Ezekiel 38: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to speak against Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief ruler of Meshech and Tubal. God says he will pull Gog and a large allied army out of the far north and bring them against Israel in the latter years, when the people are living safely in a land rebuilt after war. Gog will come planning to plunder that unwalled people, and God says he will answer with an earthquake, the sword, plague, and a downpour of rain, hail, fire, and burning sulfur, so that many nations will know who he is.

Claim by Claim

1. 38:1
   • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
   • The word came with a command to speak.
2. 38:2
   • God addressed the prophet as son of man.
   • God commanded him to set his face against Gog.
   • Gog is of the land of Magog.
   • Gog is called the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, though the phrase may equally mean prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.
   • God commanded him to prophesy against Gog.
3. 38:3
   • God commanded the prophet to say what follows.
   • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
   • God declared that he is against Gog.
   • Gog is again called chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, the same phrase that may mean prince of Rosh.
4. 38:4
   • God said he will turn Gog back.
   • God said he will put hooks in Gog's jaws.
   • God said he will bring Gog out.
   • God said he will bring out all of Gog's army with him.
   • The army includes horses and horsemen.
   • All of them are clothed in full armor.
   • They are a great assembly carrying large shields and small shields.
   • All of them handle swords.
5. 38:5
   • Persia, Cush, and Put are with them.
   • All of these carry shield and helmet.
6. 38:6
   • Gomer and all its troops are there.
   • The house of Togarmah from the remotest parts of the north is there.
   • All of Togarmah's troops are there.
   • Many peoples are with Gog.
7. 38:7
   • God commanded Gog to be ready.
   • God commanded Gog to prepare himself and all the company assembled to him.
   • God told Gog to be a guard for them.
8. 38:8
   • After many days Gog will be mustered, or visited, or summoned.
   • In the latter years Gog will come into a certain land.
   • That land has been restored from the sword.
   • Its people were gathered from many peoples.
   • The land is the mountains of Israel.
   • Those mountains had been a perpetual waste.
   • The land's people were brought out from the nations.
   • They all dwell securely.
9. 38:9
   • Gog will go up.
   • Gog will come like a storm.
   • Gog will be like a cloud covering the land.
   • Gog and all his troops will come.
   • Many peoples will come with Gog.
10. 38:10
    • The message is spoken by the Lord GOD.
    • On that day thoughts will come into Gog's mind.
    • Gog will devise an evil plan.
11. 38:11
    • Gog will say he will go up against a land of unwalled villages.
    • Gog will say he will come against people who are at rest.
    • Those people dwell securely.
    • All of them dwell without a wall.
    • They have no bars and no gates.
12. 38:12
    • Gog's purpose is to take spoil.
    • Gog's purpose is to seize plunder.
    • Gog's purpose is to turn his hand against desolate places that are now inhabited.
    • Gog's purpose is to turn his hand against a people gathered from the nations.
    • That people have acquired livestock and possessions.
    • That people dwell at the center of the earth.
13. 38:13
    • Sheba and Dedan will speak to Gog.
    • The merchants of Tarshish will speak to Gog.
    • With them are all its young lions, a word some read instead as its villages.
    • They will ask whether Gog has come to take spoil.
    • They will ask whether Gog has assembled his company to seize plunder.
    • They will ask whether it is to carry away silver and gold.
    • They will ask whether it is to take livestock and possessions.
    • They will ask whether it is to take a great spoil.
14. 38:14
    • God commanded the son of man to prophesy.
    • God commanded him to say this to Gog.
    • The message is spoken by the Lord GOD.
    • God asked whether Gog will not know it on that day when God's people Israel dwell securely.
15. 38:15
    • Gog will come from his place out of the remotest parts of the north.
    • Gog will come with many peoples.
    • All of them ride horses.
    • They are a great company.
    • They are a mighty army.
16. 38:16
    • Gog will come up against God's people Israel.
    • Gog will come like a cloud covering the land.
    • This will happen in the latter days.
    • God said he will bring Gog against his land.
    • The purpose is that the nations may know God.
    • God will be shown holy in Gog before the eyes of the nations.
    • God addressed Gog directly.
17. 38:17
    • The message is spoken by the Lord GOD.
    • God asked Gog whether he is the one of whom God spoke in former days.
    • God spoke by his servants the prophets of Israel.
    • Those prophets prophesied in those days for years.
    • What they prophesied was that God would bring Gog against them.
18. 38:18
    • On that day Gog will come against the land of Israel.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.
    • God's fury will rise up in his face.
19. 38:19
    • God has spoken in his jealousy.
    • God has spoken in the fire of his wrath.
    • On that day there will be a great shaking in the land of Israel.
20. 38:20
    • The fish of the sea will tremble at God's presence.
    • The birds of the sky will tremble at God's presence.
    • The beasts of the field will tremble at God's presence.
    • Every creeping thing that creeps on the ground will tremble at God's presence.
    • All humans on the face of the ground will tremble at God's presence.
    • The mountains will be thrown down.
    • The steep places will fall.
    • Every wall will fall to the ground.
21. 38:21
    • God will call for a sword against Gog throughout all his mountains.
    • This is declared by the Lord GOD.
    • Every man's sword will be against his brother.
22. 38:22
    • God will enter into judgment with Gog by pestilence and by blood.
    • God will rain down on Gog, on his troops, and on the many peoples with him.
    • What God rains down includes a flooding rain.
    • What God rains down includes great hailstones.
    • What God rains down includes fire.
    • What God rains down includes brimstone.
23. 38:23
    • God will magnify himself.
    • God will sanctify himself.
    • God will make himself known in the eyes of many nations.
    • They will know that he is the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

38:1

"The LORD" in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters (YHWH) that Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; translators since 1611 have marked it this way rather than spelling it out.

38:2

"Son of man" is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, roughly "mortal" or "human being," marking the distance between the speaker and the man he is speaking to. It is a title of address, not a name. "Turn and face" someone was a formal gesture: the prophet physically faced the direction of the target and delivered the oracle at it, the way one squares up to an opponent. Gog is a person; Magog, Meshech, and Tubal are places or peoples. Meshech and Tubal were real Anatolian kingdoms in what is now central and eastern Turkey, known to Ezekiel's world as distant traders in slaves and bronze (see chapter 27). Magog is otherwise unknown and may simply mean "the land of Gog." No historical king named Gog has been identified. "Chief ruler" translates a Hebrew phrase that can be read two ways: as "chief prince" (a title) or as "prince of Rosh" (naming a third people alongside Meshech and Tubal). Ancient translators split on this and modern ones still do.

38:3

"The Lord GOD" is not a repetition. The Hebrew has two different words, a title meaning "my master," followed by the divine name; English prints the second one as GOD in capitals here to avoid writing "Lord LORD."

38:4

Putting hooks in the jaws is the image of handling a captured beast or a prisoner. Assyrian kings had themselves pictured leading defeated rulers on a cord fastened through the lip or nose. The point of the picture is that Gog is not marching of his own accord; he is being hauled.

38:5

These are the far edges of the known world in three directions. Persia lay east, in modern Iran. "Ethiopia" translates Cush, the kingdom south of Egypt in modern Sudan, not the modern country of Ethiopia. "Libya" translates Put, a region of North Africa west of Egypt. Together with the northern peoples in the next verse, the list means troops drawn from everywhere at once.

38:6

Gomer and Togarmah were peoples of Anatolia and Armenia, north of Israel, Gomer is usually identified with the Cimmerians, horse-riding raiders who swept through the region in the seventh century BC. "The far north" was the direction invasions had always come from, since armies could not cross the desert to the east.

38:7

The orders here are a muster: the commands a general gives before a campaign. God is telling the invader to arm and organize, the sarcasm of ordering an enemy to prepare thoroughly for a battle he will lose.

38:8

"Called up for action" translates a verb usually meaning "visited" or "mustered" (the word used for a commander reviewing troops and assigning duty. Ezekiel wrote for people deported to Babylon. "A land that has recovered from war," resettled by people "gathered from many nations," describes the return home that earlier chapters promise. The invasion of this chapter is imagined as happening after that, to a population that thinks the danger has passed. "The mountains of Israel" is Ezekiel's standard phrase for the country itself) the central hill country where most Israelite towns sat.

38:11

A town without walls, bars, and gates was a town that had made no preparation to be attacked. Defended settlements had a wall, gates that closed at night, and heavy timber bars dropped across them. The detail is what makes the target attractive: it is not a description of poverty but of a people so secure they have stopped fortifying.

38:12

"The center of the land" translates a rare Hebrew word meaning something like "navel." It may mean the geographical middle, or high ground, or the land's most prized point; the ancient translators disagreed and the sense is genuinely uncertain.

38:13

Sheba and Dedan were trading kingdoms of Arabia; Tarshish was a far-off port in the west, probably in Spain, and stood for the farthest reach of sea trade. These are merchants, not soldiers, and their questions are a trader's questions: they want to know what is being carried off and, by implication, whether they can buy it. "Young lions" renders the Hebrew literally. The same consonants can be read as "villages" or "trading posts," which is how many translators take it; others keep "young lions" as a figure for the merchants' fighting men or rulers. The text is ambiguous.

38:14

"Will you not know it?" follows the Hebrew as written. A slightly different reading of the same consonants, followed by the ancient Greek translation, gives "will you not rouse yourself?", that is, stir into action. Both readings are old.

38:15

Invading armies almost always entered Israel from the north, because the desert blocked a direct approach from the east and the coastal road ran down from Syria. "The north parts" carried a built in sense of menace for Ezekiel's first hearers, the direction Assyria and Babylon had come from.

38:16

"The latter days" is a set Hebrew phrase meaning "in days to come" or "at the end of the days." It points to a distant future without fixing a date. "Show my holiness" translates a verb meaning to be shown set apart, in a class of one, to be publicly demonstrated as what one claims to be. The idea is a reputation established in front of witnesses, not an inner quality.

38:17

Earlier prophets, Jeremiah especially, had warned repeatedly of an unnamed destroyer coming from the north. The question here asks whether Gog is that long-predicted figure. The Hebrew can be punctuated either as a question expecting yes, or as a flat statement ("you are the one of whom I spoke") and translations differ.

38:18

The Hebrew idiom is that fury "comes up in the nose" or face, anger seen in the flare of the nostrils and the set of the features. It describes visible rage, not a private feeling.

38:19

"Jealous" here translates a word closer to fierce protectiveness or zeal, the passion of someone defending what is his own. It is the word used of a husband's response to a broken marriage, not of petty envy.

38:20

The King James "creeping things" means small animals that crawl on the ground.

38:21

An army turning its swords on itself was a recognized battlefield outcome: in panic and darkness, allied contingents speaking different languages mistake each other for the enemy. Other Old Testament battles are described the same way.

38:22

"Bring my judgment against him" uses a courtroom word, to bring suit, to press a legal case. The penalties that follow are imposed as a verdict rather than as random destruction. Rain, hail, fire, and sulfur are the standard furniture of a divine storm in this literature; sulfur (the King James "brimstone") is the yellow mineral that burns with a choking smell, found around the Dead Sea, and is what falls on Sodom in Genesis.

38:23

"Magnify myself, and sanctify myself" does not mean God makes himself bigger or holier than he was. Both verbs mean to display something that is already true, so the sense is to show himself as great and as holy in front of witnesses.