Prophet: Nahum

When Jonah warned Nineveh of God’s wrath, the Ninevites repented and God spared them. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and the Assyrian empire had grown more mighty and wicked since the time of Jonah. The city also continued to lead nations into idolatry (Nahum 3:4) and had carried off the northern tribes into captivity. God sent the prophet Nahum to reveal Nineveh’s future: utter desolation. Although God is good and compassionate (Nahum 1:7, Jonah 4:2), He will not leave the guilty unpunished (Nahum 1:3).

Nahum starts by describing God as jealous, (allowing no room for idols), and as a avenger who is wrathful toward his enemies. Slow to anger, God had planned to punish Nineveh decades earlier  (Jonah 3:4), but had spared them when they repented. (Jonah 3:10). Now, having returned to their evil ways and remaining un-repentant, the Assyrians seal their fate.

We don’t know much about the prophet Nahum. The other books of the Bible don’t mention him, and we aren’t even sure where his town (Elkosh) was located, though it was probably a town in Judah, since the Northern Tribes had been taken into exile by the time Nahum wrote his book. Nahum was written after the Assyrians sacked the Egyptian city of Thebes, or No-amon (Nahum 3:8), and was likely written before the Babylonians defeat of  Nineveh in 612 B.C.