'Comfort, consolation' (Nachum, from nacham, the root behind Noah and Nehemiah) — the seventh of the Twelve, and the author of a single sustained oracle against NINEVEH. ⚠ His book is the dark TWIN of Jonah: both are aimed entirely at Nineveh, and they reach opposite verdicts. In Jonah (~760 BC) the city repents and God spares it; in Nahum, a century and a half later, the same city has become the ancient world's most efficient killing-machine, and God announces its end. The name 'Comfort' is exact, not ironic: Nineveh's fall is the consolation — the good news — for every small nation Assyria had crushed, so Nahum is comfort written from the underside of an empire. ⚠ Nothing is known of him but his home town, ELKOSH, which no one can locate; a tradition since Jerome puts it in Galilee, others near Nineveh's own ruins. He is dated by the two cities he names: Thebes, whose fall (663 BC) he speaks of as past (3:8), and Nineveh, whose fall (612 BC) he foresees.