THE

name of this prophet signifies a comforter; for it was a charge

given to all the prophets, Comfort you, comfort you, my people:

and even this prophet, though wholly taken up in foretelling the

destruction of Nineveh, which speaks terror to the Assyrians, is, even

in that, comforter to the ten tribes of Israel, who, it is probable,

were now lately carried captives into Assyria. It is very uncertain at

what time he lived and prophesied, but it is most probable that he

lived in the time of Hezekiah, and prophesied against Nineveh, after

the captivity of Israel by the king of Assyria, which was in the ninth

year of Hezekiah, and before Sennacherib’s invading Judah, which was in

the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, for to that attempt, and the defeat of

it, it is supposed, the first chapter has reference; and it is probable

that it was delivered a little before it, for the encouragement of

God’s people in that day of treading down and perplexity. It is the

conjecture of the learned Huetius that the two other chapters of this

book were delivered by Nahum some years after, perhaps in the reign of

Manasseh, and in that reign the Jewish chronologies generally place

him, somewhat nearer to the time when Nineveh was conquered, and the

Assyrian monarchy reduced, by Cyaxares and Nebuchadnezzar, some time

before the first captivity of Judah. It is probable that Nahum did by

word of mouth prophesy many things concerning Israel and Judah, as it

is certain that Jonah did

(2 Kings xiv. 25),

though we have nothing of either of them in writing, but what related

to Nineveh, of which though a great and ancient city, yet probably we

should never have heard in sacred writ if the Israel of God had not had

some concern in it.