The title of the book comes from the name of its writer.
We know nothing about Nahum ("consolation"or "comfort") other than what we read in this book. His name proved significant since he brought comfort and consolation to the Judeans with his prophecies. He was "the Elkoshite"(1:1), so he evidently came from a town named Elkosh, but the location of such a town is yet to be discovered. Scholars have suggested that it stood near Nineveh, in Galilee, near Capernaum (City of Nahum?), east of the Jordan River, or somewhere in Judah. Since he was a Jewish prophet and evidently lived after the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C., a location in Judah seems most likely to me. Perhaps the Assyrians had carried his family away to Mesopotamia when they conquered the kingdom of Israel and Nahum somehow managed to return to Judah later.1This may explain Nahum's familiarity with things Assyrian.
