What is the prophetic significance of Ezekiel 38-39?

Question 10134.

Ezekiel 38-39 describes a vast coalition from the far north sweeping down on a restored and unsuspecting Israel, and being destroyed by God Himself before a shot is properly fired. Two long chapters are given to it, which is a great deal of space for an event many Christians have never heard a sermon about.

The prophetic significance of these chapters is not chiefly military. It is theological, and Ezekiel tells us the point himself more than once.

What Ezekiel 38-39 describes

A leader called Gog, of the land of Magog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, is summoned by God with hooks in his jaws. He comes with Persia, Cush and Put, with Gomer and Beth-togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north, an enormous force described as a cloud covering the land.

The target is a people gathered from many nations onto the mountains of Israel, dwelling securely, in a land of unwalled villages. The motive is plunder, to seize spoil and carry off silver and gold and livestock.

The outcome is not a battle. God intervenes with earthquake, confusion, pestilence, torrential rain, hailstones, fire and sulphur, and the invasion collapses. Ezekiel 38-39 then describes seven months of burial and seven years of burning weapons for fuel.

Who are these nations?

The names come from the table of nations in Genesis 10, and identifying their modern equivalents has been a favourite parlour game for a century and a half. I would urge caution, because a great deal of confident identification has aged badly.

Magog, Meshech and Tubal are generally located in Anatolia and the Caucasus. Persia is straightforward and is modern Iran. Cush lies south of Egypt, Put to the west of it, Gomer and Beth-togarmah again to the north.

What Ezekiel 38-39 gives us with certainty is a direction and a character. The coalition comes from the north, it is largely composed of peoples who now surround Israel, and it is united by hostility rather than by geography.

Not the same as Revelation 20

Revelation 20:8 uses the names Gog and Magog for a rebellion at the end of the thousand years, and readers naturally assume the two passages describe one event. The details will not allow it.

In Ezekiel the attackers come from one direction with named allies; in Revelation they come from the four corners of the earth and are simply the nations. In Ezekiel there is burial and salvage lasting years; in Revelation the earth and sky flee away immediately afterwards.

John is borrowing Ezekiel’s language as a deliberate echo, the way we might call a modern conflict somebody’s Waterloo. I set the comparison out fully in my article on Gog and Magog in Revelation 20.

Not Armageddon either

Some identify the invasion with the campaign of Armageddon at the Second Coming. Again the details resist it. At Armageddon the nations gather against Jerusalem and are destroyed by the appearing of Jesus in person, whereas in Ezekiel 38-39 the Lord acts through natural forces and no return of the Messiah is mentioned.

The aftermath differs as well. Armageddon is followed immediately by the establishment of the kingdom. Ezekiel’s aftermath involves seven years of clearing up, which is difficult to fit into the transition to the Millennium.

See my article on the battle of Armageddon for that campaign in its own right.

The stated purpose

Ezekiel does not leave us guessing about why this happens. The refrain runs through both chapters: that the nations may know that I am the LORD, that I will show my greatness and my holiness, that the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day forward.

This is a self-revelation of God on a global scale. A nation that had drifted into secularity is confronted with an act of deliverance it cannot explain away, and the watching world sees it too.

Read Ezekiel 38:23 and you have the interpretive key to the whole passage in a single verse. Everything else is scenery around that sentence.

Israel dwelling securely

One detail governs the timing more than any other. The people are described as dwelling securely, in unwalled villages, without bars or gates. The Hebrew betach means confidence, whether that confidence is well-founded or not.

Modern Israel is many things, and unwalled and unsuspecting is not among them. That has led some to place Ezekiel 38-39 after a peace settlement, which is a suggestive thought given that Daniel speaks of a covenant confirmed with the many for one week.

I hold that timing loosely. What I hold firmly is that the passage assumes a regathered nation in its own land, which was unimaginable for most of church history and is a plain fact today.

Why this cannot be ancient history

Some commentators try to locate the fulfilment in the Maccabean period or in the wars after the exile. Nothing in the historical record comes close. There is no recorded invasion of Israel by a northern coalition destroyed by fire and hailstones, followed by seven months of burial.

Ezekiel also places it in the latter years and the latter days, language he uses nowhere casually. The prophecy is set within a section of his book that runs from chapter 33 through to the millennial temple in chapters 40 to 48, and that whole block looks forward.

A consistent literal reading of the prophets requires us to leave Ezekiel 38-39 in the future, where the prophet put it.

What it tells us about God

Three things stand out. God defends Israel even when Israel is not looking to Him, which is grace rather than reward. God uses the hostility of nations to accomplish His own purposes, hooks in the jaws and all. And God acts publicly, so that no one can credit the outcome to anybody else.

There is also a warning in it for the invaders. They come for plunder and they find the living God, which is a miscalculation of some magnitude.

How not to use these chapters

I would ask you not to read Ezekiel 38-39 with a newspaper in one hand. Every generation since the Crimean War has found its own villains in these names, and every generation so far has been wrong.

Prophecy is given so that when it happens we will believe, as Jesus said, not so that we can predict the date. Date-setting is forbidden, and speculative identification is its respectable cousin.

Where the passage sits in the book

Context settles a great deal. Ezekiel 33 to 37 describes the regathering of Israel, the valley of dry bones coming to life, and the reuniting of the divided kingdom under one shepherd. Ezekiel 40 to 48 describes the millennial temple in exhaustive detail.

Ezekiel 38-39 sits deliberately between those two blocks. A restored nation is described, then a great assault on that nation, then the worship of the kingdom age. The placement is part of the argument.

Anyone who reads chapters 36 and 37 as literally fulfilled in a modern regathering, and chapters 40 to 48 as a literal future temple, cannot consistently read Ezekiel 38-39 as a figure of speech about spiritual opposition in general.

Hooks in the jaws

One image deserves a paragraph of its own. God says He will turn Gog about and put hooks into his jaws and bring him out with all his army. The picture is of a great beast being led where it has no wish to go.

Yet the passage also says that thoughts will come into Gog’s mind and he will devise an evil scheme. Both are true at once. He acts freely out of greed, and he is being drawn into a trap.

That combination runs right through the Bible, from Joseph’s brothers to Pilate’s courtroom. Ezekiel 38-39 is one more instance of God allowing wicked intentions to run their course and turning them into the occasion of His own self-revelation.

The aftermath and the Spirit

The closing verses are easy to skip and they matter enormously. God says He will not hide His face from Israel any more, when He pours out His Spirit upon the house of Israel. Deliverance is followed by outpouring.

That pattern connects Ezekiel 38-39 to the promise of a new heart and a new spirit two chapters earlier, and to Zechariah’s picture of a nation looking on the one they have pierced. Rescue leads to repentance rather than the other way round.

You can read the closing promise in Ezekiel 39:29, and it is one of the warmest sentences in a book not otherwise noted for warmth.

So, now what?

Let these chapters do what they were written to do. They tell us that God keeps His word to Israel, that human hostility cannot overturn His purposes, and that He is willing to make Himself known in ways nobody can misread.

If God is that committed to a nation that had forgotten Him, what does that say about His commitment to you? And what would it take for you to stop reading prophecy as entertainment and start reading it as encouragement?

“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.” (Ezekiel 38:23)