Nahum, one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament; appears to have been a contemporary of Isaiah, and to have prophesied after the destruction of Samaria and the defeat of Sennacherib before Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah. His mission as a prophet was to console the people in the presence of the formidable power of Assyria, and to predict its downfall, and especially that of its capital city Nineveh, an event which happened under Cyaxares the Mede 603 B.C. His thought is forcible, his expression clear, and his diction pure, all three worthy of the classical age of Hebrew literature.