Ezekiel 38:2

2. Gog, the land of Magog R.V., “Gog, of the land of Magog.” Dr. Adam Clarke says: “This is allowed to be the most difficult prophecy in the Old Testament. It is difficult to us because we know not the king nor the people intended by it.” He mentions numerous queer explanations, such as that Gog was a hidden name for the Americans, and Meshech and Tubal for the Turks or Christians, but approves the view that Gog stood for Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, which country is called Magog by Pliny ( Natural History). Every commentator since Clarke has risen from the study of this passage with a sense of defeat. Every attempted suggestion has been a guess. As Cornill says, “No other chapter in Ezekiel is so shrouded in mystery.” Since the discovery in the Assyrian inscriptions of an unknown land Mat-Gahi and of the cuneiform name of the well-known Gyges, king of Lydia, written Ga-gi-Gugu, the most usual explanation has been that Gyges was the original king of Gog, and that Magog (“land of Gog”) means Lydia. The great invasion of the Scythians, who carried the scalps of their foes at their bridle reins for napkins and drank fresh blood out of cups made from the skulls of their enemies, must have been one of the most vivid reminiscences of the prophet’s youth, and these barbarian hordes were closely associated with Gyges; for it was the savage Kimmerians, known to the Assyrians as Gi-mirre (Bib., Gomer, Ezekiel 38:6) whose king Esar-haddon calls a “Manda [Scythian] warrior” who swooped down upon Lydia and carried off with them the head of Gyges himself.

Yet the historic Gyges, who had been headless for over half a century, seems very unlike this “prince” of the northern barbarians, who had Persia, Cush, and Put as his subordinates (Ezekiel 38:5, R.V.), and who in the far-away future (Ezekiel 38:14-16) as had been long predicted (Ezekiel 38:17) should invade Israel with such a multitude of warriors that after their destruction by supernatural agencies (Ezekiel 38:20-22) their weapons could furnish the sole fuel for all the cities of Israel for a period of seven years (Ezekiel 39:10). Even if it were conclusively proved that Gog (Og) had been a well-known name among the northern barbarians from very ancient times (Haupt, American Oriental Society, April, 1899), its use in this connection would still require explanation. Many of the most acute commentators of modern times have taken this term as “a poetical representation of the heathen powers of the world who shall meet death in opposing the new theocracy” (Wellhausen, New Review, 1893), or as, perhaps, a secret reference to the Babylonian empire, the only great power whose destruction Ezekiel had not previously prophesied (25-32), which power is alluded to under this invented name of Gog not probably for fear of the Chaldean police, but in order not to stir up false hopes and lead the people to revolt (Cornill) though against this latter suggestion Kuenen has urged the decisive objection, “that this is a picture of a time when Israel shall have returned to her own land; which of itself presupposes the overthrow of the Chaldean monarchy” ( Onderzoek).

Objections could also be made to Wellhausen’s view (which is not greatly different from John Wesley’s), yet with our present knowledge it seems, with some modifications, the most probable. Possibly these names of northern tribes are intended to symbolize the outlying nations of heathendom, which are not included in the prophecies of destruction against the seven great monarchies previously mentioned: Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt. Gog (Hebrews, hidden, covered) is a personification rather than a real person. He appears as the typical incarnation of universal world power, which can marshal the Scythians from the extreme north, the Persians from the east, and the Ethiopians from the south, in that “‘terrible’ day of the end” of which the prophets so often speak, when Israel shall have one last struggle with her enemies and come forth victorious. Evil will not have been fully conquered even after the people return to their own land. A decisive moment will some day come when a supreme attempt will be made, more fearful than any in the past, to overthrow God’s kingdom, but the right will finally prevail. Before, when such a catastrophe had occurred under Nebuchadnezzar, Israel had succumbed; but the nation will be true to its omnipotent God the next time, and therefore will successfully oppose any coalition. No enemy can prevail against the new Israel because it will be faithful to Jehovah.

This mysterious prophecy was never fulfilled literally. It can never be fulfilled other than spiritually. (Compare the New Testament “antichrist,” and see Gautier, pp. 318, 323, etc.)