Who is Gog?
Ezekiel 38:1-4
Ezekiel series, Part 71
Introduction
We’re finally starting it, the most famous section of Ezekiel: chapters 38 and 39. The battle of Gog and Magog.
This chapter is about an alliance of nations that band together to attack Israel in the end times. The list of nations includes names like Cush, Put, Togarmah and more, and they’re led by a figure named Gog.
I don’t know about you, but these sound like someone in Scrabble trying to make up words with whatever tiles they have left. In fact, it’s hard to know who all it’s talking about unless we do some historical research to find out what these words meant to Ezekiel’s original audience.
And that’s not difficult to do, except when it comes to the identity of the leader of this alliance: Gog.
Who is Gog? That’s the question we’re going to start this multi week study with, and it all begins today on the Cross References podcast.
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(Continued)
Welcome to the book of Ezekiel: a Cross References Bible study where we learn how every small piece of the Bible tells one big story- and how they all connect to the cross and Christ.
My name is Luke Taylor, and when I introduce myself at the beginning of each episode, I drop a random fact to help you get to know me a little better, and something that connects to the subject matter of the day. But I hope I don’t have any comparisons between myself and the figure we’ll be talking about on today’s lesson: this dark and mysterious figure named Gog who leads an invasion into Israel from the North.
Ezekiel 38:1-4
The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face toward 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 armor, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords.
Gog is going to lead a major attack against Israel, it says, in the last days. It is really weird to see this random villain show up out of nowhere to lead such a significant attack against God’s people in Bible prophecy. Gog is mentioned nowhere- or perhaps almost nowhere- else in the whole Bible, which leaves us with a lot of questions as to who he is.
And throughout church history, it seems that Bible scholars and interpreters have seen fit to identify him with whoever was the most dangerous nation on the block in their time.
Ambrose, a church father of the fourth century, believed Gog to be the Goths.
Martin Luther believed Gog to be the Turks.
During WWI and WWII, it was believed to be Germany (because of a nation mentioned later, Gomer)
Also in the 19th Century, it became popular to associate them with Russia/USSR. Probably the most popular assumption right now is that Gog is Vladimir Putin.
They probably just look at whoever’s playing the villains in the latest James Bond movies. “It’s the Russians! It’s the Muslims!” The scholars just seem to blame whoever is causing the most problems in society and slap a Gog on it. Which also goes great with my plan of blaming Lady Gaga for all of our cultural decline. Gog. Gaga. It’s just too perfect.
And so with all of these fluctuating possibilities of who Gog could be, it can really make us wonder if we can ever really figure it out.
Well, I think I actually can give you a pretty solid answer today, although it may not be what you were expecting.
But if you hang in here until the end, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Meshech and Tubal
So let’s start with a textual analysis of Ezekiel 38:1-4.
The ESV describes him this way: Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal
The NKJV is slightly different: Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal
So the major difference in how translations will describe Gog comes down to this word Rosh. The word “rosh” can be taken two ways: as a title, and as a descriptor. In other words, as a noun or as an adjective.
If it’s a noun, it refers to a place called Rosh. But if it’s an adjective, it’s a common word that simply means the leader or king.
Linguistically, I’ve looked at several arguments and I think it is absolutely clear that Rosh is a descriptive word that means what the ESV says: the Chief Prince. There is no location named Rosh in ancient times or mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.
The reason that some want to say that Rosh is a place is because it sounds like Russia. There are some good reasons to think that Gog and Magog has something to do with Russia, and we’ll talk about those today. And there are some poor reasons to think that Gog and Magog are Russia, and I want to be fair and talk about those as well. And frankly, the idea that Rosh is Russia is not a strong reason when you look at the original Hebrew. It’s very common for the Bible to use “rosh” to mean a leader.
It mentions here that Gog is in control of three other places, though: the land of Magog, and Meshech and Tubal. We actually know where Meshech and Tubal are. They have been mentioned previously in the book of Ezekiel. First, Meshech and Tubal come up in
Genesis 10:2
The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.
Genesis 10 is one of those genealogy chapters. It’s telling the origins of several nations and people groups right after the flood. It’s explaining how the three sons of Noah spread out and their families and descendants populated the earth. The sons of Japeth went the European direction. They would be more aligned with the white people of the world.
Noah’s other sons were Ham and Shem. Ham went toward the African direction, and his descendants are considered mores the black people of the world. Shem went eastward and his descendants are considered the Semitic people groups. Darker-skinned than white people. This includes the Jews, the Arabs, and so on.
If you’re anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, we often call that being anti-semitic. That comes from being a Shemite, or descendant of Shem. Technically, there are lots of other people groups who descended from Shem beyond just the Jewish people.
So Meshech and Tubal are mentioned as descending from Japeth. They went and settled in what is modern-day Turkey. There are lots of ancient maps that confirm this, which we’ll talk about in the next episode. Also, Meshech and Tubal came up in
Ezekiel 27:13, speaking to Tyre, it says:
Javan, Tubal, and Meshech traded with you; they exchanged human beings and vessels of bronze for your merchandise.
Now, that section on Tyre is not connected to Ezekiel 38, but it does do one important thing: it moves in a counter-clockwise direction of nations around Tyre, starting with the nations in the Northwest of Tyre. Going Northwest of Tyre points you straight at Turkey.
Now, some will try to make Meschech into Moscow and Tubal into the the city of Tobolsk in Russia, and again, those would be bad reasons to equate Gog with Russia. That would not fit with the pattern already laid out earlier in Ezekiel.
Here’s a good principle of hermeneutics and studying stuff in-context. If you want to know what a Bible verse means by a particular word, the first place you should look for comparison is within the same book. If you’re reading a word in Ezekiel and you want to understand what Ezekiel means by a word in one verse, you should look at how he uses it in another verse.
If you don’t have a comparison to use, then the next level is going to other books by that same author and seeing how that same author uses that word in another book. Now, that won’t really apply in the case of Ezekiel, but it could come up in the book of Luke. If you want to study what the writer Luke means by a word in the book of Luke, you can also compare it with how he uses the word in the book of Acts, since that’s also written by Luke.
If you don’t have another word or book by that author, you could look at other books within that same genre. Maybe Matthew uses a word and you aren’t sure what he means, but you could also compare that word with how it’s used in the book of Mark, since that’s the same genre of literature for that book in the Bible.
And then if you don’t have any closer options, then you can look at the rest of the Bible. So that’s kind of a side-note, but that’s a hermeneutical process you can go through to let the Bible interpret itself. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the Bible is its own dictionary.” And this is how. First, look at how a word is used in its own book. Then by that same author in other books. Then by other books in that genre. Then by other books of the Bible period. But you give more weight to some places than others.
This helped me to understand the way Paul talks about the body of sin being put to death in Romans 6. That’s a pretty tough passage of scripture to interpret, until you look at how Paul discusses the body of sin in his other letters, and then it clears a lot of things up.
This hermeneutical principle helped me to understand when James talks about being justified by our works in James 2. That’s another passage that really throws some Christians for a loop, until you understand the way that James is talking about justification is different than what Paul means when he talks about justification.
I could go on, but that’s just kind of a side note on hermeneutics. Now let’s talk about Magog.
Magog
As I said before, lots of scholars want to make Gog be all about Russia, so they say that Rosh and Meshech and Tubal are terms that refer to Russia. That’s not justifiable when you pick apart how the Bible uses those words in other places. Meshech and Tubal are described as Northwest of Tyre in Ezekiel 27; that means they can’t be in Russia. Rosh is a word used 37 other times in Ezekiel, never used as a place name, it’s just a word that always means “the head.” So it’s not responsible to interpret it as a location in Ezekiel 38:2.
But what about the land of Magog. Is this a place that shows up anywhere else in scripture? Well, it was also mentioned as one of the descendants of Japeth, like Meshech and Tubal. And that’s it. So let’s trace who and where Magog is. Is said Gog is of the land of Magog.
Magog, according to ancient maps, is in an area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea if you were to look on a modern map. Magog is an area known as Caucasia, which I find interesting since like I said, the white people of the world are said to descend from Japeth.
I’ll note that when it spoke of Gog being in charge, it said he is the chief prince of the “land” of Magog. It didn’t say the land of Meshech and Tubal, but it did specify the land of Magog. What’s the significance there?
Well, I plugged this verse into my online concordance, and the word “land” is the Hebrew eres (eh-rets), which can be translated as physical land OR the people of the land. So it can be considered the literal territory, but it can also refer to the people of that territory. So who are the people of the territory of Magog?
I’ll note that they are said in verse 15 to come "out of the far north.” And Russia would certainly fit that description.
There is an ancient Jewish historian named Josephus, whose name you probably recognize because we rely on his research for so much of our knowledge about the ancient world. According to Josephus, the people of Magog were the ancient Scythians. The Scythians migrated a little bit further north and became the nation of Russia. So there is a very direct link between Magog and Russia.
Also, by the way, Ukraine. The territory of Ukraine can also be considered Scythian or Magogian territory. So it’s very interesting that a war is being fought right now over that very region. It could be that whoever wins that war can also fulfill this prophecy of Gog and Magog.
But if you look at current geopolitics, it appears that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is much more poised to fulfill this role spoken about in Ezekiel 38.
Gog
So who is Gog? I mentioned Vladimir Putin a few moments ago. Could Putin be Gog? No. Because Gog is not a person.
I said before that Gog isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, which makes his appearance here so mysterious. But he actually does make some appearances in the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint is the Bible Jesus would have probably used, if He read the Bible in Greek.
And the Septuagint is very very similar to the Hebrew, but there are a few places where it makes some interesting substitutions. Interesting because some of them make you scratch your head, and you aren’t exactly sure where they came from. One of those substitutions is in
Amos 7:1
This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.
Amos 7 is about a series of judgments that are prophesied against Israel. The first will be a swarm of locusts which eat all of their crops. The second is a wildfire that ravages the land. And the third is the plumb line prophecy which is a whole subject all on its own. But I want to focus on the locusts here. It said at the end of verse 1 that they would come after “the latter growth after the king’s mowings.”
What happens is that Amos prays against this judgment and God stays His hand and doesn’t let it happen. But if you read this verse in the Septuagint, it doesn’t talk about the King’s mowings. It says something else.
Amos 7:1 (septuagint translation)
The Lord hath shown me, and, Behold, a swarm of locusts were coming, and behold, one of the young devastating locusts was Gog the King.
So in the Septuagint, the locusts are led by Gog the King. A very random reference. So what is Gog, a locust? What could that mean? Well, before I answer this question, let’s make it even tougher. There’s a somewhat random verse in the book of Proverbs which speaks of locusts not even having a king.
Proverbs 30:24 says
Four things on earth are small,
but they are exceedingly wise
And then a few verses later it says
the locusts have no king,
yet all of them march in rank
So it makes this off-hand references to the hierarchy of locusts, and makes the point that they have no leader. They just know what they need to do and all stay together.
So if locusts have no leader, then why does it say in the Septuagint that Gog is the King of the locusts? Well, locusts have no king. But demons do. And it is my belief that the Bible can use the word locusts to refer to demons. Or that there are some demons who behave as locusts do.
In the book of Revelation, one of the judgments unleashed upon the earth is a plague of demon locusts who are related from the abyss.
Revelation 9:1-6 (NIV)
The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. 2 When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. 3 And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. 6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
If you remember, there was a moment when Jesus was casting demons out of someone and they begged Jesus not to send them into the abyss. Well now we know why they didn’t want sent to the abyss. It’s full of swarms of demon locusts.
So it’s my belief that Gog is one of the names of a fallen angel or demon (I’m not going to split hairs on the technical difference in those two things today) Gog is a fallen angel or demon who is in charge of a hoard of demon locusts. And Gog is in charge of a lot more than that; Gog has charge over the people of Magog. And Gog apparently has influence over Meshech and Tubal as well. He is the power behind the power; the chief prince, much like the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece in Daniel 10.
Make sure you check out my other podcast, Weird Stuff in the Bible. In this week’s episode, I’m going to be talking about territorial spirits: how fallen angels or demons are assigned to particular territories of the earth. And it relates with Gog right here: I don’t believe Gog is Vladimir Putin. That would be a very convenient interpretation if it was. But Gog is not Putin; Gog is the demon who controls Putin.
Much like how we read earlier in Ezekiel and in chapter 28, we read about the King of Tyre and the Prince of Tyre. Tyre had a human ruler, a human king. But we studied how, at that time, Tyre had been handed over to Satan. Satan was the demonic entity who had territorial jurisdiction over Tyre at the time of Ezekiel. And so God would speak to the King of Tyre, but then God would also peer behind the spiritual veil and speak to the demonic spirit who was in charge of Tyre, which was Satan himself in those days, and that’s why we get the famous description of Satan right there somewhat randomly in the book of Ezekiel. You can go back to the episodes I did last February if you’d like more information on that.
So this is how one being can be in charge of multiple countries. Because you have Gog who is said to be in charge of Russia and Turkey. Gog is of the people of Magog- the Russians- and that includes Vladimir Putin- but he also apparently has some dominion over Turkey as well. And he is a wise old fallen angel of ancient times who has the political willpower to unite several nations to his cause.
So who are those other nations? That’s what we’re going to talk about next time.
Next Time
So join me in a week as we pick apart a whole TWO more verses in the Gog and Magog prophecy. Like I said before, I want to make sure we understand the field of players in this prophecy before we actually delve into what happens.
I can tell you about what’s gonna happen to Put and Cush and Persia, but that’s not going to mean as much to you if you don’t know who Put and Cush and Persia are. Plus, once you understand who they are, that will help you recognize these alliances forming right now in the days we’re living in. So next week we’ll explain who all these other nations in Gog’s alliance are.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
And like I said, I have another podcast called Weird Stuff in the Bible. This week I’m going to be explaining what territorial spirits are, a subject we touched on in this chapter today. So go check out Weird Stuff in the Bible wherever you get your podcasts.
Is Gog the Antichrist?
In closing, I just want to deal with one interesting question that comes up in this chapter: Is Gog the Antichrist? In fact, if we jump ahead a few verses, I think God even poses this question just to make us think.
Ezekiel 38:17
Thus says the Lord God: “Are you he of whom I have spoken in former days by My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied for years in those days that I would bring you against them?
The way that this is translated in some versions, like the NIV, makes it sound like a declarative statement, that Gog has been prophesied about for years to come against Israel. The thing is, Gog hasn’t been. As we said, he’s a pretty much non-existent figure in the Bible, really comes out of left field here in Ezekiel.
However, a figure who is said to come against Israel someday, in dozens of verses throughout the Old Testament, is the Antichrist. So it appears that that’s what this question in Ezekiel 38:17 is alluding to.
If you look in Hebrew, according to my commentaries, this is not a declarative statement or even a leading question, but an open-ended question. God leaves it mysterious. God is basically throwing the question out there for us to consider: is Gog the Antichrist?
Or to put it another way, since we’ve kind of established that Gog is a demon king: is Gog a spiritual entity who will control and perhaps possess the antichrist?
I am going to guess that the answer is no. Gog is an important figure, probably bringing certain things into alignment geopolitically or paving the way for the Antichrist’s rise to power. But Gog is not a demonic entity who will control the Antichrist. Gog’s alliance is going to fail. To literally crash and burn. Gog’s attack on Israel isn’t going anywhere.
We’ll talk more about the timing of the battle of Gog and Magog in a future lesson. I think this battle will have some kind of role to play in end times events. But I don’t believe Gog will be the antichrist. But I do think he’s an eschatological figure.
Perhaps the Israeli people who are still expecting a future attack by an antichrist (which of course they don’t call the Antichrist) will survive the alliance of Gog and Magog, and they’ll think they have survived the antichrist himself. But they won’t realize that the real antichrist is just around the corner.
All of this will come up in the question of the timing of Gog and Magog, which we’ll study soon. Gog and Magog can’t happen at any moment; we’ll need to see certain things happen before Ezekiel 38 can play out.
So your first focus should be the timing of the rapture, because that could come at any moment.
Thanks for listening to this Cross References Bible Study on the Book of Ezekiel. This has been Luke Taylor, reminding you: it’s all Lady Gaga’s fault.