Today’s Passage: Ezekiel 38
After all the promises of the previous chapter, the scattered bones raised, the two sticks made one, the everlasting covenant of peace, we might expect the book to close in quiet. Instead the LORD lifts Ezekiel’s eyes to a far horizon and shows him one more storm gathering. A figure called Gog, from the land of Magog, gathers a great coalition out of the distant north and comes up against God’s people after they have at last been brought home and are dwelling in peace, unwalled and unsuspecting. It looks for all the world like the end of everything the earlier chapters promised. But the great surprise of this oracle is that the LORD is the one who summons the horde. He puts hooks in its jaws and draws it out, not because He has lost control, but because He means to be known. Read this chapter, then, not as the triumph of God’s enemies but as the last great stage on which His holiness will be shown to all the nations.
As you read, hold this: God Himself draws out the last, greatest assault against His people, only to display His holiness and shelter those who are His.
Context The world of Ezekiel 38
Ezekiel had spent much of his book naming the nations near at hand, Ammon and Moab, Tyre and Egypt, the neighbors whose pride and cruelty God would judge. Here, at chapters thirty-eight and thirty-nine, the lens pulls back to something larger and stranger. Gog and Magog, Meshech and Tubal, Gomer and Beth-togarmah, these are names from the far edges of the world Ezekiel knew, peoples of the remote north and beyond, gathered with Persia and Cush and Put from the other corners of the map. The picture is deliberately vast: not one angry neighbor but a whole world of hostile power massing together against a small and peaceful people.
Faithful readers have long differed over exactly when and how this oracle finds its fulfillment, and this is a place to hold our opinions with an open hand. Some have read it as a picture of enemies in Israel’s later history; many have seen in it a portrait of the final assault of the nations against God’s people at the end of the age, an image the apostle John takes up again in the last book of the Bible. What every faithful reader agrees upon, and what the chapter itself insists upon, is the one sure point: however great the gathering storm, it rises and falls entirely under the hand of God, and its only lasting result is that the nations come to know that He is the LORD. We can miss the timetable and still not miss the truth.
Ezekiel 38:1–3 (BSB)
¹ And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ² “Son of man, set your face against Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. Prophesy against him ³ and declare that this is what the Lord GOD says: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.
The oracle opens the way so many of Ezekiel’s oracles open, with the prophet told to turn his whole face toward the thing God means to address. Notice the very first word God speaks over this dreaded enemy. Before Gog gathers a single soldier, before the coalition ever moves, the LORD says plainly, “Behold, I am against you.” That short sentence is the seed of the whole chapter. The mightiest gathering the world can raise stands already under the “no” of the living God. Whatever else this figure is, and however far his armies stretch, he is a creature addressed by his Maker, and his Maker has set Himself against him. The reader who remembers this can watch the storm gather without terror.
Ezekiel 38:4–6 (BSB)
⁴ I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws, and bring you out with all your army—your horses, your horsemen in full armor, and a great company armed with shields and bucklers, all brandishing their swords. ⁵ Persia, Cush, and Put will accompany them, all with shields and helmets, ⁶ as well as Gomer with all its troops, and Beth-togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you.
Here is the astonishing heart of the matter, and I would have you slow down over it. Gog imagines that he moves by his own will, that the plan is his and the choosing is his. But God says, “I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws, and bring you out.” It is the picture of a great beast led by a ring through the mouth, and the one holding the cord is the LORD. The whole vast muster, the horses and the armor, Persia and Cush and Put, Gomer and the peoples of the far north, all of it is being drawn onto the field by the very God it means to defy. There is deep comfort in this. The enemies of God’s people are never so free as they suppose. Even their assembling serves a purpose they did not choose and cannot see, for the God who is against Gog is also the God who summons him.
Ezekiel 38:7–9 (BSB)
⁷ Get ready; prepare yourself, you and all your company gathered around you; you will be their guard. ⁸ After a long time you will be summoned. In the latter years you will enter a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and all now dwell securely. ⁹ You and all your troops, and many peoples with you will go up, advancing like a thunderstorm; you will be like a cloud covering the land.
See the tender detail God folds into His warning. The people this horde comes against are not a fortress bristling for war; they are a land “that has recovered from war,” a people gathered home from among the nations to the mountains that had long lain desolate, and they “all now betach, pronounced BEH-takh. Strong's H983, security, safety, confidence; dwelling securely. This is a gentle and homelike word, and it runs like a quiet thread through the whole chapter. Three times we are told the people are dwelling “securely,” living without walls or bars or gates, at ease in the land at last. The root of the word is trust, the leaning of a weight upon something strong enough to hold it. And that is exactly the point the enemy misreads. Gog looks at an unwalled people and sees easy plunder, a defenseless village ripe for the taking. What he cannot see is that their security never rested on walls in the first place. Their safety was never in stone but in the LORD who gathered them and set them there, and a people leaning their full weight on Him are safer with no walls than the mightiest army is behind them all. .” This is the very rest the earlier chapters had promised, the homecoming and the peace. And it is precisely into that peace that the storm comes rolling, “advancing like a thunderstorm,” a cloud that darkens the whole land. There is something here every believing heart has known: that the assault often comes just when the harbor has been reached, just when the people of God have laid down their weariness and begun to rest. The chapter does not pretend otherwise. But it sets that hard truth inside a larger one, that the God who brought them home has not stopped watching the road.
Ezekiel 38:10–13 (BSB)
¹⁰ This is what the Lord GOD says: On that day, thoughts will arise in your mind, and you will devise an evil plan. ¹¹ You will say, ‘I will go up against a land of unwalled villages; I will come against a quiet people who dwell securely, all of them living without walls or bars or gates— ¹² in order to seize the spoil and carry off the plunder, to turn a hand against the desolate places now inhabited and against a people gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and possessions and who live at the center of the land.’ ¹³ Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish with all its villages will ask, ‘Have you come to capture the plunder? Have you assembled your hordes to carry away loot, to make off with silver and gold, to take cattle and goods, to seize great spoil?’
Now God lets us hear the reasoning inside the enemy’s own mind, and it is the oldest reasoning there is. He looks at a peaceful, unguarded people and thinks only, here is easy gain. The whole scheme is greed dressed up as strategy: to seize the spoil, to carry off the plunder, to make off with silver and gold. Even the watching merchants, Sheba and Dedan and Tarshish, can read the plan at a glance and ask, have you come to carry away loot? There is a plain and sobering truth in this, that the appetite which drives the great armies of the world is often no nobler than the appetite of a common thief. But there is comfort here too, for God has already named the plan “an evil plan” before it is ever carried out. He is not caught off guard by it. He has read the thoughts of the enemy’s heart from the beginning, and He has already spoken His verdict over them.
Ezekiel 38:14–16 (BSB)
¹⁴ Therefore prophesy, son of man, and tell Gog that this is what the Lord GOD says: On that day when My people Israel are dwelling securely, will you not take notice of this? ¹⁵ And you will come from your place out of the far north—you and many peoples with you, all riding horses—a mighty horde, a huge army. ¹⁶ You will advance against My people Israel like a cloud covering the land. It will happen in the latter days, O Gog, that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I show Myself holy in you before their eyes.
And here, at last, the veil is drawn fully back and we are told why all of this is permitted to happen. The horde comes up “like a cloud covering the land,” a mighty army out of the far north, and God says, “I will bring you against My land.” He does not merely allow the assault; He purposes it. But look closely at the reason He gives, for it changes everything: “so that the nations may know Me when I qādash, pronounced kah-DASH. Strong's H6942, to set apart, consecrate, make holy. This is the great word of the chapter, and indeed one of the great words of the whole book. To be holy is to stand utterly set apart in purity and majesty, wholly other than all that is common or corrupt. When God says He will show Himself holy in Gog, He means that in the moment of the enemy’s overthrow every watching nation will see, past all doubt, that the LORD alone is God, high and lifted up and answerable to no one. And this is His deepest purpose in the whole affair, not merely to rescue His people, though He surely will, but to make His own holiness blaze out before the eyes of the world. The chapter ends where all things end, in the demonstration that God is holy. His people’s safety and His own glory turn out to be the same act, and that is the surest shelter there is. in you before their eyes.” The last and greatest gathering of the world’s power against the people of God becomes, in God’s hand, the very stage on which His holiness is displayed for all the nations to see. He turns the enemy’s assault into a pulpit. What was meant as the destruction of His people becomes the revelation of His glory, and the whole watching world is the congregation.
Ezekiel 38:17 (BSB)
¹⁷ This is what the Lord GOD says: Are you the one of whom I have spoken in former days through My servants, the prophets of Israel, who in those times prophesied for years that I would bring you against them?
For a single verse the LORD turns and speaks almost in wonder, tying this far-off horror back to the long line of prophets who came before. It is as though He says: this is nothing new to Me; My servants foretold it long ago. However sudden and strange the assault will feel to those who live through it, it was already written into the counsel of God generations back. The people who face that dark day will not be facing an accident of history. They will be facing something the LORD had spoken of through His prophets for years, which means it lies fully inside His plan and His word. And what God has foretold, God has already measured. Nothing here escapes the reach of the promise-keeping God.
Ezekiel 38:18–20 (BSB)
¹⁸ Now on that day when Gog comes against the land of Israel, declares the Lord GOD, My wrath will flare up. ¹⁹ In My zeal and fiery rage I proclaim that on that day there will be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. ²⁰ The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, every creature that crawls upon the ground, and all mankind on the face of the earth will tremble at My presence. The mountains will be thrown down, the cliffs will collapse, and every wall will fall to the ground.
The moment the enemy sets foot on the land, the whole created order answers to the presence of its God. His wrath flares up, and the earth itself convulses in a great earthquake; the fish and the birds and the beasts and every creature and all mankind tremble; the mountains are thrown down and the cliffs fall and every wall collapses. We should not read this as mere spectacle. It is the plain testimony of Scripture that when the holy God rises to defend His people, the very ground cannot bear the weight of His coming. The enemy trusted in armies of stone and iron, and God answers by shaking the stones themselves loose from the mountains. Here is the God whose glory Ezekiel had seen on the throne-chariot, whose holiness fills heaven and earth; and when at last He stands up to act, no wall in all the world stays standing before Him.
Ezekiel 38:21–23 (BSB)
²¹ And I will summon a sword against Gog on all My mountains, declares the Lord GOD, and every man’s sword will be against his brother. ²² I will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed. I will pour out torrents of rain, hailstones, fire, and sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him. ²³ I will magnify and sanctify Myself, and I will reveal Myself in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD.
The end comes swiftly and it comes wholly from God’s own hand. Notice how the people of God do not lift a sword in these verses; it is the LORD who summons the sword, the LORD who sends plague and torrent and hail, fire and sulfur out of heaven, until the great horde falls into confusion and turns its blades against itself. The mightiest coalition the world could raise is undone not by a superior army but by the bare arm of God. And then, in the very last line, we hear again the refrain that has sounded through this whole book like a tolling bell: “Then they will know that I am the LORD.” That is the point of all of it. God magnifies Himself and sanctifies Himself and reveals Himself, and the last assault of the nations ends, not in the ruin of His people, but in the whole world at last confessing the name of the God who is holy.
Study notes Going deeper
The great comfort of this chapter is that God does not merely survive the last assault of His enemies; He appoints it and overrules it, drawing the storm onto the field so that His holiness may be shown and His people sheltered. The people of God have always lived by this hope, that the final gathering of every hostile power against them is not the last word, because God Himself will crush it and be glorified in the crushing. The New Testament takes up that very promise and lays it, tenderly, upon the people of Christ.
"The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." Romans 16:20 (BSB)
Hear how the two Scriptures rhyme. In Ezekiel it is the God of Israel who summons the sword and shatters the horde on His mountains; in Paul it is the God of peace who will soon crush the great enemy beneath the feet of His people. The pattern is the same across the ages: the enemy gathers, the enemy rages, and the LORD Himself brings him down and makes His own name known in the doing of it. So when the storm gathers on your own far horizon, remember whose hand holds the cord, and dwell securely. Learn the Word, lean your whole weight upon the God who is holy, and give thanks.