 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to NakedBiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on New Start Here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 152, Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. Part one, I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how you doing? Pretty good. Having a good week. I am pug sitting this week. We have a second pug in the house, so it's awesome. How's that going? They like each other? Are they friends? They do. They do. They're friends. They're friends. The new one has this odd habit of perching himself on the top of the corner of the couch, and he'll just sit there and stare at everyone. I think we've started a trend in our Facebook group. People have been posting your reverse and Hermon book with their animals, chickens, and other dogs. Great. I think we've got an animal. You want to post with reverse and Hermon book, go for it. There you go. There you go. Maybe you could do the same, but you're two pugs. Oh, yeah. We're planning on getting a picture of me with both pugs, trust me. That'll show up somewhere. Today was his first full day. They brought him over yesterday. His name is Bruno. Bruno and Maury are there in control of the house right now. Having a good week, yeah. Well, Mike, I'm excited about this week and the next week. I know eschatology is not your favorite, but it's just so hard to get away from in the Bible. It's everywhere, so I think you should start to just embrace it. Yeah, not so much. Not so much. But you can escape it. It's everywhere. Ever more present in the next two episodes. I would be, I'll be unkind and say it's imagined in more places than it is, but I'll admit that it's a big deal. I just don't like the popular takes on it and we're going to get one of those in this part. One of the reasons we're doing two parts on this is today in this episode, it's kind of a nuts and bolts episode. This is chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel. It's the Gog from the land of Magog prophecy. It is a prophecy. It was forward-looking. But again, we have this question as always in the Old Testament, and in particular the prophets. How forward-looking is this? Was it like 10 years, 100 years later, or is it like future in our time and even future to our time? A lot of people who are, quote, into prophecy, unquote, assume the latter, but that really isn't always the case. Well, chapters 38 and 39, we are going to get some stuff that I would think of as really true eschatology and time stuff even in relationship to us, but it has very clear connections to known history in the Old Testament period, known places, known terms. That's going to matter because in this first part, again, I said it's kind of the nuts and bolts episode, part one of two. We're going to talk about the terms, Gog, Magog, Tubal, Meshek, Togarma, all those sorts of things and what they point to, what they mean, and that's going to be naturally a setup, but a really important framework setting the stage for the second part, which will be focused on interpretation. So part one, again, nuts and bolts, who are we talking about? What do the terms mean? And then the second part will be more interpretation, but even though this first part is essentially word study and geography and all that sort of thing, I think listeners will actually find it quite interesting. Now, since we're dealing with two chapters and we're going to have two parts, for this episode, I'm just going to read the first few verses of each chapter, chapter 38, chapter 39 of Ezekiel, because that's where we get our terminology from and we'll read through that and then we'll just start drilling down into some of the words, some of the places that are used and talk about what they mean and what they don't mean. So jumping in here with chapter 38, we'll start in verse one, and again, I'm reading from ESV, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshek and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshek and Tubal, 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, Persia, Kush and Putt are with them, all of them with shield and helmet, Gomor and all his hordes, Beth Togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes, many people are with you. Now that's the first six verses of chapter 38. The more obvious terms here, Persia, Kush, Putt is Libya, again, we're not so much worried about them, I'm worried about the ones that are from the north, those particular places are not in northern locations, because again, I want to set up part two when we talk about interpretation and we'll pick up some of these other ones in part two as well. So we're concerned with Meshek, Tubal, Gog, Magog, Gomor, these sorts of things because they're going to be references to northern places. Now, before I read three verses in chapter 39, did you notice, and we're not going to talk about this today, but for the next part, did you notice this description? I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws. That might ring a bell with some other things we've talked about, some other mythopoetic things we've talked about that will be important. Again, I think for properly understanding why we get this description and why it's important when we're talking about a northern enemy, an enemy from Tsaphon, which is the mythic north, the place, the bad place, the place where Baal had held dominion, the rival gods and all that sort of stuff. That description, I'm not going to tell you precisely what I'm thinking here, but turning you about putting hooks into your jaws, if you look that up in the Bible, you'll find some interesting references, again, that go along with a mythic approach to certain biblical theological ideas. That's about all I can say, and that's the way I have to say it, so that I don't spill the beans here before we get to part two. But anyway, just to set your mind in motion there. Then we go to chapter 39, and we read, and you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, and I will turn you about and drive you forward and bring you up from the uttermost parts of the north, and lead you against the mountains of Israel. Then I will strike your bow from your left hand and will make your arrows drop out of your right hand. You shall fall in the mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the peoples who are with you. I will give you two birds of prey of every sort and to the beasts the field to be devoured. You shall fall in the open field, for I have spoken, declares the Lord. I will send fire on Magog and all those who dwell securely in the coastlands that they shall know that I am the Lord. A couple things here to prep you for part two. Again, the description of, I will give you to the birds of prey, birds of prey of every sort and to the beasts the field to be devoured, and then the sending fire. Again, I'm not going to say any more about that, but just if you want to prep yourself for part two, go look some of that stuff up in your Bible and you'll find some interesting things. Now, we've read those two sections of each chapter and our focus here is identifying these northern enemies, these terms. So, the identification of Gog in Ezekiel 30 and 39, again, this is no secret, has proven to be one of the most vexing problems in Old Testament study, really in biblical studies. The textual situation is pretty chaotic. It's chaotic meaning that when you, here you are in the 6th century with Ezekiel, this is when the book is going to be composed, it might undergo some editing. We've talked about that before, but it's pretty close to the beginning of the Second Temple period. You're less than 100 years away from getting a Second Temple. The first one was destroyed. And in the Second Temple period, there's lots of speculation. There's lots of opinion about what in the world Ezekiel is describing here. And people, Jews writing in the Second Temple period are all over the place. And they're not only all over the place, but they actually misread, and I'm going to show you a few examples of this later. They misread certain terms in the text like Gog, Gog. You'll believe it or not, Septuagint, for instance, which was produced in the Second Temple period, sometimes substitutes Ag, the Ag of Bashan, the giant Ag of Bashan. It's not spelled the same way, but that's the way they'll render it in their translation when no Hebrew text says that. And it shows you that they don't know who this Gog is, but hey, this one sounds kind of close. Maybe it's the same guy, so let's put him in there. They'll do stuff like that in the Septuagint and in other Second Temple texts. So if you actually look at the situation of Jews in antiquity trying to figure this out, it's kind of a mess. It's sort of a free-for-all. We'll get into more of that next time, but just so that you're prepped here, because when we go through the terms here, what I just told you is going to matter a little bit. Now everybody essentially would agree that Gog was or will be an eschatological enemy. He either was, again, subsequent to the time that Ezekiel was writing, or this is something still yet future. It's some kind of future foe relative to Ezekiel's time. Everybody agrees with that. There's disagreement though with how the figure can be associated with either a historic figure, historic enemy, or an anti-Christ figure, or whether even Gog should be associated with the anti-Christ. There's disagreement among scholars on all those things. Scholars have pursued several options for identification. So let's just start there with sort of trying to get a historical alignment here of some type. Spoiler alert, this has not been successful, but I'm going to go through a couple of the options. The dominant interpretive strategy tries to take the geographic places named in Ezekiel 38 and 39, places like Mieshek and Tubal, and then look through historical sources where those place names occur, and then look just to try to find a tyrant candidate, or some sort of warlord candidate to hopefully identify who in the world Ezekiel's talking about here when he starts talking about Gog. I have a quote here from Johann Lust, that's L-U-S-T. This is from DDD, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, and this is part of his entry on Gog. He writes, in an attempt to identify Gog as a historical person, attention has been drawn to a city prince, Goggy, mentioned in the annals of Ashurbanipal, specifically cylinder B, section four line two, a powerful ruler of a belligerent mountain people not far to the north of Assyria. So you get a northern orientation there. More frequently though, Gog is identified with Geiges, or Geiges, G-Y-G-E-S, and it also spelled Gugu in the Rasam cylinder, again this is Kenea for material, the king of Lydia. Note however that the Gog of Ezekiel has the Sumerians or Gomor as his ally, whereas the same Sumerians, that's C-I-M-M-E-R-I-A-N-S, not Sumerians, but the Sumerians, those Sumerians appear to have attacked and defeated Geiges of Lydia. So the ones who are supposed to be the allies of Gog in Ezekiel 30 and 39 are the enemies of this particular historical figure, and so this particular historical figure can't really be the identification for Gog, doesn't work. Loosed continues, such data suggests that Gog can hardly be identified with Geiges. Alternatively, Gog has been said to be the name of a country. Gaga or Gagaya allegedly mentioned in the El Amarno letters. Let's just stop here, the Tel El Amarno letters, this was correspondence between the Egyptian Pharaoh and his underlings in Syria-Palestine in the New Kingdom, just call it 1200 BC or so. That correspondence, even though it was from an Egyptian to people living in Syria-Palestine, the language of the correspondence was Akkadian, because Akkadian used to be what English is today, it was the lingua franca, it was the language of international correspondence. So in the Tel El Amarno letters, we have a reference to Gaga or Gagaya. Loosed again continues, it has become clear, however, that the writing, the Akkadian writing Ishten Kor Gagaya is erroneous. It should be Ishten Kor Gagas Gya, that's a mouthful, which translates one Kashkian. So this identification must be abandoned as well. In other words, what they thought referred to this Gagaya place actually refers to a different person or different place. So it doesn't work, and that's the end of Loosed's quote. I gave you that, again, basically because scholars have tried to identify Gag with a historical figure, they find similar sounding names, both for a person and also for a land, that's going to be relevant as we go on. Gag might have something to do with a land as well. So historians, biblical scholars have found these sorts of things in material that is geographically overlapping. Again, this is Mesopotamia, Ezekiel's and Babylon. This is to the north of Israel. So it's the right context, or at least it could be, it's an option for fulfilling the context here. But none of the identifications have worked. They all have serious problems, and in some cases, scholars just know now that that just isn't going to work, it's just wrong. But you'll find these things, you know, in older literature. But currently, nobody is claiming with any amount of certainty, or even a even half amount of certainty that they know who Gag is. So that's a problem. Now, there are other problems aside from not having a historical match to Gag with identifying Gag. And we'll get to those in a moment. So we'll return to the problem in a bit. But I want to take a look now at the geographical terms, because honestly, they're just a lot easier. And then we'll go back to the Gag reference. So Tubal, Meshach, and Magog are listed elsewhere in the Old Testament, among the sons of Japheth. That's Genesis 10, verse two. This is, of course, part of the table of nations. Togarma is also listed in the same table of nations in the very next verse, Genesis 10 3, as one of the sons of Japheth in the table of nations. So Genesis 10 sort of certifies, makes it clear what geographical region Ezekiel has in mind when he starts writing about the hordes from the north. And he gives these names, Tubal, Meshach, Magog, Gomer, Togarma. These are all situated and knowable and, again, discoverable in contemporary ancient material. And it's all consistent. This is just getting a little ahead of myself here. What you're going to find is that all of these place names are in what used to be called Anatolia or Asia Minor. And, again, if you think of your geography, we're going to post a map for this particular episode. I pull out some images from the internet and just put them in a PDF so that you can see, maybe follow along even now. But this region, again, Asia Minor, Anatolia, this is to the east of Greece and the Greek Isles, which is obviously north of Israel. It is what is today modern Turkey for the most part. And in the northeast quadrant of that, you're going to have the Black Sea. So the Black Sea is kind of on top of this region. But all of these places are knowable and discernible. Now, to make that point, just so that you don't have to take my word for it, I'm going to read some excerpts from the Anker Bible Dictionary. All of them, these are entries on all these place names. All of them are written by David Baker, who is a guy I know. David is an evangelical scholar. So if any of you might be listening to this episode in the future, most of my audience is going to know already. I don't think this has anything to do with Russia or communism or anything like this. And they're going, well, you're just saying that because you're a liberal or your sources are liberal. No, no, not so much. David Baker is an evangelical. A high view of scripture like any other evangelical. So we can get that out of the way of dispense with that sort of red herring kind of comeback. But I want to read a few excerpts here from Anker Bible Dictionary in the essays that David wrote. We'll start with Tubal. Tubal was one of the seven sons of Japheth, Noah's son, according to the Table of Nations, Genesis 10-2, and the parallel genealogy in First Chronicles 1-5. Descendants of Tubal and his siblings who are listed in the Table of Nations as Gomer, Magog, Madai, Yavan, Meshach, and Tiras are located to the north of Israel in Greece or Asia Minor and northern North Syria. So all that region there. It's logical, therefore, to expect to find Tubal in the same north area. Tubal is mentioned six further times in the prophets. Isaiah 66-19 speaks of the distant location to which Yahweh will send messengers of his grace. They include Greece, which is Yavan and Tubal, as well as Lod, drawers of the bow. Lod or the Lydians in West Turkey and Greece is the only name in the context with a descriptive epithet. Rather than seeing it as such, the Septuagint revocalizes it and reads Meshach, which is really bizarre. That's my comment there. One of the brothers of the forefathers of Tubal and the genealogies. This fits well with the other prophetic references to Tubal in which Meshach is always found, but again, it actually doesn't make any sense. These other references include an oracle against Tyre in which trade relations between the two and Tyre include the provision of slaves and instruments of bronze. That's Ezekiel 27. Herodotus mentions two nations, the Moshkoi and the Tibaranoi, and Josephus writes of Thebel and Messenians or Meskenians in his book The Antiquities. Older Akkadian texts mention Tubal and Mushki. These are located, all of these names by different sources, are located in East Asia Minor. Tubal occupies the territory south of the Halis River to the west of Togarma. That's the end of what I'll read about David's entry on Tubal. Notice, and here's the point, all of these place names, even though they differ, you can obviously hear the phonetic similarity. And if we were looking at text, you could see the similarity and spelling. All of them are knowable and discoverable in ancient material, and we know what region it is. Greek Isles moving to the east, Asia Minor, Anatolia, north Syria, and to the further north, you hit the ceiling of the Black Sea. It's a known region and these are known place names. I'm mentioning that for a specific reason that's going to come up. Meshach, David writes, Meshach is one of the seven sons of Japheth, Noah's son, according to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10-2, and again the parallel genealogy in 1 Chronicles 1-5. The latter genealogy also lists another person with the same name as a son of Shem, that's in 1 Chronicles 117. In the Table of Nations, however, Genesis 10-23, there is no second listing for Meshach, but there is a Mosh son of Aram in the parallel position to the Meshach of 1 Chronicles 117. This could be a scribal error in which the last Hebrew letter of Meshach was dropped off, that's what the Septuagint seems to be translating. Mosh could also be an entirely different entity than we don't know. Whatever the case regarding the name in Genesis, the Chronicles genealogy indicates two ethnically distinct groups, one of Semitic and one of non-Semitic descent. Most references to Meshach in the Old Testament are to the non-Semitic peoples. Five times in Ezekiel, they are associated with Tubal. I should stop here. What he means by non-Semitic is that they're descended from Japheth and not Shem. In Ezekiel 27-13, Meshach and Tubal, along with Javan, Yavan, Greece, traded slaves and bronze with Tyre, the capital of Phoenicia. Akkadian sources from as early as Tiglath Pleser, circa 1100 BC, mentioned Meshach or the Mushkaya from the land of Mushku. These people paid tribute to Asher Nasserpal II, circa 882 BC, from their capital city in East Asia Minor. This tribute included goods of bronze, again noting Ezekiel 27-13. At the end of the 8th century, the king of Meshach was Mitha, the famous Midas, whose touch, according to legend, would turn everything to gold. In the letter to Sargon II dated circa 709 BC, Midas, this Mitha ruler of the land of Mushki, seeks a peaceful relationship with the Assyrians. Both Herodotus and Josephus placed Meshach, the Moscoi, in East Asia Minor. The latter locates these people in the area later known as Cappadocia and that's East Asia Minor. Herodotus equates them with the Phrygians, somewhat farther west in Asia Minor. You could look at the map for all these references. These people migrated, eventually, from Eastern Europe into Asia during the 12th century BC. Some of the people of Meshach seemed to have moved even farther east around the Black Sea. Now I'm going to stop here and say this reference to the Black Sea and some of these people groups, this is what the, oh, Gog must be the Russians. They'll seize on the Black Sea idea because the Russian boundary touches the Black Sea. Well, if you actually look at the map, all these place names, again, I hope that you're not getting sick of me repeating this, but all these places again are in Asia Minor. Asia Minor is underneath the Black Sea. Russia is above the Black Sea. The reference to the Black Sea that some of these peoples migrated near the Black Sea doesn't mean that they went to, like, Leningrad, where that is, or Moscow, or Stalingrad, or something like that. It doesn't mean that at all. So it's dishonest and it's geographically disingenuous to take references in these reference works, like Anker Bible Dictionary, or a map and sort of play fast and loose with the geography. We're not talking about Russia here. We're talking about Anatolia, Asia Minor, East Asia Minor, Northern Syria. These are known places from contemporaneous primary texts. Magog, let's move on to that term. In the Table of Nations, this appears, Genesis 10-2 again, and parallel genealogy again, 1 Chronicles 1 verse 5. Magog is one of the six grandsons of Noah through his son, Japheth. Others of this line are associated with Asia Minor, Jevon, Tubal, Meshach. So a location for Magog also in this area is quite logical. Not all of the listed allies to the north of Israel, however, not all of the listed allies of Gog. Let me just clarify the wording there. R to the north of Israel though, as we pointed out when we read Ezekiel 38. Some of them are in other parts, Persia, Libya, Put, all that sort of thing. So they're not all from the north. So we can't necessarily say that all of the bad guys are associated with the north. Again, that's quite obvious if you read Ezekiel 38 and 39. Ezekiel 39-6, David Baker continues, fortals judgment on Gog, which will include fire falling on Magog as well. And also in chapter 39, the fire falls upon the, quote, island dwellers. This is my comment here. Island dwellers would be quite consistent with Jevon, Greece, same section of the Table of Nations, same geographical region. Again, even an obscure reference like island dwellers. We know, again, where that geographically makes sense in relationship to all the other places. Continuing with David's entry on Magog, scholars suggest several different locations for Magog, again, as a place name. Skinner in the international critical commentary on Genesis assumed the identity of Magog and Ga Gaia, which was mentioned in the Loost quotation, which are mentioned in the Amarna letters. Again, Loost, his little snippet that we read earlier, we pointed out that the Keneiform evidence turned out to not be right there. But Baker mentions it here. He says Magog, again, can be identified or has been tried to be identified in a general way as the people from, again, the north, just some vague reference to the north. A more popular identification is that Gog is a Hebrew adaptation on the name of the Lydian king, Gygus, which we mentioned as well. And again, Baker's going to go along and say, well, these are all possibilities that have been suggested. Nobody's persuaded. They all have problems, so on and so forth. Now, a note on Josephus here that David brings up. Josephus understood Magog to refer to the Scythians. While the Targum, one of the Targums, Targum Neofiti, interpreted the name as Germania, this is possibly Germanica of Comma gene in, surprise, surprise, east Asia Minor. So again, I point this out to say that even, again, in ancient now we're getting into Targums and Josephus sort of editorializing on what he thinks the term means. Even when you get that kind of material, what they reference is in the same region. East Asia Minor, Asia Minor used to be known as Anatolia, the Greek Isles, Northern Syria, that part of the world. And again, that is very consistent. It's completely consistent with the table of nations in Genesis 10, 2, and verse 3. Moving on to Togarma. Togarma, according to the table of nations, Genesis 10, 3, and the parallel genealogy in 1 Chronicles 1, 6, is one of the three sons of Gomer. So Togarma, again, one of the three sons of Gomer, who himself is a son of Japheth, Noah's son. Again, very consistent. His descendants, or at least those called by the same name are mentioned twice in the book of Ezekiel in an oracle against Tyre and, of course, our Ezekiel passage. Now, Beth Togarma also, again, translated the house of Togarma is described as exchanging war horses and draft horses and mules with Tyre for her merchandise in Ezekiel 27. The geographical location for other trading nations from the same biblical context, Ezekiel 27 now, verses 1 through 13, lists a lot of these same places. The geographical location of all of them is consistent. We have Greece, we have Meshach, we have Tarshish, we have Tuval, again, the Tarshish there for those interested. Tarshish is actually in Spain, which the unseen realm gets into. This is a different use of the term Tarshish. If you wanted a bibliographic reference for that, again, why we have a Tarshish here as opposed to the Tarshish that is in Spain, I have a really nice one. John Day in his book on Genesis 111 has an article specifically on this. So if you were interested, if you had the Divine Council Bibliography, you could get that. I probably, I do reference it an unseen realm so you can get the reference there. Neo-Assyrian texts back to David Baker and Togarma. Neo-Assyrian texts apparently refer to this location as Tilgarimu, which is on the east border of Tuval. Sennacherib campaigned against this city in 695 BC. Hittite texts refer to a city and district of Togarma in the area of the upper Euphrates, which was captured by Supele, or I always get this wrong, this is a Hittite king, Supeleumas, along with other parts of the kingdom of Metani. Again, this is the same geographical region, you just look it up on a map. The Assyrian and Hittite sources apparently refer to the same site, which has been identified with the modern Gorun. By the way, the Hittite empire was focused in Anatolia, Asia Minor, in the same place. It's all very consistent. Now you're probably getting a little bored with this now, but there's a point. There's a point to all this. The point is, this ain't a mystery. These terms are not mysterious. These terms have nothing to do with Russia as we know it. Now some are likely to wonder at this point, well, what about Rosh? My translation has Gog the Prince of Rosh. You skipped Rosh and all that list of countries and lands. What about Rosh? You're cheating, Mike. Well, actually, no, I'm not. Gog is not the Prince of Rosh. That is a mistranslation. We'll comment on it in a few minutes. There are a number of reasons that it's a mistranslation, but among them is the fact that there is no such place name in any ancient text. There is no place name Rosh known in the ancient world. Period. It's not a place name. Rosh is not a place. As Michael Astor has noted, the closest geographical correlation that could be argued is Rashi or Arashi in Neo-Assyrian records, a district on the border of Babylonia and Elam. But as Astor comments, this has nothing in common with Meshach and Tubal. Yeah, he's correct. It doesn't. It's in a different geographical region, further to the east, the southeast. In fact, it doesn't point to Russia. That would be far north, north of the Black Sea. Again, the point being made, nobody in the ancient world knew of a place name Rosh. It is not a place name. That's contrary, I know, to what a lot of listeners may have heard. Listeners may have heard that Gog is the Prince of Rosh and that Rosh is Russia. I've posted an article with this episode that is also a little bit of a setup, at least to get the lay of the land for the Battle of the King of the North and Daniel that we'll be bringing into discussion in part two. But the article posted on the episode page for this episode is by Paul Tanner. He talks about the invader from the north. The subtitle of his article is, Do we owe Russia an apology? And it's like, yeah, we do. But that article is kind of nice because it takes you through how the Russia idea was popularized by evangelical dispensational interpreters. And he points out some of the problems with it. He doesn't point out all of them. Other scholarly sources will beat that dead horse, despite the fact that it's dead. You should know as a listener, the idea that Ezekiel 38 and 39 is about Russia or a Russian invasion has literally no merit in terms of exegesis. And it has no precedent in terms of a place name in the entire ancient world. It's a fabrication. It's a Cold War hermeneutic. The Russia idea became popular in the 70s. I remember reading it in prophecy books as a teenager, a new Christian. The bad guys for the end of the world in the Cold War era, they were Russians. And the prophecy, quote unquote, experts, the prophecy pundits of the 70s and 80s that wanted the end times to be imminent right around the corner. Well, who's the enemy? Who's the logical enemy? Well, it's the Russians. Oh, Russia, Roche. There we go. That's about all the thought that went into it. It is not a view that is based in primary source material and even coherent. Let's say a little bit more about it, though. Now, despite the fact that you've heard this, and again, there's no ancient place name Roche. There are other problems. Yamauchi, who actually has a good book, you know, for this subject matter, his book is entitled Foes from the Northern Frontier, Invading Hordes from the Russian Steps. His book isn't about Ezekiel 38 and 39. It's about just what it says. Ancient peoples of the Northern Frontier. Yamauchi is a historian. I think he's still teaching. He's an evangelical. He does a lot of work on Persia in the Bible, Africa in the Bible. Here he's doing these northern countries, Asia Minor and further north. In this book, he does tackle the Russia interpretation and basically slays it because it's not very hard to do. Again, he's a historian at the University of Miami at Ohio. Might be a familiar name to you because he's been around for quite a while. But Yamauchi points out in his study of the geography, the place name Roche would have had no meaning to an ancient Hebrew audience since, quote, the name Roche, R-U-S, was first brought to the region of the Kiev. Again, that's right around the black sea there. First brought to the region of the Kiev by the Vikings in the Middle Ages. Now, the region don't even find Roche, R-U-S, earlier than the Vikings. So for an ancient person of the biblical period, talking about a place name Roche or Roche would have been utterly meaningless to them. Going even further, R-U-S, R-U-S and the longer Russia, Yamauchi notes, again, I'm basing this on Yamauchi's material here. Rousse and Russia are Indo-European words while Hebrew is from the Semitic language family. Consequently, a Roche-Russia equation is a linguistic fallacy. It's a false etymology. Additionally, aside from Genesis 10's placement of Meshach and Tubol in Anatolia, Ezekiel's own description of these same places in Ezekiel 27, verses 12 through 15, have them located among the nations adjacent to Anatolia. The place names are thus not the Russian cities, but ancient ethnic groups firmly situated in the ancient Near Eastern geographical reality of the Hebrew Bible. I want to talk about this fallacy a little bit. You know, this shouldn't be earth shaking, but I know a lot of people are exposed to well-meaning but really poor Bible teaching in this section, and just teaching about biblical languages in general that's really poor. The same set of sounds in one language that form a word do not equate to either the same word in another language or a word that sounds the same that has the same meaning as the first word. Now, in other words, that's a little convoluted. Let me illustrate the point. Chin and chin in English and Chinese, respectively, don't mean the same thing. Even though they sound the same, they don't mean the same thing. So, Roche and Russia, even though they sound the same or very similar, don't mean the same thing. Chin in English, of course, is the, according to Webster, the lower portion of the face underneath the lower lip and including the prominence of the lower jaw. In Chinese, chin means gold or metal or money, something bright. Okay? Completely different because they're different languages. The human mouth and tongue and lips and palate, you can only make so many sounds. Linguists will tell you there's 30 or so that you can make. And since every human being speaks, they have their own language, they're going to use the same set of sounds. But what they mean by the sounds that they articulate is not transferable from one language to the next. You think, well, Mike, who in the world would think that? Oh, trust me. Trust me. A lot of, quote, Bible teachers are making arguments like that in this passage. It's just absurd. It's absurd. A couple of other ones. Again, coal in Hebrew, K-O-L is the transliteration. And coal in English, C-O-A-L, guess what? They don't mean the same thing. Okay? Coal in Hebrew is where it means all or every or whole. And coal, of course, in English is a black lump of rock, okay? Bar in Aramaic, transliterated, B-A-R. It's not the same as bar in English. Okay? Bar in Aramaic means son. Okay? Simon bar Jonah, Simon son of Jonah. Bar in English could be like an iron rod. It could be a place where you drink alcohol. Okay? It just doesn't mean the same. And I know it sounds ridiculous that I have to spend time explaining something that is so obvious. But what I'm telling you is you'll actually find, not just on the Internet, in the wacky world of Internet Bible study, but you'll find it in books. You'll find arguments by things that have been published, not just self-published stuff, but published by actual real publishers. They're not academic places, but, you know, they exist to publish books. You'll find this kind of stuff in them. And it's utterly absurd. It's nonsense. It's they're just linguistic fallacies. You know, and I'll be, I think I've been blunt to this point, but I'll be even more blunt. Okay? And those of you who are out there listening, yes, you can quote me. Show me someone who does exegesis by matching sounds between languages and then saying the words mean the same thing. And I'll show you someone who doesn't understand either exegesis or languages at all. Okay? There's just no, there's, there's, there's no merit to this approach. Now let's go back to the, the, the actual phrase though in Ezekiel 38 and 39, that someone to translate Prince of Roche, the phrase is Nessie Roche. Nessie is the word for Prince. Roche, again, is another noun. It can mean head or chief or something like that. Some, some high status. There are two options grammatically that can be defended, you know, according to the rules of Hebra grammar for this phrase. Option number one is Gog, the Prince, comma, the chief. In other words, Nessie and Roche are functioning appositionally. There are two ways of talking about the same person. Gog, the Prince, the chief of Mieshek and Tubal. That's the one, like people like Dan Block, you know, prefer. It has, you know, it has a lot of merit to it. It's, it's, I think it's this most straightforward way to go. It has a nice actual parallel in at least the parallel for the idea in First Chronicles 740. In English it says, all of these were men of Asher, heads of father's houses, approved, mighty warriors, chiefs of the princes. They're number enrolled by genealogies for service and war. So this idea of chiefs and princes, again, are, are their rank terms that have some relationship to each other. Okay, that might be the best way to understand this. Gog, who, who's Gog? Well, he's the chief. He's the prince. He's the prince and the chief of Mieshek and Tubal. So Roche there is not a place name in that option. Number two, Roche is not a place name here either. Again, because there is, there was no place Roche in the ancient world. You could translate it this way. Gog, chief prince of Mieshek and Tubal. So you would take Prince as, you know, they're, they're both nouns, but you would take one as functioning adjectively. Okay, in this case, the word Roche, chief prince. Now Roche functions adjectively in other places. There are places that refer to the High Priest. It's the Kohane Ha Roche. Okay, so Roche, again, even though it's a noun, it can function adjectively very, very easily, very well and does so in the Hebrew Bible. So this, this is another good option. Gog, the chief prince of Mieshek and Tubal. And of course, your first option was Gog, the prince, the chief of Mieshek and Tubal. Either one of those works according to the rules of Hebrew grammar. Roche is not a place name. Russia has nothing to do with this. Okay, now in my book, Reversing Hermon, I discuss how the Septuagint really is no help with any of this. Now I hesitated to even bring this into the episode because, you know, it may or may not translate well to audio, but I'm going to, I'm going to read this excerpt from Reversing Hermon just because I don't want anybody listening to this episode thinking, oh, well, Mike, the answer here is the Septuagint. The Septuagint, you know, Russia has a place name and, you know, you know, all this kind of stuff in Gog, you know, Gog is a giant and all this sort of stuff. All right, well, that isn't true, even though if you get Reversing Hermon and you read the chapter, it's chapter 11, about the connections of the book of Revelation back to the watcher story and back to the giants, there is a conceptual connection between the eschatological enemies, including the Antichrist, to Gog and also to giants. Okay, that's valid, at least, you know, in terms of there were ancient Jews who thought in those terms and I give you all the data for that in the book, but it's not true to base that on the words of Ezekiel 38. So I'm just going to read this and you're going to see how confused the Septuagint translators were when it came to these names. And, you know, I'm not blaming them, I'm not picking on them. Some of them might deserve a little criticism because they basically just change the text, but others, you know, are just confused and they make mistakes, you know, they're humans, you know, that just happens. So here's what I wrote in part of that chapter in Reversing Hermon. The Septuagint translator of Ezekiel also misunderstood the grammatical limitations of Nassi Rosh leading to several mistakes in translation. In Numbers 24-7, part of the Balaam Oracle, the traditional Maseritic Hebrew text reads, Jacob's king shall be higher than Agag, that's A-G-A-G, Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. That's the statement. The point is that Israel's eventually the, you know, the Davidic king, Israel's king will defeat the king of his enemies, in this case a reference to Agag of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. But the Septuagint, created long after the days of Samuel and Agag, does something quite surprising with this passage. Instead of the phrase higher than Agag, and the Hebrew there is Mem, Olif, Gimel, Gimel, M, Olif, G-G, the Septuagint says this, believe it or not, his kingdom shall be higher than Gog. The effect of this odd translation is to transform the prophecy of Balaam into a remote end times prophecy pitting Gog against David's Messiah, the Davidic Messiah, as opposed to an Israelite king having victory over Agag in the early days of Israel's history that we actually get in 1 Samuel 15. How are we to understand this dramatic difference between the traditional text, the Maseridic text, and the Septuagint? The Septuagint translation is only textually explainable if the Hebrew text being used by the Septuagint translator read Mem, Gimel, Vav, Gimel, M-G-W-G, instead of the Maseridic texts Mem, Olif, Gimel, Gimel. So it had to be a different text. That would explain it. However, it is more likely that the Septuagint translator may have been confused by Mem, Olif, Gimel, Gimel and invented from Gog as a translation solution. So it could be a different text or he could have just made it up. The reason that confusion seems to be the best answer to the odd situation in Numbers 24-7 is that the Septuagint translator clearly blunders elsewhere with respect to Gog. Again, the Septuagint was translated by more than one person. So I'm not saying it's the same translator in the passages that I'm going to refer to next. But what it does show is that the people doing the Septuagint translation found the Mem, Olif, Gimel, Gimel in Numbers 24-7 difficult to deal with. They didn't quite know what to do with it and in other places they had problems. So here we go. Here are some other examples of really odd kind of blunders in the Septuagint. Now in Amos 7-1, we read this. 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, like grass clippings, mowings. The Hebrew there is Gimel, Zion, Yod, three letters. Now the Septuagint translates that what I just read this way. Thus the Lord showed me, and behold, an early offspring of grasshoppers coming. And behold, one locust larva, Gog, the king. It's just so different. Gog is Gimel, Vav, Gimel. It's, it's, you'd have to be a different text than the word in the Maseritic text. Now Loost, Johann Loost, which I referenced earlier in his DDD article, notes this in regard to this verse. He says, in Amos's vision of the plague of locusts, Amos 7-1, the Septuagint translator read Gog, Gog, for Gimel, Zion, Yod, clippings, or mowings. Focusing on Gog as the leader of a threatening army represented by a swarm of locusts. Okay, that's Loost's quote. Now here's me talking again. It's very hard to follow the logic of the Septuagint translator. The writers get, or the waters get muddied a bit more when we discover that the Septuagint translator arbitrarily transforms Ag, O.G., Ag of Bashan, in Deuteronomy 3, verse 1, verse 13, and Deuteronomy 4, 47, to Gog in his translation. He adds a G. He adds a letter. Again, the Septuagint translator just adds a letter and changes the word. Even more confusing is the fact that at least one Septuagint manuscript of the same, you know, dealing with the same material does the opposite. There's one Septuagint manuscript of Ezekiel 38-2 that instead of Gog, we have O.G. So in one passage, O.G. becomes Gog. Another passage, Gog becomes O.G. in the Septuagint. This is the kind of thing I'm referring to that you look at it and you go, you know what? They just didn't know what to do with this. It's just confusion. Now one certainty arises out of this messiness. This is me in reversing Hermon again. At least some, here's the certainty, at least some Second Temple Jews were comfortable associating Gog with the giant of Bashan and Hermon and the greatest scatological enemy. So at least one handful of Jewish people were writers. And of course, you know, their readers are going to go, you know, be influenced by what they write, but some of them were comfortable mixing all that stuff. And the question is, why? Why did they feel that that was okay? Or why did they feel that made sense? And I addressed this in unseen realm a little bit, but I'm going to continue reading and reversing Hermon as to why this is. And this is going to lead us to the end of this episode and transition to the next one. The real answer here, I think, the reason why they were comfortable, the Septuagint translators weren't bothered by what they were doing with the tax, they were fiddling with the tax, was because Gog for them was an enemy of the mythological, the mythic north. Again, taking north not just as a reference to geography, not just something up there geographically, but they associated the northern location in earthly geography with the dominion of Baal, okay, with the dominion of darkness, with dark powers, cosmically. So we leave literal geography and we go to cosmic geography, that's what we mean by mythic geography, something that's supernatural in focus. And if you think that way, then you are in the territory of Baal and Mount Hermon and the Watchers and the Giants. So they were thinking on these terms and there were good reasons, not just contrived reasons, why they were thinking on these terms. So they may have fiddled with the names Og and Gog and different passages or just not knowing what to do with them, but they were doing it because other things that are actually in the biblical text sort of legitimized it for them. Now, what am I talking about here? Okay, reversing Hermon here. I have a little section on Gog and the mythic supernatural north. In terms of physical geography, the region of Bashan constituted the northern limits of the promised land. Biblical people, of course, knew that there were enemy cities and peoples beyond Hermon. It is of no small consequence that when enemies from these northern regions invaded the land of Israel, they came, quote, from the north, from Zafon. The physical north, therefore, was associated with the terror of tyrants bent on Israel's destruction, because Israel got invaded from the north all the time. It was a scary thing. Next paragraph, the tyrant from the north factor is one of the reasons why Antiochus the fourth, and this takes us into part two where we're going to go with that. This factor is one of the reasons why Antiochus the fourth has become the prototype for the final end times Antichrist. Antiochus the fourth whose violent career tracks closely with events of Daniel 8 through 11 was ruler of Seleucid, Syria, just north of Bashan. It was he who invaded Jerusalem in the second temple period and forced Jewish priests to sacrifice unclean animals on the temple altar and saw himself as an exalted deity. It is therefore understandable that a figure like Gog, the invader from the uttermost parts of the north, is how Ezekiel phrases it in Ezekiel 38.6 and 15 and chapter 39 verse 2. It's very understandable that a figure like Gog is viewed by scholars as a foreshadowing of Antiochus. Antiochus comes later than Ezekiel's time. Antiochus comes in the period between the testaments. So when Antiochus shows up and does what he does, it naturally would have made people think of Gog because Antiochus came from the north and did all these awful things. Back to reversing Hermon, next paragraph. But these observations merely scratch the surface. There's much more to see. As readers will recall, Bashan was the land of the Refaim, the region associated with gateways to the realm of the dead and home to the city of Dan, the central cultic site for the worship of Baal, the lord of the underworld. The foot of Mount Hermon overlapped the northern boundary of the region of Bashan. As I wrote in the Unseen Realm, so here I put a little Unseen Realm into reversing Hermon. As I wrote in the Unseen Realm, quote, the word north in Hebrew is Zaphon or Zaphon in some transliterations. It refers to one of the common directional points, but because of what Israelites believed lurked in the north, the word came to signify something otherworldly. The most obvious example is Bashan. We've devoted a good deal of attention to the connection to that place with the realm of the dead and with giant clan populations like the Refaim, whose ancestry was considered to derive from enemy divine beings. Bashan was also associated with Mount Hermon, the place wherein Jewish theology, the rebellious sons of God, of Genesis 6, infamy, descended to commit their act of treason. But there was something beyond Bashan, farther north, that every Israelite associated with other gods hostile to Yahweh. Places like Sidon, Tyre, and Ugarit lay beyond Israel's northern border. The worship of Baal was central in these places. Specifically, Baal's home was a mountain, now known as Jebel el-Aqra. Situated to the north of Ugarit, in ancient times it was simply known as Zaphon, Zapanu in Ugaritic. It was a divine mountain, the place where Baal held council as he ruled the gods of the Canaanite Pantheon. Baal's place was thought to be on the heights of Zapanu in Ugaritic texts. Baal is Lord of Saphon in the same sources. He is also called a prince, which is Zabol in Ugaric. So, you have Baal Zabol, Prince Baal. Again, we know what that's going to evolve into. It's going to become a title for Satan. Another of Baal's titles, again, is Prince Lord of the Underworld, Zabol Baal Arts. Okay, Baal is Lord of the Dead, Lord of the Underworld. It is no surprise, then, that Zabol Baal becomes Baal Zabol and Baal Zabab, which was actually a term of derision. These titles were associated with Satan in later Jewish literature and the New Testament. So, it isn't just the New Testament. That's the end of the unseen realm quote. An ancient reader would therefore, back to reversing Hermon, an ancient reader would therefore not only have feared the north because of the threat of invading tyranny, but for supernatural theological reasons. This is the conceptual grid among or through which Gog of Magog must be understood. The failure to find any secure historical reference for Gog and the fact that the far north from which Gog hailed was so clearly associated with dark supernatural powers has led many scholars to consider Gog as a supernatural terror instead of a historical person. This trajectory is, in fact, more coherent. Several scholars have proposed that Gog could be viewed as a personification of darkness based on the meaning of the Sumerian Gug, which means darkness. This view has found little acceptance, but its detractors have offered next to nothing in the way of evidence for rebuttal. A supernatural figure of darkness actually comports well with Revelation 20, verses 7 through 10, which mentions Gog and Magog along with Satan, and the human armies arrayed against Jerusalem, the holy city. That's the end of the Hermon excerpt. Now, I'm just going to summarize this because this is going to bleed into what we're going to do in part two, and that is interpretation. So, by way of summary for this episode, a couple points, five points. Number one, the geographical references in Ezekiel 38 and 39 are clear. This is not modern Russia. The place names are all found in Anatolia, ancient Asia Minor. You can throw in the Greek Isles, okay? Greek Isles and modern Turkey, if you want a modern geographical referent, you know, for familiarity. It's all familiar. Number two, Rosh is not a place name. This passage is not about Russia. There was no place name Rosh in antiquity. Three, as all the place names are from the north, the invasion of Gog is best understood as a cosmic invasion. That is, it would have been associated with dark powers or invaders who were a threat because supernatural forces of evil were empowering them. Fourth, as we'll see next time and hinted at here, this is the way the passage was understood by John, the Book of Revelation, and other Second Temple writers. Human forces from the bad place, the north, the geographic north, which was under the dominion of supernatural powers because it was the cosmic north, okay? These were the enemies. The place from which they came was under dominion of Baal the Lord of the Dead, who was the Satan figure. And lastly, number five, this is why it's misguided to look for a specific modern political entity for Gog. The idea is a Satan-empowered threat who seeks the inheritance of Yahweh that is Jerusalem and Zion for his own, and thus for his God, who is Satan. Whether the figure in question recognizes that or not. So stay tuned for part two. All right, Mike. I've got nothing really to comment on part one. I'll wait for part two, but I'm looking forward to part two. Yeah. There's a lot of interesting stuff. Again, I'm not going to... I wanted to throw that in, again, just so it's on the record, so to speak. And if you want sources for all that, and you want more detail and more content, Reversing Hermon does have a chapter that Gog and Magog is part of the discussion. So people can go there if they want more than what we just got on the podcast. But there's a lot of interesting stuff there, and it really is. Yeah. Don't forget, you can get that Tanner's article two on the episode page as well as that map. So please go to the NakedBiblePodcast.com and get those extra resources. And Mike, is there anything else that you'd like to discuss? No, I think that's it. Okay. We'll patiently wait for part two. And with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Click on New. Start here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 153 Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. Part two, I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey, Mike, how are you doing this week? Pretty good. A lot very busy, as usual. Maybe even a little bit more, but pretty good. Well, yeah, we might as well jump into it. This is part two, as Trey said. So please, if you have not listened to part one, you really need to listen to part one. Part one dealt with who Gog is and isn't. And I'm going to assume that listeners have heard that podcast in this particular episode because it is part two. So I won't repeat its points or necessarily even reread parts of Ezekiel 38 and 39 that I read in that episode. I mean, we'll obviously hit a few things here in both chapters relevant to what we're going to discuss today, but the chapters are long. I'm not going to take the time to read through all of them, or even, again, what I read through last time. Now, the major takeaway from part one, just to refresh the memory of those who did listen to it, is that Gog and his hordes are part of the cosmic north motif in Old Testament theology. That is, they represent evil powers of darkness in a cosmic sense. Now, that involves human warfare, again, because of this linkage, this relationship between the powers of darkness and humanity. But human participants are not the primary focus, and you need to keep that thought in mind as we proceed today. Now, a few preliminary observations as we transition into part two, some of this, again, we'll touch on a little bit of part one content. Two observations here. Number one, the primary focus, again, just to fix in our minds when it comes to Ezekiel 38 and 39 is supernatural evil. And that's why it doesn't matter if Gog can be satisfactorily identified as a specific person either in the past or present or future or not. Gog cannot be clearly identified, but that doesn't matter because the focus is cosmic evil, supernatural evil. It's also why it's pointless to try and impose modern warfare weapons into the chapter or modern countries into the narrative or to come up with some kind of silly reason why armies of the future will fight with weapons of the past, the pre-modern era. And you see all of that when you see these chapters discussed. None of that just really matters. It's all unnecessary and really pays no attention to the cosmic context of the cosmic north of the Zophon or Zophon idea that I talked about in Unseen Realm and of course that I talked about last time. So the humans aren't the primary point. The battle is a battle between supernatural evil and Yahweh's own people and land and of course ultimately him. Secondly, and I mentioned this briefly last time, the Gog and Magog references are repurposed in Revelation 20, verses 7 through 9. We're going to spend a good amount of time talking about that in this episode. So if we accept the New Testament as an inspired commentary on the Old Testament, then that repurposing is significant. In other words, we can't ignore it. We have to let the New Testament writer be our guide, so to speak, when it comes to understanding Gog and Magog. Now with all that as a backdrop, I'm going to ask three questions that I want listeners to sort of keep floating around in their head, keep oriented to. Number one, how are we to read Ezekiel 38 and 39 as to its meaning? Two, how does the New Testament repurpose these chapters? We know that it does, but how does it do it? And three, are the New Testament and Old Testament portrayals consistent with each other? Now I'm going to start with a few key items in Ezekiel 38 and 39 that will help us to think about all three of these questions. In Ezekiel 38.4, Ezekiel 38.4 says, I will turn you about, God is speaking to Gog here, 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. So this notion of putting hooks into Gog's jaws and bringing him out. Now I mention that because we've seen language like that elsewhere in Ezekiel, specifically Ezekiel 29, verses three and four. And again, to refresh your memory there, this was God speaking to the Pharaoh of Egypt. This is one of the oracles of the nations against Egypt. And we read this, thus says the Lord God, behold I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams, that says, my Nile is my own, I made it for myself. I will put hooks in your jaws and make the fish of your streams stick to your scales. And I will draw you up out of the midst of your streams and all the fish of your streams will stick to your scales. Now, the listeners will remember when we talked about Ezekiel 29 in that oracle against Pharaoh, that the point of that imagery was Leviathan. Again, the great sea beast, the great chaos beast, the chaos metaphor of the ancient neary, specifically the ancient Canaan most particularly, but also we find it in the Hebrew Bible. When will God deal with Leviathan or chaos? Well, we know the answer to that question. That question is in Isaiah 27, specifically verse one. I'll read that. Again, this is all backdrop that I want in the listeners' minds here. In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent. Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. So Leviathan gets what's coming to him at the day of the Lord. So these are all important concepts. There's some connection between Gog and Leviathan and of course the day of the Lord. So that's sort of preliminary beginning number one. Ezekiel 38, 5, and 6, the next two verses read this. We have a listing of Gog's helpers, his compatriots. Persia, Kush, and Put are with them, Gog's hordes. Remember, Gog's hordes are from the north, the cosmic north here. But Persia, Kush, and Put are with them. All of them with shield and helmet, Gomor and all his hordes, Beth Togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes. Many peoples are with you. That's Ezekiel 38, 5, and 6. So while we noted human participants are secondary, their inclusion in the description reinforces the supernatural emphasis. And you say, well, how does that work? Well, you'll notice that Israel's enemies come from the south, Kush and Put, the east, Persia, and the west. You say, well, where's the west? Well, back in part one, we talked about the orientation geographically of Gomor and Beth Togarmah and Meshach and Tubal and again these place names. And some of them corresponded to Yavon or Javon, which is the Semitic word for Greece, or the Aegean region. And that would be west of where the battle is going to take place. So what this means is that the imagery is therefore that Israel's enemies come from the four corners of the earth. Now that should sound familiar to readers of Revelation 20 and verse 8, which says that Gog and Magog will come from the four corners of the earth. And Satan will go out, he will go to the four corners of the earth, he will gather Gog and Magog, gather them all to battle, the numbers like the sand of the sea in Revelation 20 verse 8. So there's a connection there. And in the verse that I just read, Gog and Magog are specifically mentioned, but you get this idea of their helpers. Again, all the enemies there in Revelation 20 are from the four corners of the earth. Again, it's interesting because that's where, if we look at Ezekiel 38, that's what we've got. We've got enemies from the four corners of the earth. So the connection is pretty clear. Now the battle takes place, according to Ezekiel 38-8, Ezekiel 39 verses 2 and 4. The battle takes place on or at the, quote, mountains of Israel. Now the phrase is used elsewhere, mountains of Israel, in Ezekiel as a general reference to the land of Israel or Judah. We have it in Ezekiel 6 verses 2 and 3. Again, that one I think is kind of noteworthy. We'll come back to that and read that. But Ezekiel 6-2 and 3, Ezekiel 19-9, Ezekiel 33-38. We've got 34 verses 13 and 14. Ezekiel 36-1 and 4. And Ezekiel 37-22. That's not all the references, but just a sampling. And I want to go to Ezekiel 37-22 and read that. We read, And I will make them, again, God is the speaker, I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel and one king shall be over them. And they shall no longer, they shall be no longer two nations and no longer divided into two kingdoms. So you read a verse like that, one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel. It's very clear that it's a phrase that's just used generally for the whole land. If we go to the earlier reference that I mentioned, Ezekiel 6. Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them and say, You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys. Behold, I, even I will bring a sword upon you. I will destroy your high places. Again, there in the immediate context of Ezekiel, he's referring to Jerusalem and Judah. So just two samples there that, again, show a little bit of variety, but still consistency when it comes to this mountain language. Now, the chief mountain though, in Israel, where the Lord is, is of course Zion. And we get this language in other passages in the Old Testament, Isaiah 2, okay, verses 2 and 3. Let me just spring that up. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be lifted up above the hills and all the nations shall flow to it. And Isaiah 27, 13 is another one. In that day, a great trumpet will be blown and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem. So this is an obvious reference, Jerusalem, it's Mount Zion, so on and so forth. And I point this out because even though we have a plural reference here, mountains of Israel, the day of the Lord is still associated with one particular mountain and that is Zion, okay, where the temple was, where the presence of God was situated and which, obviously, even though there is no temple now, is forever associated with the presence of God in the temple. And that's going to come up a little bit later again. And I'll just telegraph it now. If you've read Unseen Realm, this is important because of the whole concept of Har Moed, okay, the Mount of Assembly. And Har Moed is behind the phrase Armageddon, right? So Armageddon is not a battle that takes place at Megiddo, okay? It's a battle that takes place at and for Zion, okay, Mount Zion, Jerusalem. And there's a whole backdrop to this discussion, but what I want to bring it up here again to get your thoughts oriented to Armageddon. Now, if you're listening carefully now, you're thinking already, no, wait a minute, the connection of Revelation 20 with Ezekiel 38 and 39, that Revelation 20 isn't Armageddon because Revelation 20 verses 7 through 9 occurs after Revelation 19, of course. And Revelation 19 is where the Lord comes back on the white horse at the battle of Armageddon to save Jerusalem and so on and so forth. Those are two different things, two different chapters. So if the Ezekiel language is associated with Revelation 20, why is Mike saying that we need to be thinking about Armageddon as well? Okay, we'll return to that. I'm just planting again the question in your mind because once we get there, you'll see why this is relevant. Now, let's just keep moving. Ezekiel 38, 16 situates the invasion in the, quote, latter days. And the description of the conflict uses stock expressions associated with the latter days or that day or on that day. In other words, the day of the Lord. Now, let's just read Ezekiel 38 just to give you an example. And any study in your own personal Bible study of the day of the Lord, you're going to see language like this all over the prophets. Ezekiel 38, 17 thus says, the Lord God, are you he of whom I spoke in former days by my servants, the prophets of Israel, who in those days prophesied for years that I would bring you against them. And on that, but on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel declares the Lord God, my wrath will be roused in my anger for in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare. On that day, there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel, the fish of the sea, and the birds of the heavens, and the beasts of the field, and all the creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the people who are on the face of the earth shall quake at my presence, and the mountain shall be thrown down, and the cliff shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground. That's Ezekiel 38, 17 through 20. Again, any study of the day of the Lord will inform you that this is stock vocabulary. This is a familiar description to the day of the Lord event. Now, on the page for this episode, we're going to post an article from Anchor Bible Dictionary on the day of the Lord. And you could read that, you could look up the verse references, and you'll see that what I'm saying is true. Okay, that this is stock vocabulary of the day of the Lord. Now, why is that important? Well, if it's stock vocabulary, the day of the Lord, and Ezekiel 38 talks about in the latter days, then this event is associated with the day of the Lord. You say, well, Mike, what's the day of the Lord? Well, the day of the Lord, in, again, in Old Testament thinking, is the final judgment of God when wrong is made right, when the nations that are still in rebellion, and of course, they're gods. Remember our episode back on Isaiah 34 that, you know, not only at the day of the Lord do those who are hostile to Yahweh and his people get punished, but the host of heaven also gets punished, that the house is clean there too. But this is a time of final judgment when the wrong is made right, the nations that are in rebellion and their gods are judged, you know, in a permanent sense and the righteous are vindicated. Now, that means, and again, in biblical thinking, this is called the day of the Lord because this is when God returns to earth to set things right. In hindsight of the New Testament, therefore, this is a reference, and this is the way it's used in the New Testament. This is a reference to the Second Coming of Christ. The New Testament uses the phrase, the day of Christ as a substitution for the day of the Lord. This is the Second Coming. So, this links, this description in Ezekiel 38, 17 through 20 links, Gog and Magog, this event, this incident, links it with the Second Coming of Jesus. Again, what I'm doing is I'm giving you the elements to what Ezekiel 38 and 39 mean and describe. This is not a battle that occurs some years before the Second Coming. I know that's common to situate this battle in, at the beginning of a seven-year tribulation or at the midpoint or whatever. I mean, some put it at the end where it ought to be because if you're looking at that system, that eschatological system, that's when the Lord's going to return. But that is when this event becomes a factor at the Second Coming of Christ and not before, not years before Second Coming of Christ because this is day of the Lord language. Now, returning back a little bit more, getting a little bit more detail in this description, at this judgment, again, the one that's described here in Ezekiel 38 and on into chapter 39, God destroys Gog and his hordes with fiery hailstones from the sky. That's Ezekiel 38, 23. Ezekiel 39, verse 6. Again, fiery hailstones from the sky. Gog and his hordes are buried in the, quote, Valley of the Travelers. I'm quoting the ESV here. East of the sea also called the Valley of Hamon Gog. That's Ezekiel 39, 11 and 39, 15. And we'll have more to say about the travelers. That's actually an important part of what's going on here with Ezekiel 38 and 39. But again, get the picture. This event coincides with the day of the Lord, which the New Testament puts at the Second Coming. Gog and his hordes are defeated, destroyed by fiery hailstones from the sky. Again, does this sound familiar? Again, you actually get this language in Revelation 20. Again, and you sort of expect it there because Revelation 20 references Gog and Magog. So that's not really a surprise, but I think we need to point it out explicitly. Again, this event is referred to the day of the Lord as the day of Christ in the New Testament. And with respect to the New Testament and Revelation 20, again, just by way of a little summary statement here, remember, we have the enemies from the four corners of the earth in Revelation 20. They're destroyed with fire from heaven in Revelation 20. Okay? Simple enough. It's very clear that Revelation 20 verses 7 through 9 is drawing on Ezekiel 38 and 39. In Revelation 20 verse 8, Gog and Magog are mentioned explicitly. And you say, well, Mike, this is so obvious. Why are you making a point of it? Because this connection between with Revelation 20 and specifically the day of the Lord troubles people who want to associate this event with the beginning of a seven-year tribulation and a rapture. In other words, their system gets in the way of the text. And you will actually see in some writers, people say things like, well, this event in Revelation 20 is a different Gog and Magog battle, not the one in Ezekiel 38. It's a second one. It's a different one. That is bogus. The only reason people are saying that is to make their system prop up. Okay, we're not about systems here. We're about the text. Again, if we're going to do biblical theology by definition, it needs to be about the text, not a system that we've constructed and bring to the text and then have to adjust the text to fit the system. That's not what we do here. But you'll see that. So even though this seems like an obvious thing, we have to point it out because this is what certain writers will do. They'll just say it must be a different one so that their system survives. Now, I'm going to be a little kinder to systems as toward the end of this episode because certain systems can work within what we're going to be doing here. This is not going to narrow into one system. So just heads up there. But we need to point these things out again, just to reinforce the idea that the text needs to be primary and systems are put into the background somewhere. Now, let's continue on with this burial. The burial language is really important and frankly, it's kind of interesting. Now, in regard to this reference that Gog and his hordes get buried in the Valley of the Travelers. This is Ezekiel 39, verse 11, 39, 15. Valley of the Travelers, also known as the Valley of Hamon Gog. What's being described here? Well, there's a conceptual and a geographical backdrop to this, to what is described in these two verses that is actually quite consistent with Revelation 20. Let's think of Revelation 20 first. That might be more familiar. So let's just go there and I'll read it to you and then we'll come back to the Valley of the Travelers thing. So Revelation 20, in verse 7. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and he will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth. Gog and Magog to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea and they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the blood city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. So we've got Gog, Magog, four corners of the earth and then fire from heaven. All these things are in Ezekiel 38, 39. Verse 10. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur were the beast and the false prophet were and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. So after these hordes that are surrounding Jerusalem and threatening them, after Gog and Magog and the four corners of the earth people, after they are consumed with fire from heaven, their leader, the devil here in Revelation 20, gets thrown in the lake of fire and sulfur were the beast and the false prophet are. Well if you go back to Ezekiel 38 and 39, what happens after again the Gog and his hordes are defeated with fiery hailstones from the sky? They are buried in this valley, the valley of the travelers east of the sea, also called the valley of Hamon Gog. You say well how in the world is that consistent? Well we need to divert our attention away a little bit from earth-bound literalism here and think more conceptually, think more theologically, think more abstractly about this. Now Gog and his hordes get buried in this valley of the travelers place. The Hebrew reads, that is literally translated the valley of the travelers. Now I want to read through the DDD entry, dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible, the entry for travelers, there is one, believe it or not, and I'm hoping this will introduce listeners to what's going on behind earth-bound literalism in Ezekiel 38 and 39, again because that's usually how people approach the passage, they press what Ezekiel 38 and 39 says into some earthly literalistic scheme. There's something else going on here, so here's the DDD entry, it begins a little bit awkwardly. The participle Cal plural, that's Hebrew talk, ovarim, that's the morphological form of the word, it's a Cal plural participle, big deal. The plural ovarim comes from the verb avar to pass from one side to the other, that's what that Hebrew verb means. It seems to have a special meaning in the context of the cult of the dead, denoting the spirits of the dead crossing the border between the land of the living and the world of the dead. It can be interpreted as a divine name in Ezekiel 39, 11 and 14, again, going with the Hebrew numbering there. What it means by divine name there is again a place associated with divine beings, and of course Gog, we've argued as this cosmic divine being, a symbol of cosmic evil, and the human element is secondary here. So it can be interpreted as a divine name in these passages, which may also have been preserved in the geographical name avarim, and you get that in Numbers 21, 10 to 11, Numbers 27, 12, Numbers 33, 44, and 47 and 48, Deuteronomy 32, 49, and Jeremiah 22, 20. Its ugeritic cognate would be spelled the same way, the iron, bet, rash, mem, and then he gives a KTU number. That's the numbering system, the abbreviation for the keneiform tablets from Ugar. It's KTU 1.22. And he continues in the ugeritic text, KTU 1.22, describing a necromantic session, the king invokes the spirits of the dead, the refahim, and celebrates a feast, probably the New Year festival with them. It is told that they came over traveling by horse-drawn chariots. As they are taking part in the meal served for them, they are explicitly called those who came over. They are called ovarim. So you have refahim referred to as ovarim. Okay, are you catching a drift now? The refahim are associated with the underworld, in Revelation 20 language, the lake of fire, continuing with the DDD entry. In Job 3318, the verb ovar is used to denote the crossing of the river between life and death. This represents the quite general ancient conception of a river or sea separating the world of the dead from the land of the living. For example, the Greek river Styx and the Akkadian river Hubur. In the Sumerian flood story, Dilmun, the place of blissful afterlife is called the land of the crossing. Now, we'll skip a little bit, go down a little bit further in the entry, DDD. The valley of the ovarim is located east of the sea, verse 11, Ezekiel 3911, which is probably the dead sea. So it was part of the transjordan. This is a region which shows many traces of ancient cults of the dead, such as the megalithic monuments called dolmens and place names referring to the dead and the netherworld, such as ovot. Now I'm going to go back up to the beginning of this entry, and he gives some references here to the place, the geographical place name, and we now know it's in the transjordan avarim. Here's what numbers 21, 10 and 11 says, and the people of Israel set out and camped in ovoth. Ovoth is the Hebrew word for spirits, spirits of the dead. The ove, the mistress of the ove, is the title of the medium at Endor in 1 Samuel 28. Ovoth is therefore naturally associated with necromancy, the spirits of the dead, you know, the refaim dead in the underworld, and avarim, again here in the verse, you know, they set out from ovoth and camped it, ia ovarim in the wilderness that is opposite Moab toward the sunrise, and there are a few of these references, link avarim with ovoth. They're very close to each other. Again, these are gateways. These are considered places that lead to the netherworld, to the underworld, the realm of the dead where the refaim are. It's just that in this case it happens to be in Moab in the transjordan, and this is the place that is referred to in Ezekiel 39. So you have Gog and his hordes winding up in the bad place, the netherworld, the realm of the dead where the refaim are. Now you're going to miss all of that if you have an earthbound literalistic hermeneutic in this chapter, and I've read lots of books about, oh, well how many months would it take for people using shovels and backhoes? You did a Barry X number. That is not the point. This is cosmic theological language. This is the language of supernatural darkness. We get lost and fixated on the literalism that we're trying to impose on the text, and we miss the fact that an ancient Israelite reader would have read this and gone, okay, they're all going to wind up in hell. That's the reference, and that's why Ezekiel 39 here fits actually very nicely with Revelation 20, because Satan goes there and then we've had the description of the resurrection, those who are not found written in the book of life or wind up in the lake of fire. We've had that. The beast is there. Again, it's a consistent picture. This is where the bad ones go. This is where the good ones don't go, that sort of thing. Again, we miss that when we're trying to over-literalize. Now, I would say just by way of summary here, viewing the passage this way again in a cosmic sort of way makes the connection to Revelation 20 pretty obvious. In Ezekiel 39 Gog, the symbol of cosmic darkness and all his hordes go down to the valley of the ovary. Where or where else would they go? That's where they basically belong. The valley of the ovary and the ones who have passed into the underworld before them, the abode of the Refiee. Now, other scholars prefer to see the references here in Ezekiel 39 to Molech imagery. And there are some certain reasons why they refer that block, for instance, takes this view. And part of his, I shouldn't say part, most of his argument is really on the fact that the valley of Hamon Gog in Ezekiel 39 sounds in Hebrew like the valley of Hinoam, or at least a little bit. Here they are in Hebrew. You have gay, Hamon Gog, and gay, Hinoam. And they sound a little bit alike, and block says, well, it might be, the valley of Hamon Gog might be a play on words on the valley of Hinoam. And of course, the valley of Hinoam is notorious in the Old Testament for being the place of child sacrifice to Molech. And so this is why some scholars prefer Molech imagery. Now, block, again, he doesn't really spend too much time defending this. He more or less just assumes it. But the fact is, he doesn't interact at all with the euguritic material that the DDD entry brings up. So that's kind of a gap in block's commentary there. Those who prefer Molech also do so a little bit because if Molech is behind the phrasing, then the death, catch this thought, it's important, and you don't need Molech for this, but catch this thought. They like it because the death of Gog and his hordes, therefore, becomes a sacrifice to Yahweh in reverse of the sacrifices of children at Hamon, at the valley of Hamon, to Molech. I would say, though, that this sacrificial aspect I think is valid, but it can be in view without any reference to Molech at all. If you look at Ezekiel 39.17, Ezekiel 39.17 says, As for you, son of man, thus says the Lord God, speak to the birds of every sort and to all beast the field. Assemble and come, gather from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you. A great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel. Now, the word there in Hebrew is Zavach. It's the normal word for sacrifice. You don't really need specifically to have Molech in view here to understand that what's going on here is, in effect, the offering of Gog and his hordes up to Yahweh as a sacrifice, again kind of reversing the idolatrous pattern that would have been represented by Baal worship or any worship of any other God. So, again, the imagery, the language, is actually there. If you don't want to see Molech, if you prefer the Refayim imagery, again, which I do, I think it makes a lot of sense, then you can still have the sacrificial element. I want to say something else about this too before we leave the point. If you look at Ezekiel 39, 17 through 20, and I had just read verse 17 there, it turns out that Yahweh is the one killing the sacrifice for his guests. His guests are the birds and the beasts of the field. He's the one inviting by means of the prophet, the birds of prey and the animals to the feast. Thus says the Lord God, speak to the birds of every sort and all the beasts of the field. Assemble, come, gather, all around to the sacrificial feast I'm preparing for you. And then later it says you shall be filled, you know, I'll back up a little bit, you shall eat fat until you are filled and drink blood till you are drunk. At the sacrificial feast I am preparing for you and you shall be filled at my table. So this is actually imagery of Yahweh slaying Gog and his hordes as a sacrifice, a sacrificial meal for his guests. That's what you get. Now it's at a point like this that you'd want to return, I think, for interpretation's sake, to the hooks in the Jaws description for an added dimension. Remember the hooks in the Jaws description from Ezekiel 38, 4 where Gog, you know, is described in this way like just like Leviathan imagery in other passages. Gog is described this way and again that links him to Leviathan, the symbol of all that opposes God, the symbol of chaos, the symbol of wickedness and evil and upheaval and turmoil, all the forces against God. The death of Gog and his hordes is again a sacrificial banquet for Yahweh and the righteous, but where does Leviathan come in? Well, in the Second Temple period you actually have a number of texts that pick up on this language, this imagery, and there are a number of Second Temple texts that have, for lack of a better way to put it, at the day of the Lord when God returns to earth and defeats Leviathan. Remember Isaiah 271? In that day, the Lord's going to kill Leviathan. The thinking was that when that happens, Leviathan is basically served up as a meal to the righteous. It sounds really weird and a little bit grotesque, but this was the idea that, again, using symbolic language, that this is a picture of ultimate victory. God isn't going to just kill the forces of wickedness and evil and do away with them. You're going to have a barbecue out of it. Here's the image. Evil and chaos in the end will be totally consumed, totally consumed. The way to convey that idea, again, is this meal imagery. That has all sorts of ramifications, I think, for the idea of the marriage supper at the lamb. What is served at the marriage supper of the lamb? What is the meat and the drink? There are just a number of ways that this can go and can be taken, but it's an image. It's a picture of the final victory, the ultimate victory over evil. Again, it's not that there's going to be literal eating and all that sort of stuff, but it's an image that's drawn from the Old Testament and even the wider ancient Near Eastern world about what's going to happen to evil at the end. It's going to be totally gone. It's not going to be wounded. It's not going to be left over and all that. It's going to be totally consumed. That's the point here. Now, I would ask just as a sidebar, again, since this idea, this valley of the ovarim, the refaim and all this and serving up the corpses of evil, as it were metaphorically, to the righteous and not only to the righteous, but specifically in Ezekiel, to the birds of prey and the beast, the field. It's kind of an ultimate indignity as well. Again, but this idea gets picked up in later literature as the eschatological feast. If that's the case, even if it's partly the case, let's just leave it with the birds of prey and the animals here that they consume because that's what Ezekiel says strictly speaking. If that is a parallel, again, because they go to the realm of the dead, if that is a parallel to Satan and his minions and everybody else that goes to the lake of fire in Revelation, then what does this say about the redemption of Satan? We recently on the Facebook group had this big Bruja angelic redemption, which of course I don't buy. But this is one of the reasons why I don't buy it. It's also one of the reasons why I don't buy universalism. You have this kind of language that defines ultimate victory in the consumption of evil. I mean, just putting it bluntly. It doesn't communicate the idea that evil is going to get another chance. There's nothing in Ezekiel. There's nothing in Revelation 20 that suggests that Satan, his minions and those under his power who fight against Yahweh and his people, get a second chance. They don't get regurgitated so that they can get another chance. Angelic redemption, when viewed against the context of this whole burnt offering or meal offering language, just doesn't make any sense. It's not even in the picture is the point. There are no weasel words in the passage that you can go to and say, oh, well, they'll probably still be around and get redeemed later on. No, that just isn't there. It just isn't there. And you get the same kind of sacrificial language, the harem, devoted to Yahweh of the conquest specifically aimed at the Anakim, again, the giant clans and all that. You don't get weasel words there for some later redemption. You just don't. And so this isn't the whole reason, obviously, why I don't buy angelic redemption or the redemption of Satan at some point. It's just one of the reasons I have. But I thought, since we're here and we have this underworld image, we might as well bring it up. Now remember, as well, this gets kind of interesting, and this goes into, again, the Second Temple thinking, who else, again, is in the Lake of Fire with Satan? Well, it's the beast. The beast, the beast. Why does that sound familiar? The beast. We always think of Antichrist, but where does the beast of the Book of Revelation, Revelation 13, come from? Revelation 13, one, the beast rises out of the sea. It's Leviathan imagery. And Leviathan, the beast, again, the forces of chaos, the forces of everything hostile to God is what this language points to. These are important metaphors that we can't dispense with. That also winds up, again, in this realm of the dead. There's no opportunity, again, for future redemption or anything else like this. Again, evil is devoured and done away with. Now, a bit of a commercial here, if you'll pardon that. I discussed some of this, actually a good bit of it, in reversing Hermon. And there's one particular chapter, Chapter 11, the one that deals with Antichrist and the imagery of Antichrist and how it's associated with Babylon, and how that's the backdrop to Mystery Babylon. Again, that chapter deals with a lot of this imagery. And the point of origin, the reason why these things are connected, Leviathan, you've got Babylon, you've got this place of the dead with the refaim, again, we know who the refaim are. The reason why that is important to understanding Babylon and the concept of Mystery Babylon is because of where that stuff comes from and the fact that the Apkalu, the Mesopotamian counterparts to the fallen sons of God, the Watchers, that's Babylonian. Okay, those are Babylonian good guys. All of these things go together. This is a matrix of ideas. And so when Revelation is talking about the beast and Mystery Babylon, there are connections back to supernatural forces of evil, the refaim, okay, the Nephilim, the fallen sons of God, the Watchers. This is a matrix of ideas. There's something going on here that our understanding of these passages in Revelation will be incomplete. And in some cases, go off track if we don't factor in this material. So I'm not going to get into that here, there are specifics you'll find in the book. But since we're into this subject matter, you should know that there is something of a summary of this material in the book. I'll mention another book here. If you're interested in the whole Leviathan as sacrificial meal idea of the Second Temple period, I have a book recommendation for you. It's available used. It's a volume in the Harvard Semitic monograph series. The foreign language stuff is typically in transliteration in that series. So I think you could still read it even if you don't have Hebrew. It's a book by K. William Whitney. Last name is W-H-I-T-N-E-Y. And the title is Two Strange Beasts, subtitled Leviathan and Behemoth in the Second Temple. Okay, these are not dinosaurs, please. They're not dinosaurs. These are important metaphors that are about cosmic darkness. It's so much more interesting. You know, if you just situated in its own context, rather than trying to defend something that Ken Ham says or so, it's just so much more interesting and so much more contextually relevant. So if you're interested in this subject, I highly recommend Whitney's book. It's one of the few books that collects all the material. Now, let's go back to our purpose here, Revelation, or excuse me, Ezekiel 38 and 39. You know, we've talked about how Revelation 20 verses 7 through 10 repurposes imagery from Ezekiel 38 and 39. We've got this battle at the end. Okay, Revelation 20, this battle at the end. It's the day of the Lord. The Lord returns. He's going to finally defeat Satan and all of evil and chaos and wickedness, and they get sent to the lake of fire. Okay, the language, again, Gog and Magog is used in Revelation 20. We go back to Ezekiel 38 and 39. We find the very same themes in the latter days at the day of the Lord, the day of the Lord vocabulary. This is when this battle happens. Gog is a symbol of supernatural chaos and evil. Again, we're not denying that humans are involved in this because of the symbiosis between the unseen realm and our realm. Okay, we get that. This is what we do on this podcast. We don't look at one or the other. It's always a both and. Okay, we understand that. But if you focus on the literalism that's earthbound, you're going to miss all this stuff. You're going to miss how Ezekiel 38 and 39 get repurposed in Revelation 20 and how it describes the final conflict. Okay, when all of this is put to an end, you know, the eschatological ultimate victory. Now, having said all that, I've been holding back one thing. This repurposing is important. It's important for another reason. And there's an element of the repurposing of Ezekiel 38 and 39 in the book of Revelation that for some scholars, you know, they will use it to argue the death of premillennial eschatology. Now, I think that is an overstatement. But what I show you in what follows here in the last few minutes of the episode here, what I show you might for some kill off traditional premillennialism. But again, I'm going to say that that's overstated and I'll tell you why. But it doesn't kill off at all the idea of a future earthly messianic kingdom. You say, well, isn't that the millennium? Isn't that what premillennialism is all about? Well, that's the way premillennialism is talked about. But the idea of an earthly reign of the returned Christ doesn't need to be restricted to a system. Okay, so with that, let's get into it. Here's the issue. We know that Revelation 20 draws on Ezekiel 38 and 39. It should be a no brainer right now. It mentions Gog and Magog explicitly. You've got all these parallels, okay? You would expect, again, John, who's writing the book of Revelation, when he gets to Revelation 20 and he mentions Gog and Magog, you'd expect him to have Ezekiel 38 and 39 in mind. Again, that's obvious. But here's the rub. John also repurposes Ezekiel 38 and 39 in the chapter before Revelation 20. That is in Revelation 19. And that's the passage where Jesus comes back on a white horse to slay the beast and save Jerusalem. John repurposes Ezekiel 38 and 39 in both Revelation 19 and Revelation 20. And if you're a premillennialist who's reading the book of Revelation in a linear chronological fashion, you're thinking, well, how can that be? Because chapter 19 is the second coming of Jesus. In chapter 20, the first six verses, we've got a millennium. And then after the millennium's over, we've got this other battle. How can they both be described using the same Old Testament chapters? You got a sense of the problem. I'll explain that in a moment. I'm going to read you Revelation 19, though, so that you know what this is based on. So here's Revelation 19, 11 through 21. Our focus here is going to be on verses 17 through 21, but I want to read the whole thing here. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, the one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. It's an interesting statement. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure. We're following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with the rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is clearly the return of Jesus. Here's verse 17. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men both free and slave, both small and great. Verse 19. And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast, and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that Burns was sulfur, and the rest were slain by the sword that come from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse and all the birds were gorged with their flesh. That's the end of verse 21. Now, there are only three passages in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where a word in the root family for bird and for fly, the terms that are used in Revelation 19 appear. There's only three passages in the Septuagint where those terms appear. Deuteronomy 4.17, Proverbs 19.12, and Ezekiel 39.4. The last of these is the only one with an added lemma for eating. So it's pretty clear that John in Revelation 19 is drawing on Ezekiel 39. So here's the question. How can John have the same passage in Ezekiel in mind for both Revelation 19 and Revelation 20? Doesn't John know that Revelation 19 has Jesus returning and then we have a thousand-year kingdom, and it's only after that millennium that the events of Revelation 20 play out? Since Revelation 20 verses 1 through 6 mention the thousand years several times, doesn't John know that? Well, the point is that maybe John doesn't know that. Maybe John isn't thinking of this chronology. Maybe his repurposing of Ezekiel 38 and 39 in both chapters indicates that both chapters describe the same event, the return of Christ and the defeat of Satan. Now, many commentators who do not hold to a dispensational pre-millennial reading of Revelation will take this view. They believe that Revelation is not to be read in a linear chronological fashion, but that its events, the three series of the seven judgments, are to be read instead in cycles. That is, the three series describe the same seven cyclical events on earth. This is known as the recapitulation reading of the book of Revelation. Now, Meredith Kline, whose article I've referenced in part one, on Armageddon. He's one of the few evangelicals to see the Divine Council stuff in Revelation. Kline was one who believes that this back-to-back use in Revelation 19 and 20 of Ezekiel 38 and 39 means that the two chapters describe the same event. That would in turn mean that there is no intervening one-thousand-year period. The one-thousand-year reference just means a long time and applies to the period that precedes the second coming, the period in which we now live, the so-called church age. And if this is the right reading, the thousand-year millennial kingdom vanishes. And that's what Kline says in his article. He refers to this as the death of premillennial eschatology, because you collapse versus chapters 19 and 20 into each other. And if you're dealing with the second coming at the day of the Lord, then the period that precedes the second coming and the defeat of Satan, the period that precedes Revelation 20, verses 7 through 10, is not a one-thousand-year literal millennial kingdom. It's the period in which we now live. And that makes the premillennial system implode according to Kline. Kline is a non-millennialist. And again, he uses a lot of the Old Testament imagery that is there, and it's legit, it's there, to make premillennialism collapse. And if you are a premillennialist, I don't want this to discourage you from reading Kline's article, it's actually really good. But this is where he winds up. Now, I would say Kline's reading is certainly possible, but it could be also that John does use Ezekiel 38 and 39 to describe different events, just because he wants to do that. In other words, he picks something from Ezekiel 39 to describe something at the second coming. And then he picks something from Ezekiel 38 and 39 to describe this event after a millennium. As a premillennialist, you could argue that, okay, John's using Ezekiel 38 and 39 in both passages. Whoop-de-do. He's using the Gog and Magog passage both times. He uses different elements of it. Big deal. We don't have to collapse the two to themselves into one unit, thus eliminating a thousand-year reign before these events happen. That turns the thousand-year reign into the church age. We don't have to do that, like the online list does. We can acknowledge that John is using Ezekiel 38 and 39 in both passages and still work the system. And you can. You can do that. I would also add, even if Kline is correct, let's just assume that Kline is correct. And the thousand-year references in Revelation 20 have nothing to do with a thousand-year millennial kingdom. It refers to the church age preceding the Second Coming. Let's just go with what Kline says. Well, guess what? That doesn't rule out a literal earthly kingdom of the Messiah. Why not? Because you have one right after. You have the New Earth. Okay, you have a kingdom on the New Earth with the Messiah ruling. Now, many Amillars want the kingdom to be the church age period that's all they're interested in. And then the New Earth talk in Revelation 21 and 22, let's just talk about heaven. That's just all symbolic about heaven, wherever that is. Well, that's a guess. I would suggest, again, that the talk in Revelation 21 and 22 is an earthly kingdom because that's where it is. It's on Earth. It's a new Eden. It's a global Eden. Again, I don't think that's accidental. I think that's deliberate. Now, all of this is why I say when I get asked about eschatological systems. This is why I say I don't care about the systems. Who gives a rev? Okay, I think there is recapitulation and revelation, but I also think there's some linear chronology there, too. I don't think it has to be an either or. I think it's a both-and. And I also think that the final New Earth is the earthly kingdom of God. We're going to get that. And if that's the case, then to limit it to a thousand years, it makes the kingdom too small, too short, too brief. I'm interested in and believe in a future earthly kingdom of the reigning Messiah over all the nations and we as believers reigning with Him displacing the fallen sons of God who now rule over them. That is what I think biblical eschatology describes. I don't care how it fits into a system or if it fits into a system. I don't care about systems. You know, if you want your system, I've just given you the way it can work if you're an on-miller or a premiller. But personally, I just don't care about the systems. I'm interested in how the book ends. And again, it ends on earth. I think to capture, to reclaim the nations involves events happening on earth and a kingdom on earth. That's where I'm at and that's why. So to wrap up, what's Gog and Magog? Ezekiel 38 and 39 about. It's an event associated with and ended by the Second Coming. It's the day of the Lord. It's not a battle that occurs years earlier than the Second Coming. How that plays out in terms of human participants, precise identifying which human nations and armies is anybody's guess. That is secondary. The important point is that Gog is a Satan figure and the battle describes Satan's last gasp at robbing Yahweh of his people and his kingdom. Mike, you mentioned in the unseen realm about Irenaeus. Notice that the word Titan had it up to 666 in Greek. The matron, Leviathan was a Titan. So that's pretty interesting. Yeah, it is. And again, that is something that's I discussed in chapter 11 and reversing Hermon as well. There are other geometric approaches to that that are worth thinking about too. Yeah, absolutely. Mike, we might as well just cover the book of Revelation. Come on. Just get it over with. It's like pulling the Band-Aid off. Let's just do it. It's just a convoluted mess. Let's just do it and get it over with. That way, you just put it behind you and move on. I'll tell you what turns me off about it is you end up spending half of every episode talking about systems. Can you cover it without covering the systems? Probably not. Because when you say something you have to say now, you've probably heard this different thing over here and that's because you've been taught this system. Or this might be really familiar to you, what you were taught in church, and your Christian neighbor doesn't believe that because you've got different systems. So you always end up talking about how the book is taught and the presumptions therein to the book. And at the end of the day, everybody's guessing. So I do think there is recapitulation. There really is something to that. But you can't just use that and say, well, nothing in the book is chronological. That's the kind of overstatement you get when people are defending hermeneutics and specific systems. And you just have to muck through all of that every time you say anything about any particular passage in the book. I think it's easy to get lost in all that. Well, we can do a naked Bible version of it. Sure, you can mention some systems, but you can naked revelation. All right, well, we'll get pieces here and there, I guess. And Mike, next week, it'll be our 20th Q&A show. So that's a start. I should get ready for that. Yeah. All right, Mike, why just want to remind everybody, if you haven't done so and you're on Facebook, please go like the Naked Bible Podcast page or go join the Naked Bible Group. Lots of great conversations and great minds in the group talking about similar content. So please do that if you have not. And with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.