Ezekiel Thoughts

Working on research can give your mind a great turn here and there. I was thinking of something on Saturday that turned my attention to the prophesy of Ezekiel 38 and 39. For those of you not readily familiar with this one, it’s a prophesy of a coming war in which several nations will attack Israel by surprise, but be defeated by supernatural power.

This particular passage has been one that has displayed the politics of the times with ready abandon. Prior to the reestablishment of Israel, many interpretations were such that Israel was a figurative representation of either the Jewish remnant or the Church. Then, after 1948, people began to play with all sorts of different nations as the attackers. The Soviet Union was a favorite choice for quite a long time.

So lets look at who is involved. The easy ones are the later nations mentioned: Persia, Cush, and Put. Persia is Iran, Cush is the land south of Egypt and is now the country of Sudan, although Cush has occasionally been used as a reference to just black Africa, but I’m leaning a little more towards just Sudan in general. Put is the old name for Libya. The other countries are a little more difficult.

The alliance under Gog is Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, and Beth Togarmah. All of these countries are to the north in the area surrounding the Black Sea. Turkey controls almost all of it, although there are parts that extend around the Black Sea and into Chechnya. The confusion comes about when people wonder if it was just referring to the land or the people in the land. Magog was the land that was under the domination of the people whom the Greeks called Scythians and had settled to the north of Lydia. These later involved into one of the dominant peoples of Russia. Gomer in turn was the land controlled by the Cimmerians, in western Turkey who migrated north and turned into the Germanic peoples. I myself, favor the actual land rather than the peoples. My interpretation is of course colored by the times and this article, but I envision a pan-Islamic assault on Israel. Now, Russia may be behind the scenes in support but I think of the active participants, a jihad makes the most sense.

Probably just as interesting is the nations who are not mentioned in Ezekiel’s prophesy. The three notables are: Babylon, Egypt, and Aram. Babylon would be representative of Iraq and possibly Jordan, Egypt is Egypt and Aram is Syria. Of all the countries, Syria is the most puzzling due to its longstanding hatred of Israel and its open commitment to its destruction. One of the primary theories to explain Syria’s absence from the invasion is the prophesy in Isaiah 17. In this passage, it is prophesied that Damascus will be completely destroyed and never rebuilt. Damascus was in fact briefly destroyed by the Assyrians not long after Isaiah made his prophesy, but it was quickly rebuilt and currently enjoys the designation as the oldest inhabited city in the world, going back over 4000 years and maybe longer. So, sometime before the overall attack, I would expect to see Syria overrun and Damascus destroyed. Given the current climate, I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a joint Israeli-American assault on the country. There are already whisperings about how Syria and not Iran is the big target on the list next. Jordan and Egypt all have nominal peace treaties with Israel and I would suspect that Iraq might go ahead and sign one as well, especially after some sort of resolution is reached with the Palestinians, leading to the dismantling of the security wall.

A later notable of the prophecy is that after God destroys the invading armies, the Israelites take the weapons and use them as fuel for seven years. Part of this is to convey the magnitude of the loss of the invaders, but then you couple this with the later part of the prophecy which states that men will regularly employed in clearing the land, that it will take seven months to bury the dead and then a special system has to be employed if anyone finds human remains in the area. To me, this sounds a great deal like the procedures used in nuclear waste removal. Given this, coupled with the known research activities of Iran, I would not be surprised if the invaders attempted to use nuclear weapons in the assault.

Of course, everyone has their own theories, but this is where my mind wandered on Saturday.