"Gog" vs "God"

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Sep 11, 2017 at 04:37

Thanks for posting my comment, Daniel. Errata:

"He is God, of Ezekiel 38-39"

Typo -- Erdogan is "Gog" of Ezekiel 38-39:

Ezek.38
[1] And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
[2] Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
[3] And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:
[4] And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
[5] Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
[6] Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.
[7] Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
[8] After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.

The "land" of Magog, as the term implies, is a geographical PLACE, not a person. Magog was a grandson of Noah, the survivor of the great flood of the Bible and of history. The few references to him in the Bible all place him in what is now Turkey. The "land" of Magog is the land where he used to live, just as the "lands" of Illinois, Iowa and Kansas are the lands where those tribes used to live.

Like those American states, hardly any of the current inhabitants are descendants of the early settlers. In Turkey, the inhabitants in Noah's day were genetically akin to (yDNA haplogroup J2) and linguistically related to the present-day Chechens and Ingushes of southern Russia. The LAND, on the other hand, was overrun first by Neo-Hittites, speaking an Indo-Aryan language, then by the Altaic-speaking Turks.

So much for the "land" of Magog. The man, Gog, has no relation to Magog other than living in the same place. More precisely, Gog refers to the "Gugu" of the Assyrians and "Gyges" of the Greeks. He was the founder of they dynasty in the Western Anatolian (Turkish) kingdom of Lydia during the time of the prophet Ezekiel. Just as the Assyrians referred to the northern Israelite kingdom of King Jehu as "Beth Omri" ("the House of Omri"), Lydia was probably thought of as "Beth Gugu", "the House of Gog".

In Ezekiel's day, what is now Turkey was the northernmost limit of "civilization", in the eyes of the Biblical people. Their world extended roughly from modern-day Iran to modern Greece. Rome, in those days, was thought of as a faraway land. It was ruled by the Etruscans, who contended with the Carthaginians (related to the people of Tyre and Sidon) for control of the western Mediterranean. Also colonizing those distant regions were Greek city states (named Javan, after the land of Ionia immediately next to Lydia) and the land of Tarshish, or "Tartesus", located in modern-day Spain, just west of Gibralter. For this reason, "Tarshish" was thought of as something like the "end of the earth", which is why the prophet Jonah had assayed to go there several years before Ezekiel's day. The Mediterranean Sea was named after the colony; and the reference to Tarshish in Ezekiel 38,

[13] Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?
[14] Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it?

was to the merchant nations that would ply that sea in our time: the Europeans and Americans. "Sheba and Dedan", likewise, collectively refer to the Arabian peninsula, specifically probably Saudi Arabia and its pro-Israeli allies such as the UAE. They, along with the NATO states in Europe and America, are the ones most likely to raise a protest ("shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil?") if and when Turkey and Iran ("Persia" in the prophecy) come against Israel.

As for the timing, we know it is after the Jews have come back to Eretz Israel from the Diaspora, namely, today.

Ezekiel prophesied during the Sixth Century BCE, during the early days of the second captivity of the Jews (if one counts the captivity under Pharaoh as the first). The temple was destroyed in his day, and it looked as though the Jews were doomed to disappear through assimilation. Ezekiel and the other prophets of his day foretold that Israel would NOT be ultimately assimilated, but would one day return entirely, as a nation, to their original homeland. This, of course, is the central cause of contention in the modern-day "Arab-Israeli" conflict.

Ezekiel, like Jabotinsky after him, foresaw that Israel's neighbors would not readily accept the return of these "Zionists"; but would stiffly resist them. Unlike other prophets of his time, though, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, he did not focus in chapters 38 and 39 on the people immediately next to Israel, namely, the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians. Instead, he foretold that this great attack would come from the next tier of countries: Turkey, Iran, Sudan and Libya, all of which are today Islamist governments with a deep-seated hatred of the Jews and of Israel.

There is another, later, attack on Israel prophesied in the Christian book of Revelation and also in Zechariah 14. Revelation says this would immediately precede the coming of Messiah, after which there would be a 1000-year reign of peace. After THAT period, another attack is foreseen, from "the ends of the earth, Gog and Magog"). In THAT case, Gog and Magog do not refer to Erdogan and Turkey, but literally to "the ends of the earth".

God is set to win that one, not "Gog". Sorry for the typo.

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