Hebrew word · H5151
נַחוּם
nachum
Nahum
A personal name from the root nacham, which in its related verb forms means to comfort, to be comforted, or to relent. It is probably a shortened form of a longer name like Nehemiah, 'YHWH comforts', and may mean 'comforted' or 'comfort'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
A prophet living at the time of Divided Monarchy, only mentioned at Nam.1.1
§ Nahum = "comfort"
the Elkoshite, prophet who predicted the fall and destruction of Nineveh; writer of the book by his name; personal history and situation unknown
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
A personal name from the root nacham, which in its related verb forms means to comfort, to be comforted, or to relent. It is probably a shortened form of a longer name like Nehemiah, 'YHWH comforts', and may mean 'comforted' or 'comfort'.
- Against the English
All versions simply transliterate it, which is normal for a name, but English readers then miss that it carries a meaning.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Greek form Naoum appears in the Greek Old Testament and for a different man in Luke's genealogy (Luke 3:25). A similar name, Nehum, appears in Nehemiah 7:7. Josephus discusses the prophet in Antiquities 9.239-242, and the Greek text of Tobit 14:4 in Codex Sinaiticus mentions Nahum's word about Nineveh.
Where it appears
Nahum · 1
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Nahum 1:1 נַח֖וּם Nahum
This is the burden against Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite:
Here: The prophet's name, built on the Hebrew root for comfort. He gives no father's name, no title of 'prophet' and no king's reign, so almost everything we know of him is in these two words.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.