Who is…
Nun

also known as: Non (1 Chronicles 7:27)

Hebrew: נוּן —meaning: in Aramaic and related languages nun means “fish” / The letter nun in early Hebrew script was fish-shaped. A Hebrew root associated with the name means to sprout, flourish, or continue (hence “perpetuity” or “posterity”)

This Old Testament Hebrew man is the father of Israel’s great military and spiritual successor to Moses—Joshua (originally Hoshea), from a leading Ephraimite family, and a man of the Israelite generation that suffered in Egypt.

And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle. —Exodus 33:11 KJV

A Jewish midrash (Genesis Rabbah 97:3) plays on the fish meaning of his name: “the son of him whose name was as the name of a fish would lead them into the land.”

Nun is a son of Elishama and almost certainly lived during the Egyptian bondage of Israel. His son Joshua was born in Egypt. Nun himself is never said to have entered Canaan and is not mentioned among those who did.

Elishama son of Ammihud was the nasi (tribal prince/leader) of Ephraim during the wilderness period (Numbers 1:10, 2:18, 7:48, 10:22). That places Nun in a prominent Ephraim tribal family.

Joshua is repeatedly called “Joshua son of Nun” (more than 30 times). But his father never appears in a narrative record of his own, so nothing more is known of Nun.

Traditional tomb

A Jewish tradition locates Nun’s tomb near Joshua’s at Timnath-serah / Timnath-heres (Joshua 24:30; Judges 2:9), identified by many Orthodox Jews with the village of Kifl Haris (Kifl Hares) in Samaria, northwest of Ariel.

The site also has traditions about Caleb. The identification is traditional rather than archaeologically proved, Another candidate for biblical Timnath-serah is Khirbet Tibnah.