NAHUM (Consolation) was a native of Elkosh, whose site is unknown, but it was probably a little village in Galilee. He is thought to have prophesied after the captivity of the ten tribes, and between the two invasions of Sennacherib, whom Hezekiah had bribed with the treasure of the Temple. He comes as a consoler from Jehovah, foretelling the death of Sennacherib, and overthrow of Assyria; but his book is chiefly the sequel to that of Jonah; the latter having warned Nineveh of impending punishment, which God remitted on its repentance, Nahum now repeats the denunciations.

Jonah concluded with the declaration of God's mercy, "slow to anger," and "repenting of evil." Nahum begins by announcing the certainty of His judgment. Nineveh had sunk back into its old sins of violence, robbery, and bloodshed, with blasphemy and hostility to God. Nahum pronounces its sentence. Its destruction was near, and would be sudden and complete. There are three very distinct predictions: (1) The sudden destruction of Sennacherib's army (i. 12), and his death in the house of his god (i. 14). (2) The inevitable capture of Nineveh by the sudden irruption of the river in the midst of the siege (ii. 6). (3) Its utter desolation (iii.). In Nahum's time it was the largest and most opulent city in the world. It was captured by Cyaxares (B.C. 625). Xenophon describes its "wall void and large," 150 feet high, fifty wide, and twenty-two and a half miles in circuit; while the neighbouring inhabitants knew not what it had been, or how it had perished. In the second century A.D. its site was lost.

Date and Authorship. Some commentators, both ancient and modern, have assigned Alkush, on the Tigris, as the place of his birth, considering him to be the son of an Israelite captive, and that the vivid picture of Nineveh was drawn by him from personal observation: while they also affirm, that the interspersion of Assyrian words in his book points to that country as the scene of his prophecies. Others deny that internal evidence favours any other than a Palestinian origin to the work, which accords with the greatest weight of external evidence. The time of his prophecy is no less controverted. Some make him contemporary with Hosea, Amos, and Jonah (in the reign of Joash); others, with Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi; and while some German critics place him in the time of Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, or Josiah, Josephus distinctly states (Antiq. ix. 11) that he prophesied in the reign of Jotham.