Ezekiel 38:17-23 meaning

Ezekiel 38:17-23 announces the LORD's destruction of Gog through a great earthquake, internal slaughter, pestilence, and fire from heaven, displaying His holiness so that the nations will know He is the LORD. The LORD speaks again to Gog, the leader of a coalition of nations He is drawing to Israel to bring an attack upon it: "'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them?"'" (v 17).

The LORD frames Gog as the climax of a long line of warning. "Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants the prophets of Israel?" (v 17). The earlier prophets had spoken of a great northern enemy and a final assault on the LORD's people; the foe from the north runs through Jeremiah 4:6 and 6:1, and the gathering of nations for judgment appears in Joel 3:9-16.

It appears here that prior invaders of Israel, such as Assyria and Babylon, serve as a preview of the ultimate invader. Gog and his coalition appear to be the ultimate fulfillment of those prior warnings, each of which had its own fulfillment. The question presents Gog as the long-anticipated adversary the LORD has been pointing toward across generations of prophecy.

The moment Gog comes against the land of Israel is the moment the LORD's response ignites: "It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," declares the Lord GOD, "that My fury will mount up in My anger" (v 18). The same divine protection that defends the covenant people now rises against the power that violates their security. The LORD who stood as Gog's adversary in Ezekiel 38:3 here moves from declaration to action.

The first instrument of judgment against Gog comes from the earth itself. "In My zeal and in My blazing wrath" the LORD declares "that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel" (v 19). This could be the same upheaval that marks the LORD's appearing to rescue Jerusalem elsewhere in the prophets; Zechariah 14:4-5 describes the Mount of Olives splitting east to west when the LORD's feet stand on it, which could describe an earthquake.

This will not be an ordinary earthquake--all creatures will take note: "The fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at My presence; the mountains also will be thrown down, the steep pathways will collapse and every wall will fall to the ground" (v 20).

The earthquake reaches every order of creation. All created life, from the fish of the sea, to the birds of the heavens, to the beasts of the field and the creeping things, and to all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at God's felt presence (v 20).

The shaking is comprehensive. The collapse follows: the mountains also will be thrown down, the steep pathways will collapse, and every wall will fall to the ground (v 20). It appears that this earthquake will be followed by a sword, an instrument of death, against Gog: "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother" (v 21).

It also appears that the earthquake will be accompanied by confusion that causes the nations to begin to fight one another. The Hebrew word translated earthquake literally means "shaking." So, the phenomenon being described could go beyond just describing an earthquake.

The LORD turns the coalition's weapons inward: "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains" (v 21). The sword is the army's own: "Every man's sword will be against his brother" (v 21). The confederation gathered from many nations dissolves into mutual slaughter, each soldier apparently striking the man beside him. The same panic-driven self-destruction had broken Midian's host before Gideon (Judges 7:22) and the armies arrayed against Judah in Jehoshaphat's day (2 Chronicles 20:23). The LORD needs no army of His own to defeat Gog; He sets the invaders against each other.

The judgment piles instrument upon instrument: "With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire and brimstone" (v 22). The event being described is cataclysmic in nature. The fire and brimstone recall the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24), the LORD's signature judgment poured from heaven on a wickedness beyond repentance. The whole arsenal of creation is turned against the coalition: disease, flood, hail, and fire. These natural disasters fall from God's hand until the great northern army is destroyed on the mountains of Israel.

The oracle closes on its purpose: "I will magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the LORD" (v 23).

The defeat of Gog and the coalition of nations he leads is the LORD's self-revelation to the world. The chapter ends with the formula that runs through the whole book--"they will know that I am the LORD" (v 23)--now spoken over many nations. What began at Ezekiel 37:6 as Israel knowing the LORD through the raising of dry bones widens here to every nation knowing Him through the destruction of the last great enemy.

The same purpose governs both the gift of life and the judgment of Gog: that the LORD be known for who He is. Again, to know God is the very definition of life, so this is God's divine blessing in the extreme (John 17:3).

Ezekiel 37 raised a dead nation, reunited it under one Davidic king, and placed the LORD's sanctuary in its midst under an everlasting covenant of peace. Ezekiel 38 shows a nation at peace assaulted and defended--the LORD drawing out the greatest enemy the nations can field, only to destroy it and be known by every nation as the LORD.

A similar picture is painted at the end of the New Testament, where Gog and Magog are also mentioned. Revelation 20:8 names Gog and Magog in the final assault, when Satan is released after the thousand years to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth and gather them for war; they come up on the broad plain of the earth and surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and "fire came down from heaven and devoured them" (Revelation 20:9). The fire from heaven that consumes the last coalition in Revelation answers the fire and brimstone the LORD rains on Gog in Ezekiel 38:22.

The scenario described in Revelation 20 appears to occur after the thousand-year reign of the Messiah in Israel. That is the reign that is predicted in Ezekiel 37. So Ezekiel 38 might refer to the event also mentioned in Revelation 20. However, prophecies typically have multiple fulfillments. It could be that Ezekiel 38 foreshadows both Revelation 20, after the thousand-year messianic reign, as well as the period leading up to the second coming of Christ and His establishment of the messianic kingdom in Israel.

We will propose a mental model that might describe how the various prophecies fit together, bearing in mind that while God's purposes are always plain, and our response also clear (to be faithful witnesses and fear God rather than man), prophetic details usually remain veiled until God chooses to reveal them fully.

Revelation describes the final era of the present earth, prior to the messianic kingdom. The armies of the nations are gathered under a world leader Revelation calls the "beast" at the place Revelation calls Armageddon, a transliteration of the Hebrew "Har-Magedon," often understood as the mountain of Megiddo (Revelation 16:16). From there they march on Jerusalem.

Zechariah 14:2 describes that assault: the LORD gathering all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, the city captured and half its people exiled. Then the LORD intervenes. Zechariah 14:3-4 has His feet standing on the Mount of Olives, splitting it east to west, as He fights against those nations. Ezekiel's prophecy of Gog might have a fulfillment in the person of the beast. This could represent the first of two global gatherings of the nations to descend on Israel--the second being the Revelation 20 invasion after the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.

Micah 5:5 prophesies a time when "the Assyrian" will invade, likely indicating that the prophetic insertion of Assyria's invasion of Judah and God's miraculous deliverance in the reign of Hezekiah prefigures what will take place under Gog, who might have a fulfillment by the beast of Revelation. God's deliverance of Judah in Hezekiah's time appears in Isaiah 36-37. The fact that this occurs in Isaiah in addition to the historical accounts in 2 Kings 18:13 - 19:37 and 2 Chronicles 32:1-23 is an indicator of its prophetic significance. The beast will be like Sennacherib, the Assyrian emperor, and his false prophet like Rabshakeh, Sennacherib's insolent mouthpiece.

Revelation 19:11-16 likely pictures the same return as Zechariah 14. In Revelation, we see heaven opened, Christ descending on a white horse, in righteousness judging and waging war. We see a sword proceeding from His mouth to strike down the nations. This sword could correspond to the sword the LORD calls for on His mountains in Ezekiel 38.

The beast and the false prophet are seized and thrown alive into the lake of fire (Revelation 19:20), and the gathered armies are slain by the word from His mouth (Revelation 19:21). Satan is then bound and shut in the abyss for a thousand years (Revelation 20:1-3), during which the Davidic king, Jesus the Messiah, reigns over the earth--the very reign Ezekiel 37:24-25 promised when it named David the LORD's servant as king and shepherd forever.

After the thousand-year reign described in Revelation 20:4, Satan is released for the final Gog-and-Magog assault and is thrown into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet already dwell (Revelation 20:7-10). This all occurs before the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21 arrives. In the new earth the dwelling place of God is among men--the full realization of the sanctuary the LORD promised to set in Israel's midst forever in Ezekiel 37:26-28 becomes God in person, dwelling among His people in His unveiled glory.

We will repeat and emphasize that prophecies typically have more than one fulfillment, so a single oracle can point at a near event, a far event, and a final event all at once, with each fulfillment deepening the others rather than canceling them. The coalition assembled by Gog could represent a global assembly. It could assemble and culminate the major eras of human history defined in Scripture.

Daniel defined four distinct beasts that represent four eras of human authority. He saw a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a dreadful iron-toothed creature (Daniel 7:4-7). These represent, respectively, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The same four kingdoms are set forth in Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the statue in Daniel 2:36-43. The fifth kingdom was God's kingdom made without hands (Daniel 2:44-45). Ezekiel 38 fits the setting up of a kingdom apart from human effort, as Gog and company will be defeated by the hand of God.

John saw one composite creature, the beast, depicted with a leopard's body, a bear's feet, and a lion's mouth (Revelation 13:1-2). It is possible, then, that the final enemy gathers the whole of human tyranny into one coalition. It will be like Rome, but carrying the vestiges of every prior kingdom inside it. It will have the authority and tyranny of Babylon, the reach and administrative control of Persia, the swiftness of Greece and the fierceness of Rome fused into one body.

That Rome is depicted as being brittle in Daniel's vision, of clay and iron, fits well with the idea that the final assembly against God will be a global coalition. The parts are fused into a whole that has a singular aim--to defeat God's people and capture God's land. That Satan is chained and thrown into the abyss for a thousand years indicates the one behind this entire invasion.

The peoples named in the Gog coalition could fit this fusion. The far-northern stock of Magog, Meshech, and Tubal stands among Israel's classic northern enemies, while related Japhethite peoples are described as spreading among the coastlands (Genesis 10:2-5) and later became associated with regions in and around Anatolia and the wider northern world known to Israel. So, the coalition could gather the the table of nations once scattered--a western, a northern, and an eastern branch united back into a single host marching on the LORD's people.

The fixed direction of the assault may reinforce this. Invasion lands on Israel from the north, even when the invaders rise in the east, because the Arabian desert turns every eastern army up the Euphrates and down through Syria. "Out of the north the evil will be let loose on all the inhabitants of the land" runs as a refrain in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:14; 6:1), and even the Greek pressure on Israel came through the north when the Seleucid line, Daniel's "king of the North" (Daniel 11:5-9), came down on Judea from Syria. Every prior invader could thus be seen funneling through the same northern door that Gog comes through, even if from the remote parts of the earth.

The names themselves may carry a clue. When Revelation reuses them, Gog and Magog no longer stand for one northern bloc but for a worldwide muster: Satan goes out "to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore" (Revelation 20:8). "The four corners of the earth" appears to represent the whole-earth totality. So by the time of Revelation, the name could function as shorthand for the entire human race arrayed against the LORD--the coalition of all nations rather than one.

It is possible the two appearances of the names are the same event, two distinct events, or, in the way prophecy often works, both. Timing is uncertain, and intentionally so. The disciples asked Jesus whether He planned to restore the kingdom to Israel after He rose from the dead (Acts 1:6). This was understandable, because that was their expectation all along.

The reason they were willing to fight and die for Jesus before He submitted to arrest, then fled and became disbelieving and dismayed, was because Jesus shattered their expectation. Now that Jesus had risen, they hoped He would, as the Son of David, take the throne of Israel. Jesus did not dispute He would take the throne. Rather, He answered His disciples' question by saying that now was not the time, and further that the timing remained under the Father's authority:

"He [Jesus] said to them, 'It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.'"
(Acts 1:7)

The time is certain. Prophecy declares it. But it is God's to know, and He will reveal it in due time.

Revelation's placement of the use of Gog and Magog in Revelation 20 suggests it relates to the revolt after the thousand years (Revelation 20:7-8). Ezekiel 38 appears to better fit an assault before the return of Christ that converges on Jerusalem and falls when the LORD returns (Zechariah 14:2-4; Revelation 19).

It could be that the Ezekiel 38 muster and the Revelation 20 muster are separate gatherings, and it could be that they are one assault seen from two vantage points. Given how prophecy commonly folds near and far fulfillments together, it would be unsurprising for both to be true.