Nahum 1:1

"The burden of Nineveh" means God's heavy sentence against that famous city. The prophets use the phrase often. In Isaiah we find the burden of Babylon, and of one place after another — a message of judgment, and so it was called a "burden."

"Burden" means a heavy message, a message of judgement, a message that weighs down the soul of the man who has to deliver it. Nineveh was the capital of the Kingdom of Assyria. Nahum condemns the city rather than the Kingdom; Isaiah condemns the Kingdom, with no special mention of its capital. This distinction is important. In His wonderful ways God will restore and bless Assyria in the Kingdom age (Isa. 19:23-25), but its proud capital will never rise again. Why? Because God gave Nineveh special favour in its day. He sent Jonah there on a special mission, and the whole population trembled at the preaching and cried to God for mercy.

Nahum's history is unknown. All we know of him is that he was an Elkoshite. His name means "comforter." Some have identified Elkosh with a village of similar name that still exists today. It stands near the site of ancient Nineveh, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and it displays a tomb said to be Nahum's grave. But careful research has shown that claim has no foundation at all. No one knew anything about that grave until about the sixteenth century. It is the Elkosh that existed in Galilee and is still known as a little village. Nahum, like Jonah, was a Galilean.

No one knows exactly where he came from. Some researchers think it was the village of Alkush by the river Tigris near Mossul. Others suggest a place in Galilee near Capernaum. Others think it was Capernaum itself (Kephar-Nahum = village of Nahum). Some believe it was a village in Judea. At Nahum's time the kingdom of the ten tribes, where Galilee lies, was already in Assyrian captivity, and Nahum speaks straight to the kingdom of Judah (chap. 1:15b). Both facts point to that last possibility.

The Jews in the time of our Lord made a strange reproach (John 7:52), for prophets had come out of Galilee. Jonah and Nahum were both Galileans. Men are blinder in reading the Bible than in anything else. Readers pass over the plain facts of Scripture more carelessly than the facts of any other book. People forget what it does not suit them to remember.

Nahum was the Barnabas of the Old Testament. His name means "consolation," and the great aim of his prophecy was to comfort the sad and downcast hearts of the people of God. But his ministry was very different from that of the "son of consolation" we read about in Acts. Barnabas rejoiced when he saw the grace of God reach the Gentiles… Nahum rejoiced over the opposite, the judgment of the Gentiles. He urged the men of Judah on the ground that their enemies were cut off.

The burden of Nineveh means that a weighty prophetic message about the great world city of Nineveh is to follow. Jonah gives us the size of that city, and excavations have confirmed his figures. The next sentence tells us plainly that what follows in the book is the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

Nahum ("Comfort") is a vigorous prophecy of the judgment of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, so the city stands for that empire — the King of the North in a coming day. Egypt pictures for us the world in its smug independence of God; Assyria shows the world in its vicious opposition to Him… The prophecy looks on to God's judgment of the King of the North in the latter days. Notice that the unbending firmness of God's judgment fully matches the determined greed of this enemy.