Ezekiel 38 explained: Gog's Attack and Its Defeat

A message against Gog (vv. 1-3)

Gog is a ruler from the far north whom scholars cannot identify with confidence, and Meshech and Tubal were peoples in what is now Turkey. In verse 2 translations differ: some read the Hebrew word rosh as 'chief', others as a place called Rosh, and mainstream scholars reject the popular link between Rosh and Russia.

Dragged out with allies (vv. 4-6)

The hooks in the jaws picture God leading Gog out like a captured animal, so the whole campaign is under God's control from the start. His allies come from every edge of the known world: Persia to the east, Cush and Put in Africa (likely Sudan and Libya), and Gomer and Togarmah in the far north.

Attacking a land at rest (vv. 7-12)

Gog is told to prepare, probably in mockery, to attack Israel in a distant future time after its scattered people have come home and live safely in villages without walls. His only motive is to rob people who threaten no one, living at what verse 12 literally calls the 'navel' of the land or earth (translations differ), an old picture of Israel as the center of the world.

The traders' question (v. 13)

Sheba and Dedan were trading peoples of Arabia and Tarshish a distant port far to the west, and their question may show eagerness to share the loot, alarm, or scorn; the text does not say which. Where one translation has 'villages', another has 'young lions', because translators read the Hebrew word differently.

Why God brings Gog (vv. 14-17)

God says he himself brings Gog against his land, so that the nations will come to know him when he shows his holiness through Gog's defeat. In verse 17 one translation has God ask whether Gog is the enemy earlier prophets spoke of while another states it outright; no earlier prophet names Gog, so this probably points to older warnings of an enemy from the north.

Shaking, fire and hail (vv. 18-23)

God's anger brings an earthquake that shakes every creature, the invaders turn their swords on one another, and plague, hail, fire and burning sulfur destroy the army and its allies. This is a picture of mass death by God's hand, drawn from older stories like the fire on Sodom, and its stated purpose is that many nations will know that God is the LORD.

Key verse: Ezekiel 38:16

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on what Gog's invasion refers to: some older interpreters saw it fulfilled in the Greek king Antiochus IV's attacks on Jerusalem in the second century BC, many read it as a symbolic picture of the final defeat of evil (as Revelation 20 does with Gog and Magog), and some Protestants who read prophecy as a literal map of the future expect an actual war against the modern state of Israel.

Something to think about

What do you think it does for people who have survived disaster to imagine a last great enemy being defeated without their having to fight?