The life of St Nahum
He is remembered as the Elkoshite, after his home village of Elkosh, though even that plain fact is not entirely settled: Jerome believed he had located its ruins in Galilee, while other traditions place it further east, or connect his name to Capernaum, a town whose very name may mean village of Nahum. Almost nothing else of his personal history has survived.
His short book takes up where the preaching of Jonah had left off a generation before, turning once more to the great Assyrian city of Nineveh, whose people had for a time repented at Jonah's warning but had since returned to their old sins. Nahum foretold that the city's ruin would come through both flood and fire together, and tradition holds that this came to pass when a river near Nineveh, swollen after an earthquake, overran part of the city while fire consumed the rest. Unlike most of the prophets who came before him, Nahum offered no call to Israel's own repentance, his words aimed entirely outward, at a city whose day of reckoning he alone among the prophets was given to foresee in such detail.
