OF THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
N A H U M.
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 14:25),
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.
Matthew Henry "Verse by Verse Commentary for 'Nahum' Matthew Henry Bible Commentary".
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