Nahum. The seventh of the twelve minor prophetic books of the Old Testament is inscribed: 'The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.' The opening verses speak (i. 2-8) in general terms of the certainty and awfulness of the divine judgment against the enemies of God, and of his unfailing goodness to those who put their trust in him; these principles are then applied (i. 9-15) on the one hand to some power, not yet named, 'that imagineth evil against the Lord;' and, on the other, to Judah (i. 15), who, though now afflicted, is to be afflicted no more. The second chapter opens with a rapid sketch of a military armament—the red shields, scarlet uniforms, flashing chariots, brandished spears—hurriedly summoned for defensive war; then Nineveh, first named in ii. 8, is seen as a ruined site which an inundation has swept bare, and the great spoil of the 'dwelling of the lions' is indicated rather than described. The subject is continued in the concluding chapter, which predicts for the bloody city, full as it is of lies and rapine, the same fate as has already overtaken 'populous No' (iii. 8) or No-ammon, the Egyptian Thebes. The date of the prophecy must thus be placed somewhere between the fall of Thebes—i.e. not earlier than 666 B.C., and that of Nineveh—i.e. not later than 606 B.C. The explanation of i. 11 by former interpreters as alluding to
Sennacherib is thus excluded; the reference must rather be to some actual or threatened invasion of Judah in the reign of Manasseh, and most probably to that of Assurbanipal about 647 B.C., in which Manasseh was himself carried into captivity. The prophecy is written in classical Hebrew, and is characterised by a bold and vivid originality of style, if also by a conciseness sometimes bordering on obscurity; in more than one expression it has been thought that the writer betrays personal acquaintance with Ninevite affairs, and it is conjectured that he may have been either an Israelite of the northern kingdom who in early youth had been deported after the fall of Samaria, or a Judæan who had been carried captive along with Manasseh. Of his personal history nothing is actually known; the name, which is not a very common one, reappears in Luke, iii. 25, and in the name of the Galilean Capernaum ('village of Nahum'). He is described as a native of Elkosh, by which perhaps is to be understood the modern El-Kauseh, near Ramah in Upper Galilee, though others think of Al-Kôsh near Mosul, on the left bank of the Tigris, where the grave of the prophet has been shown since the 16th century. See commentaries by O. Strauss (1853), C. Å. Blomquist (1853), F. Gihl (1860), M. Breiteneicher (1861), L. Reinke (1867), and E. Mahler (1886), and works mentioned under HOSEA.