38 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face towards Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him 3 and say, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. 4 And I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armour, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords. 5 Persia, Cush, and Put are with them, all of them with shield and helmet; 6 Gomer and all his hordes; Beth-togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes—many peoples are with you.
7 “Be ready and keep ready, you and all your hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. 8 After many days you will be mustered. In the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely, all of them. 9 You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you.
10 “Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme 11 and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates’, 12 to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the centre of the earth.13 Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its leaders will say to you, ‘Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to seize great spoil?’
14 “Therefore, son of man, prophesy, and say to Gog, Thus says the Lord God: On that day when my people Israel are dwelling securely, will you not know it? 15 You will come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army. 16 You will come up against my people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.
17 “Thus says the Lord God: Are you he of whom I spoke in former days by my servants the prophets of Israel, who in those days prophesied for years that I would bring you against them? 18 But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, my wrath will be roused in my anger. 19 For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare, On that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. 20 The fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the people who are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence. And the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground. 21 I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Lord God. Every man's sword will be against his brother. 22 With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgement with him, and I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulphur. 23 So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
We have already indicated in previous Notes what we think are the deficiencies of interpretation in both the dispensationalists and the classical Reformed view, the one referring these words to a period after our Lord's Second Coming, and the other referring all to the Church of Christ, equating Israel here with the Church. What we must try to do is to draw the truth from both views (for both contain some truth) and hold it in such a way as to see what is the dynamic message of the Scriptures. In our study of the dry bones passage and also of the promise of the new covenant, we saw that we could very legitimately refer Ezekiel's words both to the Church and to Israel, and that present-day Israel has a significant place in the economy of God. In this light, let us make some general observations, so as to elicit guidelines to interpretation. If for example we compare the statement in 38:17 (referring to Gog) and 39:8, we see that the implication of these two verses is that Ezekiel is not speaking of something new, but something that earlier prophets had also spoken about. Almost all of them, and some in particular, laid a tremendous emphasis on the idea of a final, cataclysmic, head-on clash between God and the powers of evil. We find it in Joel, who speaks of the great and terrible day of the Lord; in Zechariah, who prophesied later than Ezekiel; in Amos, in Isaiah, with hints and sometimes outright statements; in Jeremiah too, who speaks of the 'time of Jacob's trouble'. Clearly, what is in view, in all of them, is the eschatological battle of the end time, in which the forces of evil and the power of God meet in headlong clash, in the final climacteric of history. This is the theme of so much of the book of Revelation also, as for example Revelation 11:3ff, which describes the same confrontation as that referred to by Ezekiel, but in different language, and a different pictorial image to describe it (cf also Revelation 16:14, 19:19 and 20:7-10). In this last reference Magog almost seems to be a person, not a land, but certainly in Ezekiel Magog is the land of which Gog is the prince. Gog and Magog are therefore to be taken as symbols of the powers of evil and of darkness, rather than literal powers.