Who wrote Nahum, and when?
Nahum of Elkosh. Between 663 and 612 BC, before the fall of Nineveh.
The book names its author as Nahum of Elkosh, and that is almost all we know about him. The location of Elkosh is uncertain; suggestions include sites in Judah, Galilee and even northern Iraq, but none is confirmed. His name means comfort, which fits the message. The book can be dated with unusual confidence because it mentions the fall of Thebes in Egypt (see chapter 3), which happened in 663 BC, and it predicts the fall of Nineveh, which came in 612 BC. So Nahum spoke somewhere between those two dates, most likely in the later part of that window when Assyria's power had begun to slip. A few scholars have suggested that parts were written down after 612 BC, but most accept the book as a prophecy given before the event.
Who was Nahum written to?
Judah, oppressed by Assyria and needing to hear that the empire’s cruelty would not last.
Nahum spoke to the people of Judah, the small southern kingdom that had lived in Assyria's shadow for a century. Assyria had wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, and in 701 BC its army had swept through Judah, destroying towns and shutting up Jerusalem before withdrawing. Judah survived only by paying heavy tribute. Assyrian kings boasted of their cruelty, and the people of Judah knew the stories. Some of them would have wondered whether God cared, or whether Assyria's gods were simply stronger. Nahum's first hearers were people who needed to know that the empire which seemed permanent was not, and that the God who had once spared Nineveh in Jonah's day had not gone soft on wickedness.
What was happening at the time?
A century after Jonah, Assyria was at its most brutal, having destroyed Israel and ravaged Judah. Nahum announces that God is slow to anger but will by no means clear the guilty, and paints the sack of Nineveh in vivid poetry. The city fell to the Babylonians and Medes in 612 BC, as he said.
Why was Nahum written?
To comfort Judah with the certainty that God judges cruel empires.
Nahum was written to comfort Judah by announcing that Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, would fall, and that God himself would bring it down. The book opens with a poem about God's character: patient and slow to anger, but never willing to let the guilty go free (see chapter 1). Then it describes the siege and sack of the city in vivid pictures. Nahum wants his readers to believe that God rules the nations, that cruelty has a limit, and that the LORD is a safe place for those who trust him. In the wider story of the Bible, Nahum shows that God's mercy to Nineveh under Jonah was real but not unconditional, and that the God who judges empires is the same God who will finally judge all evil through Christ.
How to read Nahum today
Read all three chapters in one sitting; the whole book takes about ten minutes. Start with chapter 1, which sets out who God is before anything happens to Nineveh. Then read chapters 2 and 3 as poetry, letting the pictures of chariots, floods and empty streets do their work. Watch for the contrast between the LORD as a refuge and the LORD as a judge; both are true at once. Do not force every image to match a historical detail, and do not treat the book as a licence for personal revenge. Nahum is about God's justice, not ours. It helps to read Jonah first, since the two books belong together. While you read, pray for people you know who suffer under cruel power, and ask God to help you trust his justice rather than take matters into your own hands.
The key verse in Nahum
The LORD is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.
Passages worth knowing in Nahum
The main themes of Nahum
- God’s justice against cruelty
- The fall of empires
- God as refuge
- Comfort for the oppressed
An outline of Nahum
| Section | Chapters |
|---|---|
| The character of God | 1 |
| The fall of Nineveh | 2–3 |