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Notes on Gog and Magog The identity of the peoples comprising the latter-day hosts which fulfil the vision of Ezekiel 38 and 39 in descending upon regathered Israel “to take a spoil, and to take a prey” (Ezek.38:12) at the end of this Age has long been the subject of variant views. Ezekiel took, as the illustration of his prophecy, the Scythian invasion of Bible lands occurring in his own time. The Scythian barbarians from the southern parts of present-day Russia and Siberia, hitherto quite unknown to the peoples of the Bible, swarmed over those lands looting and destroying wherever they came. Not until they reached the borders of Egypt was their onslaught checked but it was ten years or more before they were finally expelled and returned whence they came. The memory of that happening gave inspiration for Ezekiel’s prophetic description of a similar but much more momentous event to take place at the Time of the End. The Jews, between the Return from Babylon and the time of Christ, some five hundred years, maintained a very literal acceptance of Ezekiel’s prophecy and expected the Scythian invasion to be repeated. Rabbinic literature is full of allusions to the coming day when the Scythians would invade Judah and be overthrown by the all-conquering Messiah. Josephus (Ant.1 .6 .1) about 100 A.D., repeats the prevailing belief that the hosts of Gog and Magog are the Scythians. As late as the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. the same impression continued to be held in Jewish circles. Rabbinic literature of the time of the First Advent hazarded a number of opinions. Thus the “Chronicles of Jerahmeel” (31:4) states that the peoples of Gog are the Scythians. The Book of Jubilees (Jub.9:8) describes the land of Magog as lying in what is now Crimea. There is a definite understanding in some of these writings that the prophecy of Ezekiel refers to a time at the end of the Age when barbarian peoples will come from the farthermost recesses of the world to attack Jerusalem and will be destroyed by the King Messiah (“Targum Jerusalem;” “Apocalypse of Baruch” (76:7-10); 4 Ezra 13:8-35; Rabbi Akiba). Time and time again there is this theme, that the assault is not by one particular nation but the entire non-Jewish world, making common cause against the holy people. Christian interpretation, in the pre-Augustinian days of general Millennial belief, more or less accepted Jewish tradition in this respect. Augustine himself, (4th Cent.) seems to be the first to advance a wider view of the prophecy when he said (“City of God” chap.28) that the hosts of Gog and Magog “do not represent one particular nation but are spread-over the whole earth.” By then the Scythians as a people, with all their tribal divisions enumerated by Ezekiel, had passed away, but the old idea that the barbarian horde was to come from the territory which later on became southern Russia persisted, as witness the writings of Pseudo-Methodius (7th Cent.) Bishop Haymo of Halberstadt (9th Cent.) Abbot Joachim of Fiore (12th Cent.) and the Franciscan Roger Bacon (13th Cent.), although most of these, like Augustine, placed the event at the end of the Millennium and not at the beginning. The 12th Century saw a change. With the inception of the Crusades it became fashionable to interpret this prophecy as relating to the Muslim menace to Christendom. The Saracens of those centuries were thought to be the hosts of Gog and the Christians the would-be victors over them. The fact that the Saracens came from the south instead of the north was ignored, as was the parallel fact that in the upshot the Christians were not victorious over the Muslims. Nevertheless the idea persisted, and held the field until the 17th century. Notable exponents were Martin Luther (16th cent.), Lord John Napier, the mathematician and inventor of logarithms (17th Cent.), Henry Hammond, the so-called “Father of English Biblical Criticism” (17th Cent.) and the noted Boston U.S.A. Congregational minister Edward D. Griffin (18th Cent.). Agreeable to the Augustinian theology, which placed the Millennium in the early part of this Age. 4th to 14th centuries, these all located the invasion of Gog in the past, at various dates in the 13th to 15th centuries, and pointed to the gradual expulsion of the Muslims from Christian Europe as evidence of fulfilment. There were, of course other more fanciful interpretations from time to time. The Bavarian Gerhoh of Reichersberg in the 12th Century saw the prophecy fulfilled in the conflict between Emperors and Popes, the Papacy eventually emerging victorious. John Purvey, co-labourer with Wycliffe (14th Cent.) on the other hand found fulfilment in the persecution of evangelists by Catholics. Although put forward in all sincerity, such suggestions can hardly be considered serious expositions of Ezekiel’s vision. In later times the old explanation, with an up-to-date twist, was revived, to wit, that the modern sovereign State of Russia is to fulfil the prophecy. It is believed that the revival was due to Samuel Bochart (1599-1667) a learned French theologian and Oriental scholar, author of a celebrated and voluminous work on early Scripture history, and another on the Natural History of the Bible. He was an avid collector of data on his chosen subjects, for which reason he has been frequently quoted by writers and commentators on the Bible ever since. (The research and advance in knowledge of the four centuries which have elapsed since his day have shown that many of his statements and much of his data are inaccurate, but they still continue to be copied and re-copied from Christian publication to Christian publication.) Bochart pointed to the Russia of his day as destined to fill the role of Gog’s host, apparently unmindful of the fact that none of the territory possessed by the tribes mentioned by Ezekiel— Magog, Rosh, Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, and Togarmah, was in his time under Russian control. (It was not until the 18th/19th Centuries that Ukraine, Caucasus*, and most of Siberia became part of Russia; prior to that these lands were partly Turkish and partly Mongol, mostly true descendants of the ancient Scythians whereas the original Russians emanated from Sweden). In Old Testament times northern and central European Russia and northern Siberia were virtually uninhabited. The Scythian tribes of Ezekiel’s prophecy came from southern Siberia and from the area around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Pressure of population drove more and more of them to the Bible lands and there were constant wars between them and the Assyrians and the Hittites of Asia Minor so far back as twelve hundred years before Christ. The less hospitable lands to the north were not appreciably colonised until much later, when in about A.D.800 there was a migration of Scandinavian peoples from Sweden and adjoining lands into northern Russia. These tribes were related to the Swedes, Angles and Vikings and were denoted by the Finnish word Ruotsi, from which was derived Rossiya which in turn became Russia. Their southward expansion was halted by the Jewish empire of Khazaria which in the ninth century A.D. stretched across Ukraine and the Caucasus—an empire consisting of a union between Jews of the dispersal and native Scythians, ruled by Jewish kings. Eventually the incoming Russians intermarried with the Khazarians and became one people. Then in the 13th century came the Mongol invasions of Genghis Khan and his descendants from Siberia, and the whole of the two continents from Hungary and Russia to China became one great Mongol empire. Bochart’s reputation and influence was such that any thesis advanced by him became well known and in the early 19th Century it was taken up by the Adventists and today is a common interpretation of Ezekiel 38 and 39 among Christian groups interested in “end of the Age” prophecy. It is not necessarily the correct interpretation on that account. Coming as it does largely from Bochart in the 17th century and Francois Gaussen in the early 19th, many of the arguments founded on similarity of names are not valid. Whereas Meshech and Tubal were definitely the names of Scythian tribes existing in the time of Ezekiel and appear in Assyrian annals of the time as the Mashku and Tabalu, there is no etymological (word history) foundation for associating them with the modern towns of Moscow and Tobolsk as is often done. Neither existed in Ezekiel’s day (Moscow was founded in A.D.1147 and became the capital in the 13th Century; Tobolsk in 1587 when for the first time the true Russians penetrated into Siberia.) The World As Known In Late Old Testament Times
Showing The Position Of Israel And The Hostile Nations Of Ezekiel 38/39 In Bochart’s time, early 17th century, western Europe knew very little about Russia and still less about Siberia. In a dim and general sort of way it was known that those areas were the home of eastern barbarians who once before in history had ravaged the lands of the Bible and according to the Bible, would in the last days, do it again. Today a great deal more is known about those lands and that people and a great deal more about the Divine Plan for humanity and the prophetic delineation of the events at the end which will lead to the establishment of Divine rule on the earth in succession to the rule of man. There is no longer any real ground for holding on to medieval methods of interpretation when we know, or ought to know, that what we are dealing with is something far greater, the implacable opposition of all the institutions of evil in this world to the incoming kingdom of God. That means a world-wide force arrayed against the powers of righteousness and this is what is implied in the picture of the barbarian hordes of Gog and Magog, from the four corners of the world, converging upon the city of God’s holiness. Something of this was seen by sober commentators as long as a century ago, as witness the “Speaker’s Commentary,” standard work of the 19th century, which says of Ezekiel 38 and 39 “In this prophecy there is little distinctive of a nation. It is a gathering together of the enemies of Jehovah to make their last effort and to be overthrown. The seer passes now to the final conflict between Good and Evil, and the triumphant stablishment of Divine rule.” Says Ellicott, also late 19th century, “[Ezekiel] intended to set forth under the figure of Gog and his armies all opposition of the world to the Kingdom of God, and to foretell, like his contemporary Daniel, the final and complete triumph of the latter in the distant future.” One of the important factors in the whole prophetic picture of Gog and Magog is frequently overlooked. As a rule, it is assumed that the primary object of the invading host is the conquest of Israel, the Holy Nation settled at peace in the Holy Land. It is probably true that Ezek.38:11-12 is the basis of this impression; “I will go to them that are at rest...to take a spoil, and to take a prey.” Whilst this is undoubtedly the avowed intention of the invading hosts, there is a more important underlying factor. The hosts of Gog and Magog set their faces toward that land and that people because they know that the coming Messiah is there and the beginning of his Kingdom upon earth. It is not so much the conquest and despoliation of a few thousand square miles of territory in the Middle East that is the object of their action, but their realisation that Israel’s Messiah and the world’s Lord, with all the powers of heaven behind him, is advancing to dispossess them of the rulership of this world, and even although from the nature of things they cannot and do not comprehend the nature of the foe they have to face, they do realise in a manner that maybe we cannot at present understand that they must face the issue. It is not the oil or the crops or the treasures of the literal land of Israel which they covet. It is the threat posed to the whole edifice of the “kingdoms of this world” standing behind the curtain of the clouds, our Lord Jesus with his resurrected saints, ready to be revealed to the whole world for the elimination of sin and the establishment of everlasting righteousness. The picture is displayed in Rev.19:11-21 where the kings of the earth and their armies are gathered together to make war upon the Rider on the White Horse and the armies of heaven. This is the same event in history that is described by Ezekiel under his similes of the onslaught of the hosts of Gog and Magog; Zechariah 14 affords another picture of the same thing and with the same end result. This is Armageddon, and this the end of the “kingdoms of this world.” There is no more any resistance to the new Millennial kingdom of which Christ is undisputed king, no more any doubting the fact that He has taken his great power and commenced his reign. The Messianic kingdom of righteousness is established and all opponents are overthrown. That this is the true nature and outcome of the invasion of Gog was well understood by the Jews in the immediate pre-Christian centuries and at the time of the first Advent. Always the target of the attack is the Messiah, coming to the deliverance and exaltation of his people. All through the apocryphal writings of that era the prophecy of Ezekiel is interpreted in that fashion. The First Book of Enoch, the 4th of Ezra, the Psalms of Solomon, Tobit, the Targums, the writings of Rabbi Agiba, all of these dwell upon the day when the hosts of Gog and Magog face the conquering Messiah to destroy him and are themselves destroyed instead. But not for ever. The Messiah follows up his victory by bringing those hosts of evil into the circle of his love. The Lord chastises only to eradicate sin and then He turns to heal. All too often as we read this prophecy we tend to dwell upon the utter disaster and ruin that comes upon those decimated hosts without stopping to reflect that God has a plan and purpose for them which involves an opportunity for repentance and salvation. Says Isaiah at the conclusion of his prophecy, speaking of the same thing (Isa.66:19 margin) “I will send those that escape of them” (the holy people) “unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul (Put) and Lud...to Tubal and Javan, to the lands afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles (nations).” The crushing defeat suffered by the hosts of Gog and Magog is one that leads to their conversion. Let us never forget that. AOH |
