- Scholars date Nahum’s prophecy to between 664 and 612 BCE. The book’s first verse explains that it is a prophetic vision and a pronouncement of doom on the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Nineveh’s evidently back to their old tricks again since they first repented after Jonah’s warnings about 150 years earlier. Nahum means comfort, which makes sense if your idea of comfort is watching your enemies suffer. City streets running with blood. An insatiable whore getting stripped naked and thrown to the streets. Lions and locusts and figs, oh my. In other words, prophecy as usual.
- The book of Nahum can be seen as a sequel to Jonah, only this time Nineveh does not repent and the prophet gets to laugh at the city’s destruction. Unlike other books in the minor prophets, Nahum doesn’t end with a vision of a restored Israel or Judah. It’s just more Tarantino, with the Assyrians left bleeding while others applaud.