The Author. 

        All we know of Nahum is that he came from Elkosh (1:1), an unidentified place, about which there are three traditions:

        1. It is claimed that Elkosh is the modern Elkush, a village in Iraq about 27 miles north of Mosul, which is near the ruins of Nineveh. Nahum’s tomb is shown there, but the tradition identifying it cannot be shown to be older than the sixteenth century. Were this tradition correct, Nahum will have been a descendant of one of the captives deported after the fall of Samaria in 723 B.C. (IIKings 17:6).

        2. Jerome (fourth century A.D.) was shown the hamlet of Helkesi in Galilee by Jewish guides, who claimed that it was Nahum’s birthplace. We cannot now identify the site of this hamlet with certainty. A barely possible support for Nahum’s Galilean origin is found in the name Capernaum = Kephar Nahum, i.e. Village of Nahum. If this tradition is correct, Nahum was the descendant of Israelites left in the North after the deportations by the Assyrians (cf. JIChron. 30:1, 5f, lOf, 18; 34:6f).

        3. In a work known as the Lives of the Prophets, attributed, perhaps wrongly, to Epiphanius (fourth century A.D.), a native of Palestine, Elkosh is placed in the tribal portion of Simeon, perhaps near Lachish.

        Sentiment might make us favour either of the former views, but we have to acknowledge that there is no real evidence in their favour. Nahum’s concern is clearly with Judah, not Israel. The vast majority of scholars assume he was a Judaean (One of the few modern writers to support the first view is Kirkpatrick, p. 249 seq. Driver, Lot, p. 335, gives cautious support to the second view.).