judgment came upon him by the will of God, because he was a loose vile creature; because he had vilified the true God, and reproached him, as unable to deliver Hezekiah and his people out of his hands. The Targum paraphrases it, ``because this is easy before me;'' what the Lord could easily do, make his idol temple his grave; or, however, take away his life, and lay his honour in the dust: or it may be rendered, "I will put [upon] your grave that you are vile" ^F1 ; he, who thought to have a superb monument over your grave, and an epitaph inscribed on it to your immortal honour, as kings used to have; this shall be the sepulchral inscription, ``here lies a vile, wicked, and contemptible man;'' so Abarbinel.

There was a statue of this king in an Egyptian temple, as Herodotus ^F2 relates, according, as many think, with this inscription on it, ``whosoever looks on me, let him be religious;'' though I rather think it was a statue of Sethon the priest of Vulcan, and last king of Egypt. Here ends the first chapter in some Hebrew copies, and in the Syriac and Arabic versions, and in Aben Ezra.

FOOTNOTES:

• F20: Antiqu. l. 10. c. 1. sect. 5.
• F21: De Dis Syris, Syntagm. 2. c. 10. p. 329.
• F1: (twlq yk Krbq Myva) .
• F2: (est' eme tiv orewn, eusebhs estw) . Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 141.