This document provides commentary and analysis of Ezekiel 39 from multiple scholars and commentators. It summarizes that the chapter describes God's defeat of evil forces represented by Gog and his armies invading Israel. God will destroy Gog and the armies on the mountains of Israel, leaving their bodies to be eaten by birds and beasts. Through this judgment, God will demonstrate his power over all nations and make his holy name known to Israel and the surrounding peoples. The defeat of Gog represents God's final victory over evil in the world.

1. EZEKIEL 39 COMMENTARY
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
1 “Son of man, prophesy against Gog and say:
‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am
against you, Gog, chief prince of[a] Meshek and
Tubal.
BARNES, "The present chapter describes the defeat of Evil and the triumph of God
and His people. As the prophet predicted the advance of Evil under the figure of the
invasion of an actual army; so he declares the overthrow of Evil by the figure of a host
routed and slain, and the consequent purification of a land, partially overrun and
disturbed. Some forgetting that this is a figure, have searched history to find out some
campaign in the land of Israel, some overthrow of invaders, on which to fix this
prophecy, and have assigned localities to the burial-place “Hamon-Gog” Eze_39:11.
GILL, "The present chapter describes the defeat of Evil and the triumph of God and
His people. As the prophet predicted the advance of Evil under the figure of the invasion
of an actual army; so he declares the overthrow of Evil by the figure of a host routed and
slain, and the consequent purification of a land, partially overrun and disturbed. Some
forgetting that this is a figure, have searched history to find out some campaign in the
land of Israel, some overthrow of invaders, on which to fix this prophecy, and have
assigned localities to the burial-place “Hamon-Gog” Eze_39:11.
HENRY 1-7, “This prophecy begins as that before (Eze_38:3, Eze_38:4, I am
against thee, and I will turn thee back); for there is need of line upon line, both for the
conviction of Israel's enemies and the comfort of Israel's friends. Here, as there, it is
foretold that God will bring this enemy from the north parts, as formerly the Chaldeans
were fetched from the north, Jer_1:14 (Omne malum ab aquilone - Every evil comes
from the north), and, long after, the Roman empire was overrun by the northern
1

2. nations, that he will bring him upon the mountains of Israel (Eze_39:2), first as a place
of temptation, where the measures of his iniquity shall be filled up, and then as a place of
execution, where his ruin shall be completed. And that is it which is here enlarged upon.
1. His soldiers shall be disarmed and so disabled to carry on their enterprise. Though the
men of might may find their hands, yet to what purpose, when they find it is put out of
their power to do mischief, when God shall smite their bow out of their left hand and
their arrow out of their right? Eze_39:3. Note, The weapons formed against Zion shall
not prosper. 2. He and the greatest part of his army shall be slain in the field of battle
(Eze_39:4): Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel; there they sinned, and there
they shall perish, even upon the holy mountains of Israel, for there broke he the arrows
of the bow, Psa_76:3. The mountains of Israel shall be moistened, and fattened, and
made fruitful, with the blood of the enemies. “Thou shalt fall upon the open field (Eze_
39:5) and shalt not be able even there to make thy escape.” Even upon the mountains he
shall not find a pass that he shall be able to maintain, and upon the open field he shall
not find a road that he shall be able to make his escape by. He and his bands; his regular
troops, and the people that are with him that follow the camp to share in the plunder,
shall all fall with him. Note, Those that cast in their lot among wicked people (Pro_1:14),
that they may have one purse with them, must expect to take their lot with them, and
fare as they fare, taking the worse with the better. There shall be such a general slaughter
made that but a sixth part shall be left (Eze_39:2), the other five shall all be cut off.
Never was army so totally routed as this. And, for its greater infamy and reproach, their
bodies shall be a feast to the birds of prey, Eze_39:4. Compare Eze_39:17, Thou shalt
fall, for I have spoken it. Note, Rather shall the most illustrious princes (Antiochus was
called Epiphanes - the illustrious) and the most numerous armies fall to the ground than
any word of God; for he that has spoken will make it good. 3. His country also shall be
made desolate: I will send a fire on Magog (Eze_39:6) and among those that dwell
carelessly, or confidently, in the isles, that is, the nations of the Gentiles. He designed to
destroy the land of Israel, but shall not only be defeated in that design, but shall have his
own destroyed by some fire, some consuming judgment or other. Note, Those who
invade other people's rights justly lose their own. 4. God will by all this advance the
honour of his own name, (1.) Among his people Israel; they shall hereby know more of
God's name, of his power and goodness, his care of them, his faithfulness to them. His
providence concerning them shall lead them into a better acquaintance with him; every
providence should do so, as well as every ordinance: I will make my holy name known
in the midst of my people. In Judah is God known; but those that know much of God
should know more of him; we should especially increase in the knowledge of his name as
a holy name. They shall know him as a God of perfect purity and rectitude and that hates
all sin, and then it follows, I will not let them pollute my holy name any more. Note,
Those that rightly know God's holy name will not dare to profane it; for it is through
ignorance of it that men make light of it and make bold with it. And this is God's method
of dealing with men, first to enlighten their understandings, and by that means to
influence the whole man; he first makes us to know his holy name, and so keeps us from
polluting it and engages us to honour it. And this is here the blessed effect of God's
glorious appearances on the behalf of his people. Thus he completes his favours, thus he
sanctifies them, thus he makes them blessings indeed; by them he instructs his people
and reforms them. When the Almighty scattered kings for her she was white as snow in
Salmon, Psa_68:14. (2.) Among the heathen; those that never knew it, or would not own
it, shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. They shall be made to know by
dear bought experience that he is a God of power, and his people's God and Saviour; and
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3. it is in vain for the greatest potentates to contend with him; none ever hardened their
heart against him and prospered.
JAMISON, "Eze_39:1-29. Continuation of the prophecy against Gog.
Repeated from Eze_38:3, to impress the prophecy more on the mind.
K&D 1-8, “Further Description of the Judgment to Fall upon Gog and his Hosts
Eze_39:1-8. General announcement of his destruction. - Eze_39:1. And thou, son of
man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal
with thee, Gog, thou prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. Eze_39:2. I will mislead thee,
and conduct thee, and cause thee to come up from the uttermost north, and bring thee
to the mountains of Israel; Eze_39:3. And will smite thy bow from thy left hand, and
cause thine arrows to fall from thy right hand. Eze_39:4. Upon the mountains of Israel
wilt thou fall, thou and all thy hosts, and the peoples which are with thee: I give thee for
food to the birds of prey of every plumage, and to the beasts of the field. Eze_39:5.
Upon the open field shalt thou fall, for I have spoken it, is the saying of the Lord
Jehovah. Eze_39:6. And I will send fire in Magog, and among those who dwell in
security upon the islands, that they may know that I am Jehovah. Eze_39:7. I will
make known my holy name in the midst of my people Israel, and will not let my holy
name be profaned any more, that the nations may know that I am Jehovah, holy in
Israel. Eze_39:8. Behold, it comes and happens, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah; this
is the day of which I spoke. - The further description of the judgment with which Gog
and his hosts are threatened in Eze_38:21-23, commences with a repetition of the
command to the prophet to prophesy against Gog (Eze_39:1, cf. Eze_38:2-3). The
principal contents of Eze_38:4-15 are then briefly summed up in Eze_39:2. ‫י‬ ִ‫תּ‬ ְ‫ב‬ ַ‫,שֹׁב‬ as
in Eze_38:4, is strengthened by ‫י‬ ִ‫ת‬ֵ‫שּׁ‬ ִ‫,שׁ‬ ‫,שׁשׁא‬ ἁπαχ λεγ.., is not connected with ‫שׁ‬ֵ‫שׁ‬ in
the sense of “I leave a sixth part of thee remaining,” or afflict thee with six punishments;
but in the Ethiopic it signifies to proceed, or to climb, and here, accordingly, it is used in
the sense of leading on (lxx καθοδηγήσω σε, or, according to another reading, κατάξω;
Vulg. educam). For Eze_39:2, compare Eze_38:15 and Eze_38:8. In the land of Israel,
God will strike his weapons out of his hands, i.e., make him incapable of fighting (for the
fact itself, compare the similar figures in Psa_37:15; Psa_46:10), and give him up with
all his army as a prey to death. ‫ט‬ִ‫י‬ַ‫,ע‬ a beast of prey, is more precisely defined by ‫ר‬ ‫פּ‬ ִ‫,צ‬
and still further strengthened by the genitive ‫ָף‬‫נ‬ָ‫ל־כּ‬ָ‫:כּ‬ birds of prey of every kind. The
judgment will not be confined to the destruction of the army of Gog, which has invaded
the land of Israel, but (Eze_39:6) will also extend to the land of Gog, and to all the
heathen nations that are dwelling in security. ‫שׁ‬ ֵ‫,א‬ fire, primarily the fire of war; then, in
a further sense, a figure denoting destruction inflicted directly by God, as in Eze_38:22,
which is therefore represented in Rev_20:9 as fire falling from heaven. Magog is the
population of the land of Magog (Eze_38:2). With this the inhabitants of the distant
coastlands of the west (the ‫יּים‬ ִ‫)א‬ are associated, as representatives of the remotest
heathen nations. Eze_39:7, Eze_39:8. By this judgment the Lord will make known His
3

4. holy name in Israel, and show the heathen that He will not let it be blasphemed by them
any more. For the fact itself, compare Eze_36:20. For Eze_39:8, compare Eze_21:12,
and for ‫ם‬ ‫יּ‬ ַ‫,ה‬ see Eze_38:18-19.
COFFMAN, “"And thou, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the
Lord Jehovah: Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and
Tubal: and I will turn thee about, and I will lead thee on, and will cause thee to
come up from the uttermost parts of the north; and I will bring thee upon the
mountains of Israel; and I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause
thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of
Israel, thou, and all thy hordes, and the peoples that are with thee: I will give thee
unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
Thou shalt fall upon the open field; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord Jehovah.
And I will send a fire on Magog, and on them that dwell securely in the isles; and
they shall know that I am Jehovah. And my holy name will I make known in the
midst of my people Israel; neither will I suffer my holy name to be profaned any
more: and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel. Behold,
it cometh, and it shall be done, saith the Lord Jehovah; this is the day whereof I
have spoken."
RECAPITULATION OF THE JUDGMENT OF GOG (Ezekiel 39:1-8)
Practically all of the previous chapter is repeated here, namely, Ezekiel 39:2-4,14-17,
and Ezekiel 18-22. "The writer is describing not a second invasion by Gog but the
same events from a different perspective. He especially elaborates the numbers of
the enemy, shown by the quantity of weapons left behind and the long time required
to bury the dead."
As Skinner stated it, "These chapters anticipate a world-judgment as the final scene
of history."[16] This obvious certainty relative to the meaning of these chapters
leads to the deductions that the mention of firewood for seven years and the
required time for burying the dead are both inert features of the prophecy, designed
to indicate the numbers of Gog's host and nothing else.
4

5. "I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field
to be devoured ..." (Ezekiel 39:4). This corresponds to the judgment scene given in
Revelation 19:17,18, in which the mighty angel of God invites the birds and beasts to
the "Great Supper of God"!
"And my holy name will I make known in the midst of my people Israel; neither will
I suffer my holy name to be profaned any more ..." (Ezekiel 39: 7). This is an
astounding statement, and it explains everything else in the prophecy. Why would it
be necessary for God to make his name known in the midst of his people Israel?
Simply because the Israel of that final period will no longer know the name of God
in any real understanding of it. They shall have ignored God's Word, contradicted
it, perverted it, mistranslated it, gone beyond it, forgotten and profaned it to the
extent that the Final Judgment itself would he necessary to make known to the
apostate Second Israel of that day even the holy Church of the Messiah, such an
elementary thing as the name of God.
It was impossible, really, that Ezekiel could have recognized the complete meaning
of such a prophecy as this.
ELLICOTT, “This chapter is a continuation of the preceding, and contains the two
latter parts of the prophecy (Ezekiel 39:1-29). It opens with a brief summary of the
earlier part of Ezekiel 38.
EXCURSUS G: ON CHAPTERS 38 AND 39.
Various indications of the nature and intent of this prophecy have been already
given in commenting upon its verses in detail, but it is desirable to gather up these
indications and combine them with others of a more general character.
It is not at all unlikely that the starting-point of the prophecy may have been in
5

6. some recent events, such as the Scythian invasion already spoken of. It is also plain
that a prophecy of such a general character, concerning the struggle of worldliness
against the kingdom of God, and its final overthrow, may have had many partial
fulfilments of a literal kind, such as in the contest between the Maccabees and
Antiochus Epiphanes, because such struggles must always be incidents in the
greater and wider contest. It is further evident from the prophecy itself that the
restoration of the Jews to their own land, then not far distant, was constantly before
the mind of the prophet, and formed in some sort the point of view from which he
looked out upon the wider and more spiritual blessings of the distant future. But
these things being understood, there are several clear indications that he did not
confine his view in this prophecy to any literal event, but intended to set forth under
the figure of Gog and his armies all opposition of the world to the kingdom of God,
and to foretell, like his contemporary Daniel, the final and complete triumph of the
latter in the distant future.
The first thing that strikes one in reading the prophecy is the strange and
incongruous association of the nations in this attack. No nations near the land of
Israel are mentioned, and few of those who, either before or since, have been known
as its foes. On the contrary, the nations selected are all as distant from Palestine and
as distant from each other (living on the confines of the known world) as it was
possible to mention. The Scythians, the Persians, the Armenians, the Ethiopians and
Libyans, the tribes of Arabia, Dedan and Sheba, and the Tarshish probably of
Spain, form an alliance which it is impossible to conceive as ever being actually
formed among the nations of the earth. Then the object of this confederacy, the spoil
of Israel (Ezekiel 38:12-13; Ezekiel 39:10), would have been absurdly
incommensurate with the exertion; Palestine, with all it contained, would hardly
have been enough to furnish rations for the invaders for a day, far less to tempt
them to a march of many hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. Further, the mass
of the invaders, as described in Ezekiel 39:12-16, is more than fifty times greater
than any army that ever assembled upon earth, and great enough to make it
difficult for them to find even camping ground upon the whole territory of
Palestine. This multitude is so evidently ideal, and the circumstantial account of
their burial so plainly practically impossible, that it is unnecessary to add anything
farther to what has been said in the Notes to this passage. Finally, in the statement
(Ezekiel 38:17) that this prophecy was the same which had been spoken in old time
by the prophets of Israel, we have a direct assurance that it was not meant to be
literally understood, because no such prophecies are anywhere recorded; but
prophecies of what we conceive to be here pictorially represented, the struggle of the
6

7. world with the kingdom of God and its final utter overthrow, do form the constant
burden of prophecy, and constitute one of the striking features of all Revelation.
To this is to be added the fact that, however the passage in Revelation 20:7-10 may
be interpreted, the author of the Apocalypse, by the use of the same names, and a
short summary of the same description, has shown that he regarded this vision of
Ezekiel as typical, and its fulfilment as in his time still future.
The prophecy, thus interpreted, falls naturally into the place it holds in the
collection of Ezekiel’s writings. There has been in the last few chapters, especially in
Ezekiel 37, an increasing fulness of Messianic promise; then follows, in the closing
section of the book, a remarkable setting forth of the perfected worship of God by a
purified people under the earthly figure of a greatly changed and purified temple-
worship, with a new apportionment of the land, a purified priesthood, and other
figures taken from the old dispensation. But these things are not to be attained
without trial and struggle; and, therefore, just here is placed this warning of the
putting forth of the whole power of the world against the kingdom of God under the
symbol of the gathering of the armies of Gog, with the comforting assurance, given
everywhere in Revelation, that in the ultimate issue every power which exalts itself
against God shall be utterly overthrown, and all things shall be subdued unto Him.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say,
Thus saith the Lord GOD Behold, I [am] against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of
Meshech and Tubal:
Ver. 1. Prophesy against Gog.] Prophesy again against him, for my people’s greater
comfort. The Jews - noted ever to have been a light, serial, and fanatical nation, apt
to work themselves into the fool’s paradise of a sublime dotage - expounding this
prophecy according to the letter, conclude that Christ is not yet come, because these
things here foretold are not yet fulfilled. When he doth come, they say, he shall set
up his kingdom at Jerusalem, gather all Israel out of all coasts unto himself there,
send each one to his own tribe, and that most certainly, by the operation of his Holy
Spirit. There they shall be no sooner settled, and the kingdom not yet fully
established, but Gog and Magog shall bring a huge army against Jerusalem, where
7

8. they shall fall by the sword, lie unburied, &c.
PETT, “Verses 1-3
God’s Judgment on Gog.
“And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Behold I am against you, O
Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. And I will turn you about and lead you on
(shshw), and will cause you to come from the uttermost parts of the north, and I will
bring you on the mountains of Israel. And I will smite your bow out of your left
hand, and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand.”
For the name and description see on Ezekiel 38:2. Once again it is emphasised that
Gog is under Yahweh’s control. Nothing can happen outside God’s remit. The
meaning of the verb shshw is unknown. The versions support ‘lead on’ (Ezekiel 38:4
has instead ‘put hooks in your jaws’ which implies the same thing). Again ‘the
uttermost parts of the north’ are stressed (compare Ezekiel 38:6; Ezekiel 38:15), the
lands shrouded in mystery from which anything can come. And the mountains of
Israel are the backbone of Israel. So the picture is of the mysterious Gog, descending
from an equally mysterious region, at the instigation of Yahweh, onto the backbone
of Israel.
That is then followed by the shattering of his weapons, that is, his strength, by the
hand of Yahweh. He will be left helpless and defenceless, as he previously thought
that Israel was (Ezekiel 38:11). His bow and arrows will be smitten from his hands.
It is noteworthy that Gog is depicted as carrying a bow. The same was true of the
rider on the white horse in Revelation 6:2 who symbolised false religion and the
deceitfulness of Satan. In Psalms 120:4 lying lips and a deceitful tongue are likened
to ‘the sharp arrows of the mighty’, and both the psalmist and Hosea speak of ‘the
deceitful bow’ (Psalms 78:57; Hosea 7:16). Thus the bow, with which men are taken
by surprise and brought down, was seen as a weapon of deceit, carried by the great
deceiver.
8

9. EBC, “ Ezekiel 39:1-8.-Commencing afresh with a new apostrophe to Gog, Ezekiel
here recapitulates the substance of the previous chapter-the bringing up of Gog
from the farthest north, his destruction on the mountains of Israel, and the effect of
this on the surrounding nations. Mention is expressly made of the bow and arrows
which were the distinctive weapons of the Scythian horsemen. These are struck
from the grasp of Gog, and the mighty host falls on the open field to be devoured by
wild beasts and by ravenous birds of every feather. But the judgment is universal in
its extent; it reaches to Magog, the distant abode of Gog, and all the remote lands
whence his auxiliaries were drawn. This is the day whereof Jehovah has spoken by
His servants the prophets of Israel, the day which finally manifests His glory to all
the ends of the earth.
PULPIT, “Of the two main divisions of this chapter, the first (Ezekiel 39:1-20)
depicts the greatness of the overthrow of Gog; the second (Ezekiel 39:21-29) records
the impression made by it upon Both Israel and the heathen, and adds a closing
promise to the former.
Ezekiel 39:1-20
In the first main division Ezekiel repeats the substance of what has already been
advanced concerning the defeat of Gog (verses 1-8), after which he strives to
represent its completeness (verses 9-20), by setting forth
Ezekiel 39:1
The chief prime of Meshech and Tubal; or, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal (see
on Ezekiel 38:2).
9

10. 2 I will turn you around and drag you along. I
will bring you from the far north and send you
against the mountains of Israel.
BARNES, "The chief prince - Or, “prince of Rosh.”
And leave but the sixth part of thee - Or, and lead thee along (Septuagint and
Vulgate).
CLARKE, "And leave but the sixth part of thee - The margin has, strike thee
with six plagues; or, draw thee back with a hook of six teeth.
GILL, "And I will turn thee back,.... Not from the land of Israel; for thither it is said
in the latter part of the text he would bring him; but the meaning is, that he would "turn
him about", as the word (w) signifies, in his own land, and lead him about at his
pleasure, and bring him out of it, unto the land of Israel; signifying hereby that the
providence of God would be greatly concerned in this affair; and in which much glory
would be brought unto him by the destruction of such a potent enemy of his people;
which is the design of bringing him out; See Gill on Eze_38:4,
and leave but a sixth part of thee; meaning, not that a sixth part only should escape
the vengeance of God, and all but a sixth part be destroyed in the land of Israel; for it
looks as if the whole army would be utterly destroyed, and none left; but that, when he
should come out of his own country upon this expedition, a sixth part of his subjects
only should be left behind; five out of six should accompany him; so numerous should
his army be, and so drained his country by this enterprise of his. Some render the words,
"will draw thee out with an hook of six teeth" (x); that is, out of his own land; and this
clause stands in the same place and order as the phrase and "put hooks into thy jaws"
does in Eze_38:4 and so may be thought to explain one another, and agrees with what
follows: for, as for the sense of it given by Joseph Kimchi and others,
"I will judge thee with six judgments (y), Eze_38:12, pestilence, blood, an overflowing
rain, hailstones, fire, and brimstone,''
10

11. it must be rejected; seeing as yet the account of his punishment is not come to; only an
account is given how and by what means he shall be drawn out of his own land;
wherefore much better is the Targum,
"I will persuade thee, and I will seduce thee;''
so Jarchi seems to understand it: and the Septuagint and Arabic versions render it, "I
will lead thee", agreeably to what follows:
and will cause thee to come up from the north parts; See Gill on Eze_38:15.
and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel; not to inherit them, but to fall
upon them, as in Eze_39:4.
JAMISON, "leave but the sixth part of thee — Margin, “strike thee with six
plagues” (namely, pestilence, blood, overflowing rain, hailstones, fire, brimstone, Eze_
38:22); or, “draw thee back with an hook of six teeth” (Eze_38:4), the six teeth being
those six plagues. Rather, “lead thee about” [Ludovicus De Dieu and Septuagint]. As
Antiochus was led (to his ruin) to leave Egypt for an expedition against Palestine, so
shall the last great enemy of God be.
north parts — from the extreme north [Fairbairn].
ELLICOTT, “ (2) Leave but the sixth part of thee.—This word occurs only here,
and the translation is based on the supposition that it is derived from the word
meaning six; but even on this supposition the renderings in the margin are as likely
to be right as that of the text. This derivation, however, is probably wrong; all the
ancient versions give a sense corresponding to Ezekiel 38:4; Ezekiel 38:16, and also
to the clauses immediately before and after, “I will lead thee along.” The greater
part of the modern commentators concur in this view.
POOLE, “ Turn thee back: see Ezekiel 38:4: or else, when Gog or his assistants shall
go into their countries to compose disorders risen since this enterprise was set on
foot, they shall return to the rest of the confederates.
Leave but the sixth part of thee: some read, as our margin notes, I will draw thee
back with a hook of six teeth, alluding to the drawing fish out of the water; others, I
will strike thee with six plagues; others, I will kill five of six, and leave but the sixth
part of thee: let me conjecture too, I will leave in thy country but one in six, and I
11

12. will bring forth thy people with thee in so great numbers, that five of six shall march
on this expedition. This runs more compliant with what follows.
Will cause thee to come up; by his all wise providence God will dispose things so,
that Gog shall deliberately choose this expedition; so God will bring him, as Ezekiel
38:4. See Ezekiel 38:4,8,15,21.
TRAPP, “ And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will
cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains
of Israel:
Ver. 2. And I will turn thee back.] Convertam vel conteram te. (a) See Ezekiel 38:3.
And leave but the sixth part of thee.] Or, Strike thee with six plagues, or draw thee
back with a hook of six teeth. {as Ezekiel 38:4} Sextabo re.
And will cause thee to come.] This is much and often inculcated, that it is God who
brings in and drives out the Church’s enemies. This is a quieting consideration.
PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:2
I will … leave but the sixth part of thee. The word ‫י‬ ִ‫את‬ ֵ‫שּׁ‬ ְ‫שׁ‬ is derived either from the
numeral six, ‫שׁ‬ ֵ‫,שׁ‬ or from the root ‫א‬ ָ‫שׁ‬ ָ‫,שׁ‬ the import of which is uncertain, although a
cognate root in Ethiopic suggests the idea of "going on" or "proceeding"—a
meaning Havernick also finds in the Hebrew. The former derivation has been
followed by the Authorized Version, which renders in the margin, "I will strike thee
with six plagues," or "draw thee back with a hook of six teeth," and by
Hengstenberg, With whom Plumptre agrees, "1 will six thee," i.e. "afflict thee with
six plagues," viz. those mentioned in Ezekiel 38:22 . The latter derivation,
presumably the more correct, is adopted by the LXX. ( καθοδογήσω), the Vulgate
(educam), the Revised Version ("I will lead thee on"), and by modern expositors
12

13. generally. Hitzig and Smend approve of Ewald's translation, "I entice thee astray,
and lead thee with leading, strings."
3 Then I will strike your bow from your left hand
and make your arrows drop from your right
hand.
CLARKE, "I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand - The Persians whom
Antiochus had in his army, Eze_38:5, were famous as archers, and they may be intended
here. The bow is held by the left hand; the arrow is pulled and discharged by the right.
GILL, "And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand,.... In which it is usually
held, to have the arrow fitted to it:
and I will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand; where they are
commonly held when put into the bow, and then the bow is drawn with it; signifying
hereby, that though he should come into the land of Israel, he should not succeed; he
would be stripped of his armour, and it would be useless to him: bows and arrows are
put for all kind of warlike instruments; and are particularly mentioned because they
were chiefly used in war when this prophecy was delivered.
POOLE, “ I will smite thy bow; make thy hand weak, not able to hold the bow, and
thy heart faint, not daring to take it up again. What is said of the bow rendered
useless, is to be understood of all other weapons of war. This one kind, the bow,
being most in use with these Scythians, is mentioned for all the rest.
13

14. Thy left hand; the hand for holding the bow, while the right fits the arrow to the
string, and draws to shoot.
Thine arrows to fall; thou shalt throw away thine arrows, that thou mayst the better
flee for escape.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause
thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
Ver. 3. And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand.] I will disarm thee. As
Herodotus (a) reporteth of Sennacherib and his Assyrians in Egypt, that their
quivers, bow strings, and targets were gnawn to pieces by mice and rats in one
night, so that they were forced to flee for their lives. And as our chroniclers (b) tell
us, that in the battle between Edward III of England and Philip of France, there fell
such a piercing shower of rain as dissolved their strings, and made their bows
unuseful.
4 On the mountains of Israel you will fall, you
and all your troops and the nations with you. I
will give you as food to all kinds of carrion birds
and to the wild animals.
GILL, "Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel,.... Be slain, and his carcass
lie there; so the Targum,
14

15. "upon the mountains of the land of Israel thy carcass shall be cast:''
thou and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee; Gog and his army, auxiliaries
and allies:
I will give thee to the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the
field to be devoured: a great part of his army being slain, should not be buried, but be
devoured by birds of prey, and savage beasts; such as eagles and vultures of the former
sort, and lions, bears, wolves, &c. of the latter. This was always reckoned a very sore
judgment and dreadful calamity, not to have a burial, but to be exposed to birds and
beasts of prey; this was threatened to the Israelites, in case of disobedience to the law of
God, Deu_28:26 and to the wicked Jews in the times of Jeremiah; and to that evil king
of Judah, Jehoiakim, Jer_16:4 and is lamented as one of the greatest evils that could
befall good men, Psa_79:2, and nothing was more dreadful among the Heathens
themselves; hence Homer (z), among the many calamities Achilles was the cause of to
the Grecians, mentions this as one, that he was the means of giving the bodies of a great
number of their heroes to the dogs, and to the fowls of the air; so Virgil (a) represents
the want of a burial, and being left to be fed upon by birds of prey, as severe a
punishment of a wicked man as can be wished for.
JAMISON, "(Compare Eze_39:17-20).
upon the mountains of Israel — The scene of Israel’s preservation shall be that of
the ungodly foe’s destruction.
POOLE, “ Thou shalt fall; thy army shall be overthrown and slain. Thou, Gog
himself the leader of this army, and all thy bands; thine own soldiers, the old trained
soldiers.
The people; the several nations that had joined in this enterprise with Gog. Their
unburied carcasses shall be torn and mangled by every ravenous bird of the air?
and the wild beasts, that range over the mountains for their prey, shall eat them; so
many of them shall be denied a burial. See a like place Ezekiel 32:4,5.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all
thy bands, and the people that [is] with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds
of every sort, and [to] the beasts of the field to be devoured.
Ver. 4. Thou shalt fall upon, the mountains of Israel.] Thither thou shalt come
15

16. indeed, as Antiochus did into the temple, antichrist into the Church of God, [2
Thessalonians 2:4] but there thou shalt take thy end.
PETT, “Verse 4-5
“You will fall on the mountains of Israel, you, and all your hordes, and the peoples
who are with you, and I will give you to the ravenous birds of every kind, and to the
beasts of the field, to be devoured. You will fall on the open field, for I have spoken
it, says the Lord Yahweh.”
The mountains of Israel were the backbone of Israel. They were its strength, but
they were also the site of Israel’s abominations. Thus the hordes of darkness would
be broken on them, and it was fitting that those mountains that had been used for
idolatry and sinful abominations, should now be the recipient of the dead bodies of
those evil hordes, just as previously they had received the bodies of the slain when
God punished Israel (Ezekiel 6:5; Ezekiel 6:13).
‘And I will give you to the ravenous birds of every kind, and to the beasts of the
field, to be devoured.’ Compare Ezekiel 32:4; Ezekiel 29:5; Ezekiel 31:13; Jeremiah
7:33; Jeremiah 16:4; Jeremiah 19:7; Jeremiah 34:20. See also Revelation 19:21. This
was considered to be an horrific death (see Psalms 79:2). Left unburied to have their
bodies mauled and their bones picked by scavenging bird and scavenging beast.
‘You will fall on the open field.’ The open field was the description given to areas
away from cities, outside in the open away from men’s dwellings (Ezekiel 16:5;
Ezekiel 29:5; Ezekiel 32:4; Ezekiel 33:27 (where it parallels ‘wastes’); see also
Leviticus 14:7; 2 Samuel 11:11; Numbers 19:16; Jeremiah 9:22). Their mission to
capture the cities of Israel will have proved a total failure. God’s people will be safe.
‘For I have spoken it, says the Lord Yahweh.’ Their destruction will occur because
God has said it and determined it.
16

17. PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:4-6
I will give thee unto ravenous birds of every sort; or, wing. The language depicts an
army on the march, followed by jackals, vultures, and other birds of prey, ready to
feast upon the corpses of slaughtered men (comp. Ezekiel 33:27; 1 Samuel 17:46;
and Homer's 'Iliad,' 1.4, 5). In addition to destroying Cog, causing him to fall upon
the mountains of Israel and upon the open field; literally, upon the face of the field,
Jehovah engages to carry the fire of war and generally of devastation (cf. Ezekiel
33:22; Amos 2:2, Amos 2:5; Revelation 20:1-15 :29) into Cog's own land, Magog (see
on Ezekiel 38:2), and among them that dwell carelessly (better, securely) in the isles;
or, coast-lands (Ezekiel 27:7); i.e. not merely the merchants of Tarshish or the
"isles" of the trading nations mentioned in Ezekiel 38:13, as Hengstenberg and
Plumptre prefer, but, as Smend, Schroder, and Keil explain, all the distant peoples
of the coast-lands from whom Gog's armies were drawn (Ezekiel 38:5, Ezekiel 38:6),
and in whom were many of Gog's sympathizers.
5 You will fall in the open field, for I have spoken,
declares the Sovereign Lord.
GILL, "Thou shalt fall upon the open field,.... Some part of his army should fall
upon the mountains, and others upon the plain; wherever they will be found, they will be
destroyed, either by the sword of the Jews and Christian princes, or by God's judgments
from heaven:
for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God; and therefore it should surely come to
pass, since no word of his ever fails; this is added to assure of the truth of it, since it
might be thought incredible that so large an army should be destroyed.
17

18. 6 I will send fire on Magog and on those who live
in safety in the coastlands, and they will know that
I am the Lord.
BARNES, "The judgment is extended to “the isles” (or, seacoast) to show that it
should fall not only on Gog and his land, but on those who share Gog’s feelings of hatred
and opposition to the kingdom of God.
CLARKE, "I will send a fire on Magog - On Syria. I will destroy the Syrian
troops.
And among them that dwell carelessly in the isles - The auxiliary troops that
came to Antiochus from the borders of the Euxine Sea. - Martin.
GILL, "And I will send a fire on Magog,.... On the land of Magog; see Eze_38:2,
while Gog is in the land of Israel, and he and his army perish there, his country shall be
destroyed by fire, or by some judgment or judgments of God, which shall consume like
fire. The Septuagint version renders it, "I will send a fire on Gog"; but he before is said to
fall upon the mountains of Israel; his country is meant; it designs the destruction of the
Ottoman empire:
and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: that belong to the Turkish
dominions; not only the habitants of the Continent shall be consumed, but those that
dwell in islands, and think themselves safe and secure, and so live carelessly; or such
who live on the sea coasts, it being usual in Scripture to call such places isles; and may
intend those who dwell near the Exine and Caspian seas:
and they shall know that I am the Lord: by his judgments executed upon them.
18

19. JAMISON, "carelessly — in self-confident security.
the isles — Those dwelling in maritime regions, who had helped Gog with fleets and
troops, shall be visited with the fire of God’s wrath in their own lands.
COKE, “Ezekiel 39:6. I will send a fire, &c.— That is, into the country of Gog. Gog
is supposed to dwell or to have dwelt between the Caspian and the Euxine sea;
which is referred to by the expression in the isles, or on the maritime coasts. This
fire seems to signify that the land, after the army of Gog had left it, should be laid
waste by the neighbouring people.
ELLICOTT, “ (6) A fire on Magog.—Magog is the country of Gog (Ezekiel 38:1),
and the Divine judgment is to fall therefore not only upon the army in the land of
Israel, but also upon the far-distant country of Gog. In Revelation 20:9 this fire is
represented as coming “down from God out of heaven.”
In the isles.—This common Scriptural expression for the remoter parts of the earth
is added here to show the universality of the judgment upon all that is hostile to the
kingdom of God.
POOLE, “ I will send, by an unusual judgment from God, a fire; either civil
dissensions, such as Egypt was consumed by, Ezekiel 30:16; or else the destroying
pestilence, which always carrieth with it a burning distemper or fever; or that fire
and brimstone mentioned Ezekiel 38:22. Or whatever this fire was, it should devour
and lay desolate.
Them that dwell carelessly; who perhaps thought their situation would be their
safety; though Gog fell on the land, the ships and isles might escape; not so, for the
same hand will send the fire on the isles and their inhabitants which sent it on Gag.
Possibly the Tyrians and Sidonians may be aimed at.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:6 And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell
carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I [am] the LORD.
19

20. Ver. 6. And I will send a fire on Magog.] So God will one day on Rome, that Radix
omnium malorum root of all evil things. [Revelation 18:18-19]
And among them that dwell carelessly in the isles.] Who must not think there to
moat up themselves against my fire.
PETT, “Verse 6
“And I will send a fire on Magog, and on those who dwell securely on the
isles/coastlands, and they will know that I am Yahweh.”
We note now an expansion of God’s judgments. The lands of those who attacked his
people will likewise suffer (compare the vivid picture in Judges 5:28-30). They
thought that they were safe because of their massive forces, and awaited the return
of the armies with great booty. But instead they will have to recognise the power of
Yahweh’s judgments. The furthest peoples will be involved. God’s judgments are
far reaching and total.
The isles and coastlands (the peoples across the seas) have not previously been
mentioned. Along with all previously mentioned the whole of Ezekiel’s distant world
has now been included in the catastrophe.
7 “‘I will make known my holy name among my
people Israel. I will no longer let my holy name be
profaned, and the nations will know that I the
20

21. Lord am the Holy One in Israel.
CLARKE, "In the midst of my people Israel - This defeat of Gog is to be in
Israel: and it was there according to this prophecy, that the immense army of Antiochus
was so completely defeated.
Ands I will not let them pollute my holy name any more - See on 1 Maccabees
1:11, etc., how Antiochus had profaned the temple, insulted Jehovah and his worship,
etc. God permitted that as a scourge to his disobedient people; but now the scourger
shall be scourged, and he shall pollute the sanctuary no more.
GILL, "So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people
Israel,.... That is, his perfections; his holiness and justice in punishing their enemies;
his truth and faithfulness in fulfilling his promises to them; his power in inflicting
judgments on Gog and his army; and his goodness in their preservation and protection:
and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: either the Heathens
round about who before blasphemed it, saying that God was not able to deliver his
people from such a potent enemy; but now their mouth will be stopped, and they will not
dare to speak any more after this manner: or else the Israelites, who shall be so
influenced by the grace and goodness of God unto them, as to fear the Lord and his
goodness, and not dare to commit the sins they formerly did, whereby his name was
polluted and blasphemed among the Heathens:
and the Heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel; they
shall know, by these judgments and providences, that he is the true God, and they shall
acknowledge and confess it; and that he is a holy and just God, and dwells in Israel, and
grants his gracious as well as powerful presence to his people; nor shall they dare to
molest them any more.
JAMISON, "not let them pollute my holy name — by their sins bringing down
judgments which made the heathen think that I was unable or unwilling to save My
people.
POOLE, “ In Ezekiel 39:6, the judgments executed on Gog make God known in the
midst of the heathen, here they make him known among his own people; in both
21

22. glorious.
My holy name; the destruction threatened against the wicked for their enmity
against holiness, being executed, manifest that God is holy, and the protection of
such. Or, holy name, for that he does in his oath swear by his holiness.
So his faithfulness is here commended and illustrated. I will not let them pollute my
holy name any more; will give them that new spirit, that due sense of my mercy;
they shall not, as formerly, profane my name among the heathen, Ezekiel 20:9. See
Ezekiel 38:23.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my
people Israel; and I will not [let them] pollute my holy name any more: and the
heathen shall know that I [am] the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
Ver. 7. I will not let them pollute my holy name.] As if I were less able to deliver my
people, or less mindful of my promises.
PETT, “ “And I will make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel,
nor will I allow my holy name to be profaned any more. And the nations will know
that I am Yahweh, the Holy One in Israel.”
God’s holy name, that is His own righteousness, purity and ‘otherness’ will by all
this be made known to His people. They will recognise Him for what He is and that
the cry of their hearts has been fulfilled, and that evil has been destroyed (compare
Revelation 6:10 - which was not so much a cry for vengeance as a longing for God’s
righteous judgments to prevail). The nations brought to judgment will also
recognise Who and What He is, ‘the Holy One in Israel’.
‘The Holy One in Israel’. That is the One set apart from, and above and beyond all
others; unapproachable except to those He calls; unique, all-powerful, and
22

23. essentially righteous in all His dealings see Isaiah 57:15). And Israel is His
dwellingplace (compare Isaiah 60:14). They are His temple. We can compare here
‘the Holy One of Israel’ (2 Kings 19:22; Psalms 71:22; Psalms 78:41; Psalms 89:18;
Isaiah 1:4; Isaiah 5:19; Isaiah 5:24; Isaiah 10:20; Isaiah 12:6; Isaiah 17:7; Isaiah
29:19; Isaiah 30:11-12; Isaiah 30:15; Isaiah 31:1; Isaiah 37:23; Isaiah 41:14; Isaiah
41:16; Isaiah 41:20; Isaiah 43:3; Isaiah 43:14; Isaiah 45:11; Isaiah 47:4; Isaiah
48:17; Isaiah 49:7; Isaiah 54:5; Isaiah 55:5; Isaiah 60:9; Isaiah 60:14; Jeremiah
50:29; Jeremiah 51:5) where the emphasis is on His might, His total superiority, and
His purity and righteousness as judge.
8 It is coming! It will surely take place, declares
the Sovereign Lord. This is the day I have spoken
of.
GILL, "Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God,.... That is, the
salvation of his people, and the destruction of their enemies; the prophecy concerning all
this is come to pass, and the whole is accomplished; thus, because of the certainty
thereof, it is represented as if the time was actually come, and the thing was really done;
for the event is as sure as if it was now fulfilled:
this is the day whereof I have spoken; by the Prophet Ezekiel and others; See Gill
on Eze_38:17.
JAMISON, "it is come ... it is done — The prediction of the salvation of My
people, and the ruin of their enemy, is come to pass - is done: expressing that the event
foretold is as certain as if it were already accomplished.
POOLE, “ It, this prophecy, to be fulfilled in the destruction of Gog, the rescue of God’s
people, and magnifying the name of God, is come; as sure as if already come; or, as if
23

24. already done; nor shall it be too long ere, in effect, and fully, it shall be done.
The day; that notable day of recompences against the last great enemies of Christ and the
church.
I have spoken, by Ezekiel now, and by others see Ezekiel 38:17.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD this [is] the
day whereof I have spoken.
Ver. 8. Behold, it is come, and it is done.] It is as good as done. So, "Babylon is fallen" -
i.e., It will fall certainly, quickly, utterly.
This is the day.] O dieculam illam! O that short time. When shall it once be? O mora!
Christe veni. O delay! Christ, come.
PETT, “ “Behold it comes and it will be done,” says the Lord Yahweh. “This is the day of
which I have spoken.”
The uniqueness of this day comes out here. It is the final day of which Yahweh has
spoken (Isaiah 2:12; Joel 1:15; Joel 2:1; Joel 2:11; Joel 2:31; Joel 3:14; compare
Zechariah 14:1), in contrast with all the other ‘Days of Yahweh’ on different nations
occurring at different times, which are seen as foretastes of what is to come (Babylon-
Isaiah 13:1-22; Jeremiah 46:10; Lamentations 2:22; Zephaniah 1:1 to Zephaniah 2:3 in
context with Ezekiel 2:4-10.Edom- Isaiah 34:1-17.Israel- Ezekiel 13:1-7; Amos 5:18-20
with 27). And all are assured that it will assuredly come.
24

25. 9 “‘Then those who live in the towns of Israel will
go out and use the weapons for fuel and burn
them up—the small and large shields, the bows
and arrows, the war clubs and spears. For seven
years they will use them for fuel.
BARNES 9-10, “Burn them with fire - Or, “kindle fire with them;” or, as in the
margin. The weapons of the army left on the field of battle shall be so numerous as to
supply fuel for the people of the land for seven years. Seven was a number connected
with cleansing after contact with the dead (Num_19:11 ff), and this purification of the
land by the clearance of paganish spoils was a holy work (compare Eze_39:12).
CLARKE, "And shall set on fire - the weapons - The Israelites shall make
bonfires and fuel of the weapons, tents, etc., which the defeated Syrians shall leave
behind them, as expressive of the joy which they shall feel for the destruction of their
enemies; and to keep up, in their culinary consumption, the memory of this great event.
They shall burn them with fire seven years - These may be figurative
expressions, after the manner of the Asiatics, whose language abounds with such
descriptions. They occur every where in the prophets. As to the number seven it is only a
certain for an indeterminate number. But as the slaughter was great, and the bows,
arrows, quivers, shields, bucklers, handstaves, and spears were in vast multitudes, it
must have taken a long time to gather them up in the different parts of the fields of
battle, and the roads in which the Syrians had retreated, throwing away their arms as
they proceeded; so there might have been a long time employed in collecting and
burning them. And as all seem to have been doomed to the fire, there might have been
some found at different intervals and burned, during the seven years here mentioned.
Mariana, in his History of Spain, lib. xi., c. 24, says, that after the Spaniards had given
that signal overthrow to the Saracens, a.d. 1212 they found such a vast quantity of lances,
javelins, and such like, that they served them for four years for fuel. And probably these
instruments obtained by the Israelites were used in general for culinary firewood, and
might literally have served them for seven years; so that during that time they should
take no wood out of the fields, nor out of the forests for the purpose of fuel, Eze_39:10.
25

26. GILL, "And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth,.... Out of their
houses into the streets, where Gog's soldiers will lie dead, and their armour by them; or
rather out of their cities, where they dwelt safely, and where they kept themselves, and
were secure from the enemy: these seem to be distinct from the militia of Israel, engaged
in battle with Gog; these were the inhabitants that will stay at home, and yet share in the
spoil and plunder; see Psa_68:12, these, after the battle is over, and the victory obtained,
of which they will have information, will then march out without fear into the open fields
and mountains, where the army of Gog will fall, Eze_39:4,
and shall set on fire and burn the weapons; the armour of Gog's army, which they
shall find lie by the dead, or upon them; or which they that flee will cast away; these they
shall gather together, and lay on a heap, and burn, as sometimes has been the practice of
conquerors; or rather they shall take them to their own houses, and make fuel of them,
and burn them, instead of wood out of the fields and forests, as the following verse
shows:
both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows; which were the
weapons that Gog and his associates used; see Eze_38:4,
and the handstaves, and the spears; the "handstaves" were either half pikes or
truncheons, as some think; or javelins, as others:
and they shall burn them with fire seven years; which some take to be a certain
number for an uncertain, and others an hyperbolical expression; but when it is
considered what a vast army this of Gog's will be, and what prodigious numbers of
weapons of all sorts must be carried by them, and the little use of fire in those hot
countries: it may be very well taken in a literal sense, and the meaning be, that so great
will be the quantity of warlike weapons that will be found and gathered, that they will
serve for fuel for the space of seven years.
JAMISON 9-10, “The burning of the foe’s weapons implies that nothing belonging to
them should be left to pollute the land. The seven years (seven being the sacred number)
spent on this work, implies the completeness of the cleansing, and the people’s zeal for
purity. How different from the ancient Israelites, who left not merely the arms, but the
heathen themselves, to remain among them [Fairbairn], (Jdg_1:27, Jdg_1:28; Jdg_2:2,
Jdg_2:3; Psa_106:34-36). The desolation by Antiochus began in the one hundred and
forty-first year of the Seleucidae. From this date to 148, a period of six years and four
months (“2300 days,” Dan_8:14), when the temple-worship was restored (1 Maccabees
4:52), God vouchsafed many triumphs to His people; from this time to the death of
Antiochus, early in 149, a period of seven months, the Jews had rest from Antiochus,
and purified their land, and on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month celebrated the
Encaenia, or feast of dedication (Joh_10:22) and purification of the temple. The whole
period, in round numbers, was seven years. Mattathias was the patriotic Jewish leader,
and his third son, Judas, the military commander under whom the Syrian generals were
defeated. He retook Jerusalem and purified the temple. Simon and Jonathan, his
26

27. brothers, succeeded him: the independence of the Jews was secured, and the crown
vested in the Asmonean family, in which it continued till Herod the Great.
K&D, "Total Destruction of Gog and his Hosts
Eze_39:9. Then will the inhabitants of the cities of Israel go forth, and burn and heat
with armour and shield and target, with bow and arrows and hand-staves and spears,
and will burn fire with them for seven years; Eze_39:10. And will not fetch wood from
the field, nor cut wood out of the forests, but will burn fire with the armour, and will
spoil those who spoiled them, and plunder those who plundered them, is the saying of
the Lord Jehovah. Eze_39:11. And it will come to pass in that day, that I will give Gog a
place where his grave in Israel shall be, the valley of the travellers, and there will they
bury Gog and all his multitude, and will call it the valley of Gog's multitude. Eze_39:12.
They of the house of Israel will bury them, to purify the land for seven months. V.1 3.
And all the people of the land will bury, and it will be to them for a name on the day
when I glorify myself, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Eze_39:14. And they will set
apart constant men, such as rove about in the land, and such as bury with them that
rove about those who remain upon the surface of the ground, to cleanse it, after the
lapse of seven months will they search it through. Eze_39:15. And those who rove about
will pass through the land; and if one sees a man's bone, he will set up a sign by it, till
the buriers of the dead bury it in the valley of the multitude of Gog. Eze_39:16. The
name of a city shall also be called Hamonah (multitude). And thus will they cleanse the
land. Eze_39:17. And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Say to the birds of
every plumage, and to all the beasts of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come, gather
together from round about to my sacrifice, which I slaughter for you, to a great
sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, and eat flesh and drink blood. Eze_39:18. Flesh
of heroes shall ye eat, and drink blood of princes of the earth; rams, lambs, and he-
goats, bullocks, all fattened in Bashan. Eze_39:9. And ye shall eat fat to satiety, and
drink blood to intoxication, of my sacrifice which I have slaughtered for you. Eze_
39:20. And ye shall satiate yourselves at my table with horses and riders, heroes and
all kinds of men of war, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - To show how terrible the
judgment upon Gog will be, Ezekiel depicts in three special ways the total destruction of
his powerful forces. In the first place, the burning of all the weapons of the fallen foe will
furnish the inhabitants of the land of Israel with wood for firing for seven years, so that
there will be no necessity for them to fetch fuel from the field or from the forest (Eze_
39:9 and Eze_39:10). But Hävernick is wrong in supposing that the reason for burning
the weapons is that, according to Isa_9:5, weapons of war are irreconcilable with the
character of the Messianic times of peace. This is not referred to here; but the motive is
the complete annihilation of the enemy, the removal of every trace of him. The prophet
therefore crowds the words together for the purpose of enumerating every kind of
weapon that was combustible, even to the hand-staves which men were accustomed to
carry (cf. Num_22:27). The quantity of the weapons will be so great, that they will
supply the Israelites with all the fuel they need for seven years. The number seven in the
seven years as well as in the seven months of burying (Eze_39:11) is symbolical,
stamping the overthrow as a punishment inflicted by God, the completion of a divine
judgment.
COFFMAN, “"And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall
27

28. make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the
bows and the arrows, and the handstaves and the spears, and they shall make fires
of them seven years; so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut
down any of the forest; for they shall make fires of the weapons; and they shall
plunder those that plundered them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord
Jehovah. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place for
burial in Israel, the valley of them that pass through on the east of the sea; and it
shall stop them that pass through: and there shall they bury Gog and all his
multitude; and they shall call it the valley of Hamon-god. And seven months shall
the house of Israel be in burying them, that they may cleanse the land. Yea, all the
people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown in the day that I
shall be glorified, saith the Lord Jehovah. And they shall set apart men of continual
employment, that shall pass through the land, and, with them that pass through,
those that bury them that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it; and after
the end of seven months shall they search. And they that pass through the land shall
pass through; and when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till
the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. And Hamonah shall also be
the name of a city. Thus shalt thou cleanse the land."
TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF GOG AND HIS HOSTS (Ezekiel 39:9-20)
We have already mentioned our conclusion that these rather long statements about
the firewood for seven years and the seven months period of burying the dead are
inert features of the prophecy designed merely to stress the great numbers of the
hosts of Gog. We have discovered no other meaningful interpretation.
"On the east side of the sea ..." (Ezekiel 39:11). Keil informs us that the Hebrew
from which this translation is taken literally means "on the front of the sea"[17]
which, of course, means "east of the sea." See our full discussion of this under
Genesis 2:14, where we have exactly the same Hebrew words (Vol. 1 of the
Pentateuchal Series, p. 51). The "sea" here "Undoubtedly means the Dead Sea."[18]
"And it shall stop them that pass through ..." (Ezekiel 39:11). This is another one of
the passages where translators thought they were improving upon the King James
28

29. Bible when they were not! The KJV has this, "It shall stop the noses of the
passengers." "This means that the strong odor of decay would arrest the attention
and impede the progress of all who passed by."[19] This same author also pointed
out that this burial place east of the Dead Sea was in the vicinity of the final resting
places of Sodom and Gomorrah, both of those having also received terminal
judgments from God because of their wickedness.
COKE, “Ezekiel 39:9. And they shall burn them, &c.— That is, for a long time; a
certain for an uncertain number. There shall be in the country so great a quantity of
military weapons, that they shall serve them for a long time for fuel. We should
remember, that they do not make very large fires in those hot countries. Mariana, in
his Spanish History, book 2: chap. 24 relates, that after the victory which the
Spaniards gained over the Saracens in 1212, they found so many spears, and other
warlike weapons of wood, as served them four years for fuel. See Calmet. Bishop
Lowth observes, on Isaiah 9:4-5 that some heathen nations burnt heaps of arms to
the supposed god of victory; and that among the Romans this act was an emblem of
peace. Among God's people it might shew trust in him as their defender.
Archbishop Newcombe observes on the present passage, "The victory shall be so
great, that, during this period of time [seven years], they shall suffice for fires on the
mountains, and in the open fields; where the rain shall fall, and whither the
inhabitants of the adjoining cities shall occasionally go forth."
ELLICOTT, “ (9) Shall burn them with fire seven years.—The representation of
this and the following verse, that the weapons of the army of Gog shall furnish the
whole nation of Israel with fuel for seven years, cannot, of course, be understood
literally, and seems to have been inserted by the prophet to show that we are to look
for the meaning of his prophecy beyond any literal event of earthly warfare.
Ezekiel 39:11-16 again present the magnitude of the attack upon the Church by
describing the burial of the host after it is slain. The language, if it could be
supposed it was meant to be literally understood, would be even more extravagant
than that of Ezekiel 39:9-10. The whole nation of Israel is represented as engaged
for seven months in burying the bodies (Ezekiel 39:12-13); after this an indefinite
time is to be occupied by one corps of men appointed to search the land for still
remaining bones, and by another who are to bury them.
29

30. POOLE, “ Shall go forth, out of their houses and out of the cities, with joy to see
and admire the great goodness of God towards them, and the greatness of his power
against their enemies. Shall set on fire: this expression seems to intimate that they
should burn these things in the open field or mountains, where they found them;
here is no mention made of the carrying any into city or houses, to burn in their
chimneys: it may be they should make those fires in token of joy.
The weapons; the warlike provision, instruments, engines, carriages, and waggons,
&c., as well as those recounted.
The shields: see Ezekiel 38:4.
The hand-staves, that either their leaders used, like our halfpikes, or perhaps such
as they cast like darts at the enemy.
They shall burn them with fire seven years: it may be wondered they burn these
weapons, which might be of use to them for defence and safety; but it was done,
partly, because they were weapons of the uncircumcised; partly, because they were
anathemata, as all Jericho was; but chiefly, in testimony that God was their safety
and defence, on which they relied, and would ever since he had so wonderfully
delivered, We might read the words thus, they shall kindle with them a fire of seven
years, and then the sense would be plain, that there should be such store of weapons
and warlike utensils, that, heaped together, they would last so long, being cast into
the fire still by such as found them; for it is not unlike they gathered up the
weapons, as they did scattered bones, on their walks, as they lighted on them.
Others tell us it is a certain number for an uncertain; others, that it is somewhat a
proverbial speech, they shall have enough by the spoil of the enemy to make them
and keep them warm, much as we sometimes say of one well provided, He is a warm
gentleman; and some others tell us it is an expression of the Jews, who love to use
this number in extraordinary cases, though they intend not precisely the same, as we
say of a thing delayed, It will be seven years ere it come, or of a thing that will serve
us a good while, It will last seven years. Or else, since the Hebrew hath not a distinct
way of declaring what might be, or the potential mood, as the Latin, but they
30

31. express possible by future, and say, that shall be, which we express by that may be,
the meaning of these futures, they shall, in this and the next verse, is no more than,
they may or might burn for seven years; and so Kimchi glosseth it as to countenance
this last guess. They shall be sufficient; and in such a country, where the need of fire
is much less than with us, it will not seem very incredible that the warlike utensils of
so numerous an army might be enough to furnish them with fuel for so many years,
or more.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and
shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows
and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with
fire seven years:
Ver. 9. And they that dwell.] Hyperbolical expressions; though the Jews hold
otherwise. See on Ezekiel 39:1.
Shall set on fire and burn the weapons.] Do not the Church’s champions so at this
day, ever since they proclaimed and proved the Pope to be that antichrist; burning
up his weapons - his false doctrines and heresies - by the fire of God’s Word, and
giving their bodies to be burned for the testimony of Jesus?
And they shall burn them with fire seven years,] i.e., Diutissime et saepissime! Most
long and most often. This seven years is not yet out. The Jesuits say Satan sent
Luther, and God sent them to withstand him. But there is a succession of Luthers to
find them work enough still, and to burn up their weapons that the churches may be
at rest.
PETT, “Verse 9-10
“And those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go forth, and will make fires of the
31

32. weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the
arrows, the handstaves and the spears. And they will make fires of them for seven
years, so that they will take no wood from the field, nor cut down any from the
forests. For they will make fires of the weapons, and they will spoil those who
spoiled them, and rob those who robbed them, says the Lord Yahweh.”
Note that Israel were all this time safe in theirunwalledcities (compare Psalms 31:21;
Psalms 127:1; Isaiah 26:1). Yahweh was their refuge (Jeremiah 16:19; Deuteronomy
33:27; 2 Samuel 22:3; Psalms 46:1; Psalms 57:1; Psalms 59:16 and often). The huge
forces had not been able to harm them. They were invulnerable. But now they can
safely go out and collect up the weapons, and there will be so many that it will take
seven years to burn them. We need not ask how many of the weapons would burn
(the inflammable ones, made largely of wood, are mentioned). The emphasis is on
the greatness of the victory, demonstrated by the huge quantity of weapons, the fact
that Israel now had no need for such weapons, and the fact that what their enemies
had intended to harm them with had become a blessing to them. The spoilers had
become the spoiled. God’s people have triumphed. As mentioned above seven years
is a God-ordained period and a picture of divine completeness. In the end it is the
people of God who will triumph.
PETT, “Verses 9-16
The Clearing Up Operation and the Cleansing Of The Land (Ezekiel 39:9-16).
Concentration on the detail here can obscure the significance of the whole. The main
points being brought out are the massiveness of what has to be dealt with, and the
importance of making the land totally ‘clean’. Attention is drawn to the vast
amounts of armour, the huge number of bodies picked clean by the scavengers
(Ezekiel 39:17-20), and the awful judgment that has come upon the nations because
they trifled with God and His people. Note the emphasis on the number seven, the
number of divine completeness (throughout the whole of the Near East) (Ezekiel
39:9; Ezekiel 39:12; Ezekiel 39:14). This brings out the idealistic nature of the
passage. The prophet’s aim is not to bring out how long it will take as a matter of
record, but the divine completeness of the judgment.
32

33. Another major point is that what is left of the nations will be buried. Not here dry
bones that will live after the battle (Ezekiel 37:1-14), but bones that will be buried
forever in the valley of Hamon-Gog, ‘the valley of the hordes of Gog’ (Ezekiel
39:11), which will ever bear witness to the fact that for these there will no
resurrection to life. Note the emphasis on the fact that all will be buried (Ezekiel
39:13-15), not one will be left uninterred. Then all that will be left is God’s people in
a pure land (Ezekiel 39:16). All will have been done away.
This was Ezekiel’s way of presenting the final triumph of the people of God and the
judgment of the nations opposed to God. From now on for ever the people of God
will rest in safety and purity. All tears will have ceased. The last enemy has been
destroyed.
EBC, “Ezekiel 39:9-16.-Here the prophet falls into a more prosaic strain, as he
proceeds to describe with characteristic fulness of detail the sequel of the great
invasion. As the English story of the Invincible Armada would be incomplete
without a reference to the treasures cast ashore from the wrecked galleons on the
Orkneys and the Hebrides, so the fate of Gog’s ill-starred enterprise is vividly set
forth by the minute description of the traces it left behind in the peaceful life of
Israel. The irony of the situation is unmistakable, and perhaps a touch of conscious
exaggeration is permissible in such a picture. In the first place the weapons of the
slain warriors furnish wood enough to serve for fuel to the Israelites for the space of
seven years. Then follows a picture of the process of cleansing the land from the
corpses of the fallen enemy. A burying-place is assigned to them in the valley of
Abarim on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, outside of the sacred territory. The
whole people of Israel will be engaged for seven months in the operation of burying
them; after this the mouth of the valley will be sealed, and it will be known ever
afterwards as the Valley of the Host of Gog. But even after the seven months have
expired the scrupulous care of the people for the purity of their land will be shown
by the precautions they take against its continued defilement by any fragment of a
skeleton that may have been overlooked. They will appoint permanent officials,
whose business wilt be to search for and remove relics of the dead bodies, that the
land may be restored to its purity. Whenever any passer-by lights on a bone he will
set up a mark beside it to attract the attention of the buriers. "Thus" (in course of
time) "they shall cleanse the land."
33

34. PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:9, Ezekiel 39:10
set forth as the first proof of the greatness of Gog's overthrow the immense booty in
the shape of weapons of war which should be obtained by the inhabitants of the
cities of Israel. So huge should be the quantity of weapons left behind by the slain,
that the Israelites should burn them with fire seven years. This burning of the
weapons has been explained by Havernick, on the ground that weapons of war, as
incompatible with Messianic times, should be no more required (cf. Isaiah 2:4); by
Ewald, as in accordance with the custom of the Hebrews (Isaiah 9:5) and other
ancient peoples (Livy, 38.23; Virgil, 'AEneid,' 8.562); by Hitzig and Smend, as
prompted by the consideration that Israel, for whom Jehovah had fought, should
have no further need of weapons; by Schroder, as indicating that for Israel these
warlike instruments should then so completely lose their power to terrify that they
might be looked upon simply as so much firewood; and by Keil, as designed to
annihilate the enemy and remove every trace of him. Kliefoth appears nearest the
mark, in suggesting that the emphasis lies upon the length of time the burning
should continue; and that this was intended, by conveying an idea of the vastness of
the spoil, to represent the thoroughness of Gog's destruction and of Israel's
deliverance. That the whole delineation is symbolical appears from the number of
years the weapons are said to serve for fuel, viz. seven, and from the character of the
weapons themselves, which, if not entirely wooden, were at least all combustible. Of
the "armor" generally ( ‫ק‬ ֶ‫ֶשׁ‬‫נ‬, "something joined," from a root signifying "to join")
the pieces mentioned—the shields and the bucklers (see Ezekiel 38:4), the bows and
arrows (see Ezekiel 39:3), the hand-staves, or, javelins (margin), perhaps, as Hitzig
and Smend suggest, the staff with which a horseman strikes his beast (see Numbers
22:27), and the spears—were mostly composed of timber. When all should have
been given to the flames, it would then appear that on their late owners the lex
talionis had worked out its literal avengement, that they who had intended to
despoil Israel were themselves spoiled; and they who hoped to plunder Israel were
themselves plundered (comp. Isaiah 17:14).
10 They will not need to gather wood from the
34

35. fields or cut it from the forests, because they will
use the weapons for fuel. And they will plunder
those who plundered them and loot those who
looted them, declares the Sovereign Lord.
GILL, "So that they shall take no wood out of the field,.... During that seven
years; or they shall have no need to do so, as the Syriac version; having a sufficiency of
armour:
neither cut down any out of the forest: out of the forest of Lebanon, or any other,
where they used to fetch wood for their necessary uses; but so great a quantity of armour
shall now be brought home by them to their houses, that they should have no need to be
at the trouble and expense of fetching wood from the forests:
for they shall burn the weapons with fire; the reason of which will be, because
they will have no occasion for them hereafter; for when this battle is over, which seems
to be the same with that at Armageddon, there will be an entire destruction of all the
enemies of Christ and his church; the world will be cleared of them, and there will be
war no more, and so no more use of weapons; this will be the last battle that will be
fought; see Isa_2:4,
and they shall spoil those that spoil them, and rob those that robbed them,
saith the Lord God: not only take their weapons and burn them, but strip them of
their garments, and take away their gold, and silver, and jewels, and everything of value
they shall find about them.
K&D, "With the gathering of the weapons for burning there is associated the
plundering of the fallen foe (Eze_39:10), by which the Israelites do to the enemy what he
intended to do to them (Eze_38:12), and the people of God obtain possession of the
wealth of their foes (cf. Jer_30:16). In the second place, God will assign a large burying-
place for the army of Gog in a valley of Israel, which is to be named in consequence “the
multitude of Gog;” just as a city in that region will also be called Hamonah from this
event. The Israelites will bury the fallen of Gog there for seven months long, and after
the expiration of that time they will have the land explored by men specially appointed
for the purpose, and bones that may still have been left unburied will be sought out, and
they will have them interred by buriers of the dead, that the land may be thoroughly
cleansed (Eze_39:11-16). ‫ם‬ ‫ק‬ ְ‫מ‬ ‫ם‬ ָ‫,שׁ‬ a place where there was a grave in Israel, i.e., a spot
in which he might be buried in Israel. There are different opinions as to both the
35

36. designation and the situation of this place. There is no foundation for the supposition
that ‫ֵי‬‫גּ‬ ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ ָ‫ה‬ derives its name from the mountains of Abarim in Num_27:12 and Deu_
32:49 (Michaelis, Eichhorn), or that it signifies valley of the haughty ones (Ewald), or
that there is an allusion to the valley mentioned in Zec_14:4 (Hitzig), or the valley of
Jehoshaphat (Kliefoth). The valley cannot even have derived its name (‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ ָ‫)ה‬ from
the ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫,ע‬ who passed through the land to search out the bones of the dead that still
remained unburied, and have them interred (Eze_39:14, Eze_39:15). For ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ ָ‫ה‬
cannot have any other meaning here than that which it has in the circumstantial clause
which follows, where those who explored the land cannot possibly be intended, although
even this clause is also obscure. The only other passage in which ‫ם‬ ַ‫ס‬ ָ‫ח‬ occurs is Deu_
25:4, where it signifies a muzzle, and in the Arabic it means to obstruct, or cut off; and
hence, in the passage before us, probably, to stop the way. ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ ָ‫ה‬ are not the Scythians
(Hitzig), for the word ‫ר‬ ַ‫ב‬ָ‫ע‬ is never applied to their invasion of the land, but generally the
travellers who pass through the land, or more especially those who cross from Peraea to
Canaan. The valley of ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ ָ‫ה‬ is no doubt the valley of the Jordan above the Dead Sea.
The definition indicates this, viz., ‫ת‬ ַ‫מ‬ ְ‫ד‬ ִ‫,ק‬ on the front of the sea; not to the east of the
sea, as it is generally rendered, for ‫ת‬ ַ‫מ‬ ְ‫ד‬ ִ‫ק‬ never has this meaning (see the comm. on
Gen_2:14). By ‫ָם‬‫יּ‬ ַ‫ה‬ we cannot understand “the Mediterranean,”as the majority of the
commentators have done, as there would then be no meaning in the words, since the
whole of the land of Israel was situated to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. ‫ָם‬‫יּ‬ ַ‫ה‬ is the
Dead Sea, generally called ‫ָם‬‫יּ‬ ַ‫ה‬ ‫י‬ִ‫נ‬ ‫מ‬ ְ‫ד‬ ַ‫קּ‬ ַ‫ה‬ (Eze_47:18); and ‫ת‬ ַ‫מ‬ ְ‫ד‬ ִ‫,ק‬ “on the front side of the
(Dead) Sea,” as looked at from Jerusalem, the central point of the land, is probably the
valley of the Jordan, the principal crossing place from Gilead into Canaan proper, and
the broadest part of the Jordan-valley, which was therefore well adapted to be the
burial-place for the multitude of slaughtered foes. But in consequence of the army of Gog
having there found its grave, this valley will in future block up the way to the travellers
who desire to pass to and fro. This appears to be the meaning of the circumstantial
clause.
POOLE, “ So, Heb. And, they shall not, &c.
They shall take: this, as noted before, taken potentially, or speaking what they
might, not what they eventually should do; such store of fuel from the weapons and
utensils of war left by these Gogites, that the Jews will not need to go to the forests
to cut down wood. Or else comparatively, as some will; what they shall need to fetch
from the forests shall be nothing in comparison to what they were wont to fetch.
They shall burn; they may if they will: it is not preceptive, to make it duty, nor doth
it necessarily determine that they must, but there were and would be for all that
36

37. time who would be burning these weapons, and save the labour and cost of buying
and fetching wood; and these who should do this I would look for among the poorer
sort.
They shall spoil; strip the dead, rifle their waggons and tents, searching what they
may find of value and use, in which it is likely the poor among the Jews would be
earliest and most diligent.
Those that spoiled them; the army of Gog, and his followers.
And rob: it was not theft or robbery in the Jews to do this, though it was robbery in
Gog and his company to spoil the Jews; but for decorum of the phrase, the prophet
useth the same word in both cases.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:10 So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut
down [any] out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they
shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord
GOD.
Ver. 10. So that they shall take no wood.] This must needs be hyperbolic, as are also
sundry other passages in Holy Scripture. When Luther burnt the Pope’s decrees
and decretals at Wittemberg, it was a fair fire doubtless, as Solon once said of the
fire he caused to be made at Athens of the bills and bonds of the Athenian usurers.
11 “‘On that day I will give Gog a burial place in
Israel, in the valley of those who travel east of the
Sea. It will block the way of travelers, because
37

38. Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it
will be called the Valley of Hamon Gog.[b]
BARNES, "The prophet pictures to himself some imaginary valley (compare Zec_
14:5) at the “east of the sea,” the Dead Sea, a place frightful in its physical character, and
admonitory of past judgments. He calls it “the valley of the passengers” (or, passers-by),
because they who there lie buried were but as a passing cloud. In Eze_39:11-15 there is a
play upon words - there were “passengers” to be buried, “passengers” to walk over their
graves, “passengers” to bury them; (or, a play upon the treble meaning of passing in
(invading), passing by, and passing through.)
Stop the noses - The word thus rendered occurs only once more in Scripture Deu_
25:4 where it is rendered muzzle. See Isa_34:3.
Hamon-gog - See the margin, compare Eze_39:16.
CLARKE, "The valley of the passengers on the east of the sea - That is, of
Gennesareth, according to the Targum. The valley near this lake or sea is called the
Valley of the Passengers, because it was a great road by which the merchants and traders
from Syria and other eastern countries went into Egypt; see Gen_37:17, Gen_37:25. See
Calmet here.
There shall they bury Gog and all his multitude - Some read, “There shall they
bury Gog, that is, all his multitude.” Not Gog, or Antiochus himself, for he was not in
this battle; but his generals, captains, and soldiers, by whom he was represented. As to
Hamon-gog, we know no valley of this name but here. But we may understand the words
thus: the place where this great slaughter was, and where the multitudes of the slain
were buried, might be better called Hamon-gog, the valley of the multitude of God, than
the valley of passengers; for so great was the carnage there, that the way of the
passengers shall be stopped by it. See the text.
GILL, "And it shall come to pass in that day,.... When this destruction of the army
of Gog shall be made:
that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel; or, "a place there, a
grave in Israel" (b); he that thought to have subdued the whole land, and taken
possession of it, shall have no more of it than just a place for a grave, to be buried in; a
place fit for a grave, as the Targum; and where that will be is next observed: "the valley
of the passengers on the east of the sea"; a valley through which travellers used to pass
38

39. from Syria, Babylon, and other places, to Egypt and Arabia Felix, which lay east of the
sea; not the Mediterranean sea, which lies west of Judea; but either the Dead sea, the sea
of Sodom, a sulphurous lake, to which there may be an allusion, Rev_19:20 or the sea of
Chinnereth, or Genesareth, as the Targum, Jarchi, and Kimchi; the same with the sea or
lake of Tiberias and Galilee, mentioned in the New Testament; which sense is approved
of by Gussetius (c); where was a passage from the land of Canaan to the east of the same
sea. Calmet (d) thinks it stands for the great road at the foot of Mount Carmel, to go
from Judea, Egypt, and the country of the Philistines, into Phoenicia, which road was to
the east of the Mediterranean sea.
And it shall stop the noses of the passengers; or the passengers shall stop their
noses, because of the ill smell of the carcasses (e); or their mouths, the mouths of
blasphemers, who shall no more blaspheme the God of Israel, when they shall observe
this monument of his power, in the destruction of his and his people's enemies. It may
be rendered, "it shall stop the passengers (f); from passing that way, because of the
multitude of the carcasses that shall fall there", and which is the reason of their being
buried out of the way; this sense Jarchi takes notice of. The Targum is,
"and it is near to two mountains;''
as if this clause described the situation of the valley.
And there shall they bury Gog, and all his multitude; all his army, such of it as
the fowls and beasts had not devoured, and the bones they had left; not his army only,
but himself also, the Sultan or Grand Seignior of the Turks, the general of his mighty
army: this was not true of Antiochus; he died not, nor was he buried in the land of Israel.
And they shall call it the valley of Hamon-gog: Hamon signifies a multitude; and
this name will be imposed upon the place of Gog's sepulchre, because of the multitude
slain and buried here, and to perpetuate the memory of it: there never was yet a place of
this name in the land of Israel, which shows that this event is yet future. Calmet takes it
to be the valley of Jezreel, in which he thinks the army of Cambyses was defeated, after
the death of that prince; wrongly taking Cambyses and his army for Gog and Magog.
JAMISON, "place ... of graves — Gog found only a grave where he had expected
the spoils of conquest.
valley — So vast were to be the masses that nothing but a deep valley would suffice
for their corpses.
the passengers on the east of the sea — those travelling on the high road, east of
the Dead Sea, from Syria to Petra and Egypt. The publicity of the road would cause many
to observe God’s judgments, as the stench (as English Version translates) or the
multitude of graves (as Henderson translates, “it shall stop the passengers”) would
arrest the attention of passers-by. Their grave would be close to that of their ancient
prototypes, Sodom and Gomorrah in the Dead Sea, both alike being signal instances of
God’s judgments.
39

40. COKE, “Ezekiel 39:11. At place there of graves— An illustrious place for sepulchre;
the valley of passengers, opposite to the sea; through which the travellers shall pass
stopping their noses. Houbigant. According to the Chaldee, the sea here spoken of
was that of Gennezareth. The valley near this lake or sea is called the valley of the
passengers, because it was a great road, by which the merchants and traders from
Syria, and other eastern countries, went into Egypt. See Genesis 37:17; Genesis
37:25 and Calmet.
ELLICOTT, “11) The valley of the passengers.—The name cannot be derived from
the Scythians, as if they were spoken of “as a cloud passing over and gone,” because
the same word is used again in this verse, and also in Ezekiel 39:14-15, evidently in a
different sense. It simply denotes some (probably imaginary) thoroughfare, which is
to be blocked up by the buried bodies of the slain. No definite locality is assigned to
it, except that it is “on the east of the sea,” meaning the Dead Sea. It was to be,
therefore, on the extreme south-eastern outskirts of the land. This is another of the
features of the description which indicate some other than a literal interpretation;
for how should such a host, invading the land from the north for purposes of
plunder, be found in that locality, and how could such vast numbers of dead bodies
be transported thither?
Stop the noses.—The word “noses” is not in the original, and should be omitted. The
meaning is simply that the bodies of the host shall so fill up the valley as to stop the
way of travellers.
The valley of Hamon-gog.—It is better to translate the word Hamon, as in the
margin: The valley of the multitude of Gog. So also in Ezekiel 39:15.
POOLE, “ At that day; when God shall have destroyed this prince, and his
formidable army.
Give unto Gog; and to many of those who were with him, for some were given to the
birds and beasts to be devoured, Ezekiel 39:4.
40

41. A place there of graves: beside many other reasons for burying these slaughtered
multitudes, the humanity that religion is full of would guide the Jews to it, and God
tells us that Gog shall have a grave in Israel. He came to take possession, and so he
shall, but not as he purposed and hoped, but as God intended; Gog shall possess his
house of darkness in that land which he invaded to make a prey of. He shall have
one place there, a grave, as the Hebrew.
The valley of the passengers on the east of the sea: this valley hath here its name and
situation; the name from the frequent travels of passengers through it from Egypt
and Arabia Felix into the more northern parts, and from these again into Egypt and
Arabia. By its situation it is on the east side of the Dead Sea, to distinguish it from
the valley that is on this side Jordan westward, in which is Dothan. Now in this
valley did the Jews discomfit the Ammonites, Moabites, Tyrians, and Sidonians,
/APC 1Ma 5. This might be a type, or firstfruits, and assurance of this great victory,
but no more; for this was of a few against a few, and in this fight of some but few
fell, &c.
It shall stop the noses; the stink of the putrefying carcasses should make travellers
stop their noses, offended with the ill smells.
There shall they bury; partly in doing the office of humanity, though to dead
enemies; and let their enemies live, who would not (for want of others) be so civil to
them when dead; but chiefly to remove the nuisance of eye and nose, and to prevent
diseases, that rise many times from such smells.
Gog: this prince, whoever it is, shall there fall, and be buried with
his multitude. They shall call it: this shall give name to the valley, which is to be
called
41

42. The valley of Hamon-gog: which appellation I do not know to be given to any valley
as yet, probably because this prophecy is not yet fully accomplished.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:11 And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] I will give unto
Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the
sea: and it shall stop the [noses] of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog
and all his multitude: and they shall call [it] The valley of Hamongog.
Ver. 11. I will give unto Gog a place there of graves.] That is all the portion or
possession he gets in the Holy Land.
On the east of the sea.] The Dead Sea, or the lake of Sodom - a fit place for
antichrist to be buried in: he shall at last be cast alive into a worse lake. [Revelation
19:20]
And it shall stop the noses of passengers.] By reason of stench, or the mouths of
passengers from speaking evil of God’s people.
And they shall call it.] For a lasting monument of God’s great mercy, in ridding the
country of such pests.
PULPIT, “Gog, who should invade Israel in the hope of acquiring the entire
mastery of her land, would obtain at Jehovah's hands only a place there of graves,
i.e. either, as Hitzig, Ewald, Keil, and Smend suggest, a place where a grave might
be possible—a place large enough to receive his slaughtered carcasses; or as
Havernick proposes, "an altogether special grave as no other in Israel;" or as
Schroder interprets, "a place where there is a grave for him and nothing else."
Concerning both the designation and the site of this divinely provided sepulcher
controversy has arisen.
42

43. In the present verse ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ָ‫ה‬ may signify either
12 “‘For seven months the Israelites will be
burying them in order to cleanse the land.
CLARKE, "And seven months - It shall require a long time to bury the dead. This
is another figurative expression; which, however, may admit of a good deal of literal
meaning. Many of the Syrian soldiers had secreted themselves in different places during
the pursuit after the battle, where they died of their wounds, of hunger, and of fatigue; so
that they were not all found and buried till seven months after the defeat of the Syrian
army. This slow process of burying is distinctly related in the three following verses, and
extended even to a bone, Eze_39:15; which, when it was found by a passenger, the place
was marked, that the buriers might see and inter it. Seven months was little time enough
for all this work; and in that country putrescency does not easily take place: the
scorching winds serving to desiccate the flesh, and preserve it from decomposition.
GILL, "And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them,.... So
long time will the burial of Gog's army take up, because of the multitude of it, and by
reason their bones will be scattered here and there; which will require time to gather
them together, and bring them to one place: the reason of the burial of them will be,
partly out of humanity, which the Christian religion, which will then be embraced by the
Jews, teaches and encourages; and partly because of the disagreeable sight and ill smell
of the carcasses of the slain, and to prevent the air being infected therewith, which might
cause noxious diseases. Jarchi gives the reason of it, because Gog is of the seed of
Japheth, who covered his father's nakedness, and therefore worthy of a funeral: but a
better reason follows,
that they may cleanse the land: not from ceremonial uncleanness, a place being
unclean, by the ceremonial law, where dead carcasses, or the bones of dead men, lay; for
the ceremonial law, as it is abrogated, will now be disused by the Jews themselves, when
converted; but from natural pollution, before mentioned.
K&D 12-20, “From the fact that Gog's multitude is buried there, the valley itself will
43

44. receive the name of Hamon-Gog. The Israelites will occupy seven months in burying
them, so enormously great will be the number of the dead to be buried (Eze_39:12), and
this labour will be for a name, i.e., for renown, to the whole nation. This does not mean,
of course, “that it will be a source of honour to them to assist in this work;” nor is the
renown to be sought in the fact, that as a privileged people, protected by God, they can
possess the grave of Gog in their land (Hitzig), - a thought which is altogether remote,
and perfectly foreign to Israelitish views; but the burying of Gog's multitude of troops
will be for a name to the people of Israel, inasmuch as they thereby cleanse the land and
manifest their zeal to show themselves a holy people by sweeping all uncleanness away.
‫ם‬ ‫י‬ is an accusative of time: on the day when I glorify myself. - Eze_39:14, Eze_39:15.
The effort made to cleanse the land perfectly from the uncleanness arising from the
bones of the dead will be so great, that after the great mass of the slain have been buried
in seven months, there will be men specially appointed to bury the bones of the dead
that still lie scattered here and there about the land. ‫י‬ֵ‫שׁ‬ְ‫נ‬ ַ‫א‬ ‫יד‬ ִ‫מ‬ ָ‫תּ‬ are people who have a
permanent duty to discharge. The participles ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫ב‬ֹ‫ע‬ and ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ ְ‫בּ‬ ַ‫ק‬ ְ‫מ‬ are co-ordinate, and
are written together asyndetos, men who go about the land, and men who bury with
those who go about. That the words are to be understood in this sense is evident from
Eze_39:15, according to which those who go about do not perform the task of burying,
but simply search for bones that have been left, and put up a sign for the buriers of the
dead. ‫ה‬ ָ‫א‬ ָ‫,ר‬ with the subject indefinite; if one sees a human bone, he builds (erects) a
‫יּוּן‬ ִ‫,צ‬ or stone, by the side of it (cf. 2Ki_23:17). - Eze_39:16. A city shall also receive the
name of Hamonah, i.e., multitude or tumult. To ‫יר‬ ִ‫ם־ע‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ we may easily supply ‫ֶה‬‫י‬ ְ‫ה‬ִ‫י‬ from
the context, since this puts in the future the statement, “the name of the city is,” for
which no verb was required in Hebrew. In the last words, ‫ֲרוּ‬‫ה‬ ִ‫ט‬ ְ‫ו‬ ‫ץ‬ ֶ‫ר‬ ָ‫א‬ ָ‫,ה‬ the main thought
is finally repeated and the picture brought to a close. - Eze_39:17-20. In the third place,
God will provide the birds of prey and beasts of prey with an abundant meal from this
slaughter. This cannot be understood as signifying that only what remain of the corpses,
and have not been cleared away in the manner depicted in Eze_39:11-16, will become the
prey of wild beasts; but the beasts of prey will make their meal of the corpses before it is
possible to bury them, since the burying cannot be effected immediately or all at once. -
The several features in the picture, of the manner in which the enemies are to be
destroyed till the last trace of them is gone, are not arranged in chronological order, but
according to the subject-matter; and the thought that the slaughtered foes are to become
the prey of wild beasts is mentioned last as being the more striking, because it is in this
that their ignominious destruction culminates. To give due prominence to this thought,
the birds and beasts of prey are summoned by God to gather together to the meal
prepared for them. The picture given of it as a sacrificial meal is based upon Isa_34:6
and Jer_46:10. In harmony with this picture the slaughtered foes are designated as
fattened sacrificial beasts, rams, lambs, he-goats, bullocks; on which Grotius has
correctly remarked, that “these names of animals, which were generally employed in the
sacrifices, are to be understood as signifying different orders of men, chiefs, generals,
soldiers, as the Chaldee also observes.”
POOLE, “ Seven months shall the house of Israel, many of the house of Israel, some
44

45. voluntarily, others by appointment, be burying of them; a little time would not
suffice to bury so great multitude, make what haste they could.
Cleanse the land; not in a legal sense, but in a natural, to clear the land of hurtful
stinks.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of
them, that they may cleanse the land.
Ver. 12. And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them.] That is, a
long while; like as the Reformed Churches were in rooting out Popery, those
damnable doctrines, ceremonies, images, relics, bulls, and books. Here in England,
the Romish religion stood a whole month and more after the death of Queen Mary,
as before. December 27, it was permitted that the Epistles, Gospels, Ten
Commandments, Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Litany should be used in the Vulgate
tongue. March 22, when the Estates of the realm were assembled, by renewing of a
law of Edward VI, was granted the whole use of the Lord’s Supper - that is, under
both kinds. June 24, the sacrifice of the mass was abolished, and the liturgy in the
English tongue established. In July, the oath of supremacy was ministered; and in
August, images were removed out of churches, broken or burnt. (a)
“ Tantae molis erat Romanam abscondere gentem. ”
PETT, “Verses 12-14
“And seven months will the house of Israel be burying them, that they may cleanse
the land. Yes, all the people of the land will bury them. And it will bring honour on
them (be to them a renown) in the day that I will be glorified,” says the Lord
Yahweh. “And they will set apart men with the continual employment of passing
through the land to bury those who pass through, who remain on the face of the
land, to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will search.”
45

46. Again the emphasis is on the huge number of dead. At first the whole of Israel will
be involved in burying the multitude of the dead for ‘seven months’, that is, the
divinely appointed time necessary. Then the task of clearing up the remainder will
be handed over to specialists, ‘the passers through’. These latter will be specifically
employed on a continual basis for the task of searching out and ensuring the burial
of all the bones picked clean by the scavengers which have been missed in the above
operation. (We are reminded of the assiduous searching out of leaven at the feast of
the Passover - see Exodus 12:19).
Note that the purpose is not to give them a decent burial but to get rid of the bones
and corpses of the accursed of God so that the land will be ‘clean’ (Deuteronomy
21:23). The whole purpose of the operation is the purity of God’s people which must
be the concern of the whole people. While such bodies remained unburied the land
was ‘unclean’ and ‘defiled’ . The everlasting Israel must be free from all taint and
totally pure for their everlasting future.
And by these actions great honour will come on Israel, for they will be having their
part in the great glory brought on the name of God by what has happened in the
defeat of the forces of darkness in ‘the day that He is glorified’.
PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:12, Ezekiel 39:13
The time that should be occupied in Gog's funeral should be seven months—so great
should be the number of the dead—the sacred number seven recalling the seven
years consumed in the burning of the weapons (Ezekiel 39:9), and reminding one of
the "seven times heated" furnace into which the Hebrew children were cast, and of
the "seven times" of Nebuchadnezzar's humiliation (Daniel 3:19; Daniel 4:23). The
parties who should conduct his obsequies should be the house of Israel, even all the
people of the land, indicating the common joy occasioned by the barbaric chieftain's
overthrow. The motive which should impel them in their work would be a desire to
cleanse the land from the defilement it had contracted from the corpses of the slain
(comp. Numbers 19:11,Numbers 19:22; Numbers 31:19; Numbers 35:33); and the
end should be that the work should be to them, not for "a remembrance" (Ewald),
46

47. but a renown, not because they should have helped to bury Gog (Hengstenberg), or
through burying Gog should have proved themselves his conquerors (Smend), and
in virtue of Jehovah's protection the possessors of his grave (Hitzig), but because in
the day when Jehovah glorified himself through Gog's destruction, he (Jehovah)
should also be glorified by their (Israel's) zeal "to show themselves a holy people by
sweeping all uncleanness away" (Keil).
13 All the people of the land will bury them, and
the day I display my glory will be a memorable
day for them, declares the Sovereign Lord.
GILL, "Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them,.... That is, a great
number of the common people of the land of Israel, especially of those that dwell near
the field of battle, shall be employed in burying the slain; and which they will be very
ready to do, for the reasons above mentioned:
and it shall be to them a renown; or, "for a name" (g); they shall be commended for
their humanity to their enemies, and shall be spoken of with honour, as being the
peculiar people of God, whom he has so remarkably appeared for, protected, and
defended:
the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God; the day that will be renown
to them will be to the glory of God; whose greatness, goodness, power, and wisdom, will
be seen in saving his people, and destroying their enemies.
JAMISON, "I ... glorified — in destroying the foe (Eze_28:22).
47

48. ELLICOTT, “ (13) All the people of the land.—“It would be but a very moderate
allowance, on the literal supposition, to say that a million of men would be thus
engaged, and that on an average each would consign to the tomb two corpses in one
day; which, for the 180 working days of the seven months, would make an aggregate
of 360,000,000 of corpses !” (Fairbairn.)
POOLE, “ All that dwell thereabout, or all that came out to resist and fight with this
army.
It shall be to them, the house of Israel,
a renown; a commendation, matter of praise, that did, like men, bury the dead, who
otherwise must have been all dung on the face of the earth, and the swelling hill
rising from their buried bones shall be a monument to the praise of Israel’s
courtesy. Or else thus, the day of my being glorified shall be a renown to Israel: as
indeed it is an honour to be owned of God, so when God shows he owneth such, he
gives them honour among all that observe it.
Glorified, in the deliverance of Israel, and in the destruction of Gog by my
wonderful power, in my just zeal against mine enemies, and for my people.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury [them]; and it shall
be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.
Ver. 13. And it shall be to them a renown.] A monument or trophy of their triumph.
When the Switzers, A.D. 1443, had vanquished the Thuricenses in battle, they
banqueted in the place where they won the victory, using the dead bodies of their
adversaries instead of stools and tables. (a)
48

49. 14 People will be continually employed in
cleansing the land. They will spread out across the
land and, along with others, they will bury any
bodies that are lying on the ground.
“‘After the seven months they will carry out a
more detailed search.
BARNES, "Men of continual employment - literally, as margin, i. e., men
regularly appointed to this business. As the land of Israel represents figuratively the
Church of Christ, the purification of that land is a proper part of the figure to indicate
such a sanctification and cleansing of His Church, as Paul describes Eph_5:26-27.
GILL, "And they shall sever out men of continual employment,.... That is, the
principal of the house of Israel, their magistrates and governors, shall select certain
persons, to be daily employed in the following work, till ended:
passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain
upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it; these men will be appointed to go through
the land of Israel, to gather up such carcasses and bones of dead men as remain
anywhere after the seven months' burial before observed; and all passengers or travellers
shall be assisting to them in it, both in directing where any such carcasses and bones
may lie, and in bringing them to the common place of burial; that so the land may he
thoroughly cleansed from such disagreeable objects:
after the end of seven months shall they search or begin to search, as the
Targum; when seven months are ended, in which the people in general will be employed
in burying the dead; these men before mentioned will be sent out into each part of the
land, to search in caves, and dens and ditches; among thickets, thorns, and briers, where
the slain may fall; or where soldiers, being wounded, might betake themselves and die;
or their carcasses or bones be dragged and left by beasts and fowls; to find them out, and
bring them to the place of interment.
49

50. JAMISON, "with the passengers — The men employed continually in the burying
were to be helped by those happening to pass by; all were to combine.
after the end of seven months shall they search — to see if the work was
complete [Munster].
ELLICOTT, “(14) Men of continual employment.—The word for “continual” is the
same as that translated always in Ezekiel 38:8, where see Note. It implies that this
occupation is to be one of long continuance, and the fact that they are to search the
land through for the remains shows that the army of Gog is not conceived of as
perishing when collected in one place, but when distributed all over the land. This
search is only to begin after the close of the burying for seven months already
described.
POOLE, “ They, the rulers in Israel,
shall sever out, choose out men who shall make it their work.
Passing through; to go up and down over the whole land, for many of Gog’s
wounded, flying soldiers died in thickets, and by corners into which they crept,
when they could go no further.
With the passengers; whose assistance they would desire of courtesy, or command
by order, and that with reason, all this care and labour for burying the dead tending
to their good, that they might unoffended travel whither they were going.
That remain unburied by the public labour of the house of Israel during the seven
months.
To cleanse it: a legal cleansing, if-referred to Antiochus Epiphanes’s times, but not
so with those that refer it to a season not yet come, for all legal ceremonies are
50

51. ended: when Gog’s army shall be destroyed and buried, the land shall be cleansed
from the stench and noisomeness of these carcasses. These officers begin their work
after the first seven months are expired, for during the seven months there would be
work for all of them to bury the dead and slain of Gog’s army.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment,
passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the
face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
Ver. 14. And they shall sever out men of continual employment.] Viros quotidianos;
men that shall stick to it, making it their business: Pollinctores: vespillones. So do
our public professors and others, to confute Popish tenets, and to decry their
customs. In doing whereof, they are assidui et accubui. constant and near.
PULPIT, “When the work of burying Gog should have gone on for seven months, at
the end of that time the Israelites should sever out (comp. Deuteronomy 10:8) men
of continual employment; literally, men of con-t/nuance; i.e. persons hired for a
continuous work or devoted to a constant occupation, whose business it should be
passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain—or, as the
Revised Version reads, to bury them that pass through, that remain—upon the face
of the land. Here, again, the old play upon the word "passengers" recurs, and with
it two or three difficulties.
15 As they go through the land, anyone who sees
a human bone will leave a marker beside it until
the gravediggers bury it in the Valley of Hamon
Gog,
51

52. GILL, "And the passengers that pass through the land,.... Not along with the
searchers, but that travel through it upon business in it, or in other lands:
when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it; as he passes
along, if he happens to see a human bone in the way, or hard by, he shall stop and lay a
stone, or a heap of stones, by it, or some such mark or token, signifying that a man's
bone lies there:
till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog, that is, which sign
shall continue till searchers come that way and take up the bone, and carry it to be
buried in the valley of Hamon-gog; for carcasses and bones were not to be buried in the
place where they were found, but to be brought and interred in this common place of
sepulture.
JAMISON, "First “all the people of the land” engaged in the burying for seven
months; then special men were employed, at the end of the seven months, to search for
any still left unburied. The passers-by helped them by setting up a mark near any such
bones, in order to keep others from being defiled by casually touching them, and that the
buriers might come and remove them. Denoting the minute care to put away every relic
of heathen pollution from the Holy Land.
POOLE, “ Order should be taken to inform travellers, if they lighted on any bone or
bones of men, as they journeyed, that they were desired to set up some mark at
them, that thereby the public officers appointed to gather and bury them might find
and carry those bones to the common burying-place.
When any seeth a man’s bone: many of Gog’s soldiers were torn by beasts, which if
some of the greater beasts did, the lesser could not, break and devour the bones, but
with the flesh these were dragged about by beasts, or scattered by the eagles and
vultures, and so lay divided from the body; of these the prophet speaks.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:15 And the passengers [that] pass through the land, when [any]
seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in
the valley of Hamongog.
Ver. 15. Then shall he set up a sign by it.] A statue, pillar, or sepulchral monument,
52

53. that the butlers may bury it. Oh that in like sort God would cause the prophet, all
relics and rags of Popery, and other heresy, together with the unclean spirit, to pass
out of our land. [Zechariah 13:2]
PETT, “Verse 15-16
“And the passers through the land will pass through, and when any sees a man’s
bone, then he will set up a marker by it, until the buriers have buried it in the valley
of Hamon-gog. And Hamonah (multitude) will also be the name of a city. Thus will
they cleanse the land.”
The passers through will continue with their employment until every bone is buried.
There are the searchers and the buriers. (With their stress on the importance f
‘cleanness’ such searchers and buriers were probably part of everyday life of
Israel). Possibly Hamonah was to be where they set up their living quarters (‘city’
could mean anything from a tent encampment to a large city).
These verses depict the thoroughness of Yahweh’s judgment. None will escape in the
least degree.
PULPIT, “describes the method of procedure these "searchers" and "buriers,"
should follow. If these were distinct from each other, the "searchers"—if they were
the same, any others—on discovering a man's bone should set up a sign by it;
literally, build near it a pillar; erect a heap of stone to call the attention of the
butlers, who, on coming to the spot, should inter it in the valley of Hamon-gog.
16 near a town called Hamonah.[c] And so they
53

54. will cleanse the land.’
GILL, "And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah,.... The name of the city
nearest to this place, where Gog and his multitude shall be buried, shall be called
Hamonah from thence, which signifies a multitude; or Polyandrion, as the Septuagint
version, a place where many graves are; or perhaps a new city will be built near this
place, and so called, to perpetuate the memory of it; or else, as Kimchi observes,
Jerusalem will be so called, from the multitude of those that will be slain near it; but,
however, neither that nor any other city in the land of Israel have ever bore any such
name; from whence it may be concluded that this prophecy does not refer to the times of
Antiochus, or any yet past, but to time to come:
thus shall they cleanse the land; thoroughly and completely, so that not a bone shall
be left unburied.
JAMISON, "A city in the neighborhood was to receive the name Hamonah,
“multitude,” to commemorate the overthrow of the multitudes of the foe [Henderson].
The multitude of the slain shall give a name to the city of Jerusalem after the land shall
have been cleansed [Grotius]. Jerusalem shall be famed as the conqueror of multitudes.
ELLICOTT, “ (16) Shall be Hamonah.—As a further monument of this great
overthrow some city (not more definitely described, but probably yet to be built)
shall be called “Multitude.”
Thus shall they cleanse the land.—The extremest defilement, according to the
Mosaic law, was caused by a dead body or by human bones. From this the land
could only be purified by the burial of the last vestige of the host of Gog. In the
spiritual contest which this prophecy is designed to set forth under these material
figures, this cleansing looks to the purification of the Church from everything “that
defileth and is unclean.” (Comp. Ephesians 5:26-27; Revelation 21:27.)
With Ezekiel 39:17 the last part of this remarkable prophecy is introduced. Its
representations are not to be considered as subsequent to those of the former part of
the chapter, but as depicting the same thing under another figure.
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55. POOLE, “ The city; either which is next to this common tomb of Gog, as most likely,
or the city Jerusalem, whose people, delivered, sanctified, grateful, and magnified in
the eyes of the nations by the wonderful mercy of their God, shall be called by way
of eminence,
The people, or
Her people,
Hamonah.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:16 And also the name of the city [shall be] Hamonah. Thus
shall they cleanse the land.
Ver. 16. And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah,] i.e., Multitude or tumult;
and all to keep up the memory of that signal victory. Near unto the University of
Cambridge, on the southeast side, there appear aloft certain high hills called Gog
Magog hills; but wherefore I know not. But not far from them is Heretics’ hill, so
called by the Papists because Bilney and Latimer were wont there to walk.
PULPIT, “As another mark to distinguish Gog's tomb, a city should arise in its
vicinity, bearing the name Hamonah, or "Multitude" (comp. Isaiah 19:18, "the city
of destruction"), though Schmieder thinks it must have been "a city of graves,"
since a city of houses could not exist in such a valley of the dead, and indeed the
LXX. gives as the city's name πολυάνδριον, by which later Greek writers were
accustomed to call the common ground in a cemetery as distinguished from its
paternal sepulchers. If quite improbable that Bethshan or Scythopolis near Megiddo
was Ezekiel's Hamonah, it is possible the actual city may have been named after the
ideal. Plumptre cites as a modern parallel the English town of Lichfield (or "Field of
corpses"), which, according to tradition, commemorates the destruction of the
55

56. Danes. When the work of the buriers should be finished, the land would be
completely cleansed.
17 “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord
says: Call out to every kind of bird and all the
wild animals: ‘Assemble and come together from
all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you,
the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel.
There you will eat flesh and drink blood.
BARNES, "The purposes of the past dispensation shall be made clear to God’s people
themselves and to the pagan. His judgments were the consequence of their sins; and
these sins once abandoned, the favor of their God will return in yet more abundance.
CLARKE, "Gather yourselves - to my sacrifice - This is an allusion to a custom
common in the east: when a sacrifice is made, the friends and neighbors of the party
sacrificing are invited to come and feast on the sacrifice.
GILL, "And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord God,.... What the prophet is
ordered by the Lord to say is to creatures not then in being, nor yet; and, were they, they
could not understand his words; but however, when the time comes, partly by an
instinct in nature, and partly by a particular direction of Providence, they will be
gathered together upon so great a slaughter of men; for what follows, though mentioned
in this place, will be between the slaughter of Gog's army, and the burial of it, as Kimchi
well observes; after the burial such an invitation would be impertinent; and which is
made not for the sake of creatures, but of men, to denote the certainty of this great
carnage that shall be made:
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57. speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field; this must be
understood of such fowls, and such beasts, as devour dead carcasses, for all will not feed
on them; a like invitation is given after the battle at Armageddon, the same with this
here, Rev_19:17 only with this difference, there an angel is said to cry, here the prophet;
there to the fowls only, here to the beasts of the field also; no doubt respect there is had
to this passage:
assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my
sacrifices that I do sacrifice for you; such a slaughter of men is called a sacrifice,
because there is a likeness between that and the killing of beasts for sacrifice; besides,
these enemies of God and his people will fall a victim to his justice, as well as be a repast
for fowls and beasts, who are invited, as to a feast, to feed upon them; and there being so
much of the power and providence of God in all this, it is ascribed to him, and is called
"the supper of the great God", Rev_19:17,
even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel; where Gog's army will fall,
Eze_39:4, and in such vast numbers, that it may well be called a great sacrifice; the
sacrifice of a great army by the great God, and for such great number of creatures:
that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood; the flesh and blood of the sacrifices, even of
slain men, which carnivorous creatures delight in. The Targum is,
"draw near everywhere round about to the slain, which I slay for you with a great
slaughter upon the mountains of Israel, and ye shall eat the flesh, and drink the blood.''
JAMISON, "(Rev_19:17).
sacrifice — Anciently worshippers feasted on the sacrifices. The birds and beasts of
prey are invited to the sacrificial feast provided by God (compare Isa_18:6; Isa_34:6;
Zep_1:7; Mar_9:49). Here this sacrifice holds only a subordinate place in the picture,
and so is put last. Not only shall their bones lie long unburied, but they shall be stripped
of the flesh by beasts and birds of prey.
COFFMAN, “"And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: speak unto the
birds of every sort, and to every beast of the field. Assemble yourselves, and come;
gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a
great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood.
Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth,
of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan. And ye
shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I
have sacrificed for you. And ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots,
with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord Jehovah."
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58. Although repeated here with variations, this is the same prophecy given in Ezekiel
39:4, foretelling The Great Supper of God.
There are two Suppers which God has provided for human beings: (1) the Lord's
Supper in his kingdom to which all men are invited to come, regardless of race or
any other merely human classification, and (2) the Great Supper of God. The first is
optional for men. If they desire redemption from their sins, the Lord's Supper is
given for their nourishment and teaching; but if men through wickedness reject this
supper, there is yet another, the Great Supper of God; it is not optional. Those who
miss the Lord's Supper will most certainly be present for this one, only they shall
not be the ones who eat it; they shall be the piece de resistance! The picture here
seems to be "Based upon Isaiah 36:6 and Jeremiah 46:10."[20] Also, Revelation
19:17-19 has another graphic presentation of this Great Supper of God. Feinberg's
opinion that, "These events shall transpire at the end of the great tribulation, and
just before the Millennial reign of Messiah,"[21] cannot possibly be correct, for the
New Testament plainly states that it will happen "when the thousand years reign of
Christ are finished" (Revelation 20:7).
COKE, “Ezekiel 39:17. Speak unto every feathered fowl— It was the custom for
persons who offered sacrifices to invite their friends to the feast, which was made of
the remainder. So here the prophet, by God's command, invites the beasts and fowls
to partake of the sacrifice of his enemies. Whoever compares Psalms 78:48.
Deuteronomy 32:24. Habakkuk 3:5 and Isaiah 34:7 must confess, that the prophet
had all these passages in his eye: but at the same time, from a luxuriance of
expression, he has both enlarged upon, and surpassed them. He dwells as long as he
can upon this subject; he sets it in all the variety of lights which it will bear, and
leaves no room for any that come after him to add or improve; unless we except that
passage of St. John, Revelation 19:17-18 which is certainly superior in sublimity to
this of the prophet. See Michaelis's Notes, p. 110.
ELLICOTT, “ (17) Every feathered fowl.—Compare Ezekiel 39:4, also Ezekiel
17:23; Ezekiel 29:5. The birds and beasts of all kinds represent all nations.
A great sacrifice.—The representation of a destructive judgment upon the Lord’s
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59. enemies as a sacrifice is found also in Isaiah 34:6; Jeremiah 46:10. The figure is not
to be pushed beyond the single point for which it is used—“to fill out and heighten
the description of an immense slaughter.”
POOLE, “ Speak; though they understand not thy word, yet speak. for they will
understand my word, which shall go out with thine.
Unto every feathered fowl; to all sorts of carnivorous birds, every kind of those that
eat flesh.
To every beast, that are for the prey, little or great, which either by craft or power
get their food out of the flesh of others.
Assemble yourselves; come in whole companies, flocks and herds too; and this
repeated twice more,
come, gather yourselves: they have an earnest invitation, from all sides.
To my sacrifice: when sacrifices were offered, there usually was a feast to the priest
the sacrificer, and for what guests were invited; now God is about to make such, he
invites his guests, resolved to entertain them plentifully.
That I do sacrifice: the punishment of these God calls a sacrifice, which he doth
offer, i.e. to his own justice, to satisfy that.
For you: it was for higher ends, yet since God intends to fill them with the flesh and
blood of it, he is pleased to tell them he hath slain for their entertainment.
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60. A great sacrifice, where more thousands are offered at once than ever were at any
time offered; it is a sacrifice so great, that none ever was or will be like.
The mountains of Israel; the land of Canaan.
Eat flesh; the flesh of the sacrifice.
And drink blood; the blood of it: this was entertainment fitting these invited guests.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD Speak unto
every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come;
gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, [even] a
great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.
Ver. 17. Speak unto every feathered fowl.] A further explanation of that which had
been said. [Ezekiel 39:4]
Assemble yourselves.] Jeremiah 12:9, Revelation 19:17;
To my sacrifice.] To this great slaughter of enemies whom I do sacrifice, as it were,
to my justice.
PETT, “Verse 17
“And you, son of man, thus says the Lord Yahweh, Speak to the birds of every kind,
and to every beast of the field. ‘Assemble yourselves and come. Gather yourselves on
every side to my sacrifice that I sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice on the
mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood’.”
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61. This is the feast of the wild beasts. They are called together to partake of it
(compare Revelation 19:17-18). And we are called on to consider this great
gathering of scavengers descending on the prey. It likens the destruction of Gog and
his forces to a great sacrificial feast. And it is for the scavengers. No man would be
told to drink blood. That makes it the more dreadful. But this is a sacrifice fit only
for the wild beasts and birds. The sight of vultures circling dead bodies and
scavengers tearing at a carcass would be a common sight in Israel. It is not in itself
glorious but horrific. The very thought of it would make men shudder. It spoke of
the most ignominious of deaths. But it was to be the fate of the wicked. Compare
Ezekiel 32:4; Ezekiel 29:5; Ezekiel 31:13; Jeremiah 7:33; Jeremiah 16:4; Jeremiah
19:7; Jeremiah 34:20. The idea of ‘eating flesh and drinking blood’ is, however,
elsewhere metaphorical for enjoying the fruits of victory.
Verses 17-20
The Scavengers Are Called to a Great Sacrificial Feast (Ezekiel 39:17-20).
A huge emphasis in this chapter is on the purification of Israel and the awful fate of
the wicked. Both are again involved here, with the emphasis on the latter. The
scavengers clean up the land, but here they are also seen as attending a sacrificial
feast in which they partake of the offering, and the offering is the wicked dead.
EBC, “. Ezekiel 39:17-24.-The overwhelming magnitude of the catastrophe is once
more set forth under the image of a sacrificial feast, to which Jehovah summons all
the birds of the air and every beast of the field (Ezekiel 39:17-20). The feast is
represented as a sacrifice not in any religious sense, but simply in accordance with
ancient usage, in which the slaughtering of animals was invariably a sacrificial act.
The only idea expressed by the figure is that Jehovah has decreed this slaughter of
Gog and his host, and that it will be so great that all ravenous beasts and birds will
eat flesh to the full and drink the blood of princes of the earth to intoxication. But
we turn with relief from these images of carnage and death to the moral purpose
which they conceal (Ezekiel 39:21-24). This is stated more distinctly here than in
earlier passages of this prophecy. It will teach Israel that Jehovah is indeed their
61

62. God; the lingering sense of insecurity caused by the remembrance of their former
rejection will be finally taken away by this signal deliverance. And through Israel it
will teach a lesson to the heathen. They will learn something of the principles on
which Jehovah has dealt with His people when they contrast this great salvation
with His former desertion of them. It will then fully appear that it was for their sins
that they went into captivity; and so the knowledge of God’s holiness and His
displeasure against sin will be extended to the nations of the world.
PULPIT, “Expanding the thought of Ezekiel 39:4, and borrowing the imagery of
the older prophets, Isaiah (Isaiah 34:6; Isaiah 56:9) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 46:10;
Jeremiah 1:1-19 :29; Jeremiah 51:40), Ezekiel represents Gog's destruction as a
great sacrifice—literally, slaying; hence a sacrificial feast or simply banquet (as in
Genesis 31:54)—upon the mountains of Israel, prepared by Jehovah for the fowls of
the air and the beasts of the field, which he, therefore, invites to come from all
quarters to eat flesh and drink blood.
18 You will eat the flesh of mighty men and drink
the blood of the princes of the earth as if they
were rams and lambs, goats and bulls—all of
them fattened animals from Bashan.
CLARKE, "Ye shall - drink the blood of the princes of the earth - I need not
mention the custom of the Scandinavians: they were accustomed to drink the blood of
their enemies out of the skulls of the dead. But this is spoken of fowls and beasts here -
rams, lambs, and goats. The feast shall be as grateful and as plenteous to the fowls and
beasts, as one made of the above animals, the fattest and best of their kind, (because fed
in the fertile fields of Bashan), would be to the guests of him who makes a sacrifice.
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63. GILL, "Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty,.... Of the soldiers, men of strength and
courage, and fit for war, with which the army of Gog will abound:
and drink the blood of the princes of the earth: both the princes of his own
family and court, and those of his allies and auxiliaries that will come along with him:
of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks; which the Targum Jarchi, and
Kimchi, interpret of kings, princes, dukes, rulers, and governors; and so does John, in
the Revelation, of kings, captains, and mighty men, Rev_19:18,
all of them fatlings of Baasha; which was a country in Israel, very fruitful, and full of
pastures, where much fat cattle were bred; and to which these great personages in Gog's
army are compared, for their bulk, strength, and wealth. So the Targum,
"all of them rich in substance.''
It may be rendered, "all of them the merie of Bashan"; for "meri" is the name of an ox or
buffle; and Jarchi says that a fat ox is called in the Arabic language "almari" (h).
JAMISON, "rams ... lambs ... goats — By these various animal victims used in
sacrifices are meant various ranks of men, princes, generals, and soldiers (compare Isa_
34:6).
fatlings of Bashan — ungodly men of might (Psa_22:12). Bashan, beyond Jordan,
was famed for its fat cattle. Fat implies prosperity which often makes men refractory
towards God (Deu_32:14, Deu_32:15).
COKE, “Ezekiel 39:18. Drink the blood of the princes of the earth— That is, the
fowls and beasts mentioned before, shall drink, &c. There cannot be a greater
instance of disingenuousness, and of inveterate malice to the Scriptures and the
people of God, than Voltaire has shewn by his infamous misrepresentation of the
passage before us; endeavouring to fix it as an opprobrium upon the Jews, that they
sacrificed human beings to the Deity. After urging what he calls proofs, he adds,
"Nay, Ezekiel himself, in order to encourage them [the Jews], promises them also
that they shall eat of human flesh: Ye shall eat both the house and his rider, and
drink the blood of princes." Can any person, with the least candour, conceive that
this writer really mistook, or misrepresented this passage through downright
ignorance?—The supposition is impossible; and in this view, what a heart must he
have had, who could thus daringly traduce the sacred oracles of God; and on how
wretched a master do they pin their faith, who blindly follow the delusive dictates of
so vain and perverse a philosopher!
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64. ELLICOTT, “ (18) Drink the blood of the princes.—In these verses there is a
curious mingling of the figurative and the literal; thus the “princes” are
immediately explained by the mention of the various sacrificial animals; and in
Ezekiel 39:20 these are again interpreted of “horses and chariots, with mighty men,
and with all men of war.” And when the figure is so far explained it only leads to a
literal sense which must yet be considered as itself but the symbol of something
further. (Comp. Revelation 19:17-18.)
POOLE, “ In these two and the two following verses, God takes on him the person
of one that makes a feast, invites his guests, and promiseth to satisfy them. Of the
two former, the first is an enigmatical invitation, or an invitation in a riddle; the
latter is the key to this character.
The mighty; who had great authority, great courage and strength, the giant-like
ones, commanders of great note in the army.
The princes: many princes came with their countrymen and subjects to assist in this
war, whose blood these fowls should drink; and these compared to rams which lead
the flock.
Lambs are the more ordinary in the army. Goats; great goats, as the Hebrew
denoteth; and these signify the more lascivious and impetuous among them.
Bullocks; such as, though more slow, were of great strength.
Fatlings; well fed, it was no lean sacrifice made.
Of Bashan, a mountain of most rich and sweet soil, and that fed the best of any.
64

65. TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of
the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them
fatlings of Bashan.
Ver. 18. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty.] Whose flesh may he, perhaps, more
delicate.
And drink the blood.] Blood royal, of a noble alloy. Sed nihil inde colligas, quam
perpetuam eorum damnationem qui verbum Dei persequuntur, quique populum
Israel spiritualem exagitant. (a) It importeth the eternal damnation of atheists and
antichrists.
PETT, “Verse 18-19
“And you will eat fat until you are full, and drink blood until you are drunk, of my
sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.”
Nothing could have been designed to make Ezekiel shudder more. The eating of the
fat and the drinking of the blood of sacrifices were forbidden to men. And here it is
the blood of men. But here it is the wild beasts who partake. It stresses the awfulness
of the fate of these people. And the beasts will be more than sated.
PULPIT, “specifies the victims whose flesh and blood should form their banquet,
viz. the mighty, as in Ezekiel 32:12, Ezekiel 32:27, and the princes of the earth,
meaning the nobles and other dignitaries in Gog's army, who, in accordance with
the symbol of a feast, are spoken of as "rams," "lambs," "goats," "bullocks," and
"fatlings of Bashan" (comp. Psalms 22:12). "Per haec animantium, quae in
saarificiis usurpari solebant, nomina varii hominum ordines intelliguntur,
principum, ducum, militum, quod et Chaldaeus observat" (Grotius. Comp.
Revelation 19:17, Revelation 19:18). In Zephaniah 1:7 the heathen are the guests,
65

66. and his people the victims, at Jehovah's banquet.
19 At the sacrifice I am preparing for you, you
will eat fat till you are glutted and drink blood till
you are drunk.
CLARKE, "And ye shall eat fat - and drink blood - Who shall eat and drink,
etc.? Not the Jews: though Voltaire says they ate human flesh, and are invited here by
the prophet to eat the flesh and drink the blood of their enemies; which is a most
unprincipled falsehood. It is the fowls and the beasts that God invites, Eze_39:17 :
“Speak to every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, assemble yourselves - that
ye may eat flesh and drink blood;” nor are the persons altered in all these Eze_39:17-20 :
so the assertion of Voltaire is either through brutish ignorance or Satanic malice.
GILL, "And ye shall eat fat till ye be full,.... The fat of men; and such as before
described generally are fat, and of which they shall have enough; and, though voracious
creatures, shall eat to satiety:
and drink blood till ye be drunken; as men are with wine, who become mad with it;
and so birds and beasts of prey grow fiercer by drinking blood: the meaning is, they
should have their fill of the flesh, fat, and blood, of slain men:
of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you; the Targum is,
"of the flesh of the slain, which I have slain for you;''
See Gill on Eze_39:17.
POOLE, “ Eat fat; accounted best, and which shall here be plentiful.
Till ye be full; none should fray them away, nor should any devour so much as to
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67. leave others hungry.
My sacrifice: see Ezekiel 39:17. RAPP, “Ezekiel 39:19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be
full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for
you.
Ver. 19. Of my sacrifice.] Or, Of my good cheer. So God calleth it, to show how well
pleased he is with the destruction of his Church’s enemies.
20 At my table you will eat your fill of horses and
riders, mighty men and soldiers of every kind,’
declares the Sovereign Lord.
GILL, "Thus shall ye be filled at my table with horses and chariots,.... With
the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, as John interprets it, Rev_19:18, and so
the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions: and with the flesh of men that ride in
chariots used in war; for chariots themselves cannot be eaten; and with these the birds
and beasts of prey will be filled at the Lord's table, which he will furnish for them on the
mountains of Israel, on the field of battle, where Gog and his army will fall: and thus as
the Lord's supper is called the table of the Lord, 1Co_10:21, so this table of the Lord is
called the supper of the great God, Rev_19:17, this is further explained,
with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God; that is, with the
flesh of valiant men, generals, captains, officers of all sorts, and common soldiers, even
of all men, great and small, bond and free, Rev_19:18.
JAMISON, "my table — the field of battle on the mountains of Israel (Eze_38:8,
Eze_38:20).
chariots — that is, charioteers.
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68. POOLE, “ At my table; in the field where Gog, his princes, and army are slain,
compared to a table.
Horses put for horsemen, not common foot-soldiers.
Chariots for the men that ride in them.
Mighty men; see Ezekiel 39:18.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots,
with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
Ver. 20. With horses and chariots,] i.e., With men that ride on horses, and fight out
of chariots.
PETT, “ “And you will be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty
men and with all the men of war, says the Lord Yahweh.”
That great and proud host that went forth to battle with shouts of triumph and
certainty of spoils, has now become a feast for the wild beasts and scavenger birds.
It stresses their inglorious end. And it is all at the word of the Lord Yahweh. When
the world triumphs and magnifies itself before the people of God, they need to
consider their end. Whatever the people of God may suffer, it is nothing like this.
Again the language is symbolic. Real life scavengers would hardly be interested in
chariots. These are judgment figures.
68

69. 21 “I will display my glory among the nations, and
all the nations will see the punishment I inflict and
the hand I lay on them.
GILL, "And I will set my glory among the Heathen,.... The glory of his divine
perfections, particularly his power and his goodness, in destroying the enemies of his
people, and saving them; which will be set in a clear point of view to the Heathen, that
they cannot but observe it; and this is the ultimate end of this strange event, as it is of all
that the Lord does, even his own glory, subordinate to which is his people's good:
and all the Heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my
hand that I have laid upon them; his vengeance and power, as the Targum; the
punishment inflicted by his mighty hand on Gog and his army: these Heathens are the
Pagan kingdoms of China, &c. and of Tartary, Persia, and the whole Turkish dominions,
being Mahometan, which are no better than Heathen; these will be converted to the
Christian religion, in consequence of this event; for this will be the passing away of the
Turkish woe, which will make way for the sounding of the seventh trumpet; and when
these kingdoms will become Christ's, and way be made for the kings of the east to come
over to him, Rev_11:14.
COFFMAN, “"And I will set my glory among the nations; and all the nations shall
see my judgment which I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
So the house of Israel shall know that I am Jehovah their God, from that day and
forward. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for
their iniquity; because they trespassed against me, and I hid my face from them."
"And the nations shall know ..." (Ezekiel 39:23). "The big lesson the nations needed
to learn was the fact of Israel's having been abandoned by their God, delivered to
the sword of the invader; and taken into exile, was not because of Jehovah's
inability to protect them, but because of their wickedness which had caused God to
hide his face from them."[22]
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70. Most of the nations had already found out that God was mightier than their pagan
deities.
ELLICOTT, “(21) My glory among the heathen.—In this and the following verse
the ultimate effect of the Divine judgments in the world is spoken of, and then, in
Ezekiel 39:23-24, this is applied to the present captivity of Israel. But the effect is too
far-reaching to be limited to the latter, and the kingdom of God was never so
established among the restored exiles, either by external triumphs over their
enemies or by its internal development in the hearts of men, that the Divine glory
was generally recognised among the heathen. In the time foretold the judgments
shall be of such a character that all shall perceive that they are from God. Yet it
must not be forgotten that the restoration from the exile was one step, and an
important one, in the course of events leading to this end.
POOLE, “ I will set, I will advance and continue, my glory; the glory of power,
justice, and wisdom against enemies, and of power, mercy, and faithfulness, with
wisdom, toward his people.
The heathen, among whom my name was evil spoken of; they eclipsed, but God will
clear up his glory.
The heathen, that are either in Gog’s army, or in the countries to which the news
shall come,
shall see, not be able to deny or doubt, my judgment; the punishment just and from
heaven, called God’s
hand laid upon them.
70

71. TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the
heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid
upon them.
Ver. 21. And all the heathen shall see my judgment.] Antiochus did so, and
Maximinus the emperor, and other tyrants, when seized upon by such judgments of
God as they could neither avoid nor abide.
PETT, “Verse 21
“And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see my judgment
which I have executed, and my hand which I have laid on them. So the house of
Israel will know that I am Yahweh their God from that day, and forward. And the
nations will know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity,
because they trespassed against me, and I hid my face from them. So I gave them
into the hand of their adversaries, and they fell all of them by the sword. I did to
them according to their uncleanness and according to their trespasses, and I hid my
face from them.”
Three primary points are made here. Firstly that the judgment on Gog will bring
God glory in the eyes of the nations who have been judged, secondly that it will
bring home to Israel that He is Yahweh their God, and thirdly that the nations will
be made to recognise why Israel really went into captivity, that it was because of
their sinfulness and unfaithfulness to the covenant, and not because He could not
protect them. Thus God will be vindicated.
‘I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see my judgment
which I have executed, and my hand which I have laid on them.’ God’s glory will
have been set among the nations by His judgments, which the nations will be forced
to recognise. They will therefore have to acknowledge His supremity, and bow the
knee to Him.
71

72. ‘So the house of Israel will know that I am Yahweh their God from that day, and
forward.’ The true people of God will have had demonstrated to them that He is
truly their God Who watches over them and cares for them for ever.
‘And the nations will know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their
iniquity, because they trespassed against me, and I hid my face from them.’ God’s
vindication and protection of His people will evidence the fact to the nations that the
captivity was not due to His not having been able to protect His people, but to His
having to deal with their sinfulness and rebellion by judgment. They would
recognise that that was why He had hidden His face from them, and not because of
His being unable to help them.
‘So I gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they fell all of them by the
sword. I did to them according to their uncleanness and according to their
trespasses, and I hid my face from them.’ The reason for God’s behaviour towards
Israel, and the reason why He hid His face from them, is now detailed. What had
happened to them in the destruction of Jerusalem and of their country had been due
to their behaviour. They had made themselves unclean by their idolatry and casual
attitude towards God and holy things, and they had trespassed against God’s laws
and covenant.
Verses 21-29
The Vindication of Yahweh (Ezekiel 39:21-29).
Ezekiel sees the future in terms of the vindication of Yahweh. He will be glorified in
the eyes of the nations when they see His judgments. Israel will also know that He is
Yahweh. For having punished them He will again gather them and His Spirit will be
poured out on them. And their deliverance will bring home to the nations that He is
all-powerful and supreme.
This would begin when Cyrus, His shepherd who did not know Him (Isaiah 44:28 to
72

73. Isaiah 45:4) decreed the return to Jerusalem and the building of the temple (Ezra 1),
it would continue when Nehemiah once again established Jerusalem as a ruling city,
and on through history as Israel grew in stature and expanded with the exiles
returning, until the coming of the Messiah, Who having established the beginnings
of the Kingly Rule of God would be cut off (Daniel 9:26) and smitten (Zechariah
12:7), and the Spirit would be poured out on His people. This would then lead on to
the growth of the Kingly Rule of God and its final triumph, and the final judgment.
All this lies behind the prophecies of Ezekiel and are their fulfilment.
22 From that day forward the people of Israel
will know that I am the Lord their God.
GILL, "So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God,.... That
has chosen them, redeemed them, called them, manifested his covenant love and grace
to them, and protected and defended them: this destruction of their enemies will be a
proof of it; and they will hereby be led into a clearer knowledge of him, and of his
goodness to them; and make a more firm and constant profession of him,
even from that day and forward, to the end of time; for after this the Jews will no
more apostatize, but will for ever remain the people of God and Christ.
JAMISON, "So the house of Israel shall know ... Lord — by My interposition
for them. So, too, the heathen shall be led to fear the name of the Lord (Psa_102:15).
ELLICOTT, “(22) The house of Israel shall know.—The knowledge here spoken of
is evidently practical, and is expressly declared to remain for ever. It can only be
considered as realised, and that still but in germ, in the Christian Church.
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74. 23 And the nations will know that the people of
Israel went into exile for their sin, because they
were unfaithful to me. So I hid my face from them
and handed them over to their enemies, and they
all fell by the sword.
GILL, "And the Heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into
captivity for their iniquity,.... Before this they thought the captivity of the Jews, and
all their distresses, were owing to their own weakness, and the weakness of the God they
served, and to the superior strength of their enemies, and the power of their gods; but
now, by this strange and amazing destruction of Gog and his army, they will see that it
was not owing to those things, but to the sins and transgressions of the people of the
Jews:
because they transgressed against me; prevaricated with him, acted a perfidious
and treacherous part to him, as the word (i) signifies; which they did, when they
delivered Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah, into the hands of the Gentiles, to be
crucified; it is their disbelief of Christ, and rejection of him, and maltreatment of him,
that is here more especially pointed at; and which is the cause of their present long
captivity and exile, and of all the afflictions and troubles they have since met with: so the
Targum renders it,
"they dealt falsely with my Word;''
the Word made flesh, the incarnate Saviour:
therefore hid I my face from them; took no notice of them, showed them no favour,
took no care of them; disregarded their prayers and cries, and removed his presence
from them, and all the tokens of it. So the Targum,
"I caused my Shechaniah (or majesty) to remove from them;''
and thus it has been ever since, and now is:
and gave them into the hand of their enemies; the Romans, who took away their
place and nation; which they feared would be the case, should many believe in Christ;
74

75. but the true reason of it was because they did not believe in him, Joh_11:48,
so fell they all by the sword; that is, through the sword of the conquering Romans;
they fell into their hands; some perished by the sword, and others were carried into
captivity; and all were punished for their iniquity, trespass, and perfidy.
JAMISON, "hid I my face — (Deu_31:17; Isa_59:2).
ELLICOTT, “ (23) For their iniquity.—In the times foretold God’s dealings shall no
longer be misunderstood, nor the sufferings of Israel considered as the result of His
want of power to protect them. All the world shall so far understand His
righteousness, that they shall see the reasonableness and necessity of His punishing
even His chosen people for their sins, and purifying them that they may become His
indeed.
POOLE, “ The sottish heathen thought meanly of the God of Israel, and reckoned
they came into captivity because the people of some greater god had by the’ power
of their god prevailed against Israel’s God and his people; but by this overthrow
given to Gog, they shall see it was not impotence in Israel’s God, but iniquity in
Israel’s people, that brought them into captivity.
Trespassed; committed sin perversely, continually, and with a high hand.
Hid my face; withdrew my favour, would no more regard them, and then it was
soon a night of trouble to them.
Into the hand, into the power,
of their enemies, which could not have hurt Israel if Israel had not first forsaken his
God, but then God forsook them. When God withdrew his defence, as fenceless, they
fell under the sword of the enemy; for it is he that subdueth enemies and giveth
victory.
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76. TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:23 And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went
into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I
my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by
the sword.
Ver. 23. And the heathen shall know.] They shall be convinced of the equability of
my proceedings, and the truth of my menaces.
24 I dealt with them according to their
uncleanness and their offenses, and I hid my face
from them.
GILL, "According to their uncleanness,.... Not ceremonial, but moral; they were
an impure and adulterous generation, as our Lord calls them, Mat_12:39,
and according to their transgressions have I done unto them; or "rebellions",
as the Targum renders it; or defections, as the word (k) signifies; their rebellions against
the King Messiah; their defections from him; their contempt of him, and rejection of his
yoke, and non-submission to his ordinances; according to the desert of such crimes, the
Lord dealt with them;
"took vengeance on them,''
as the Targum is; in the destruction of their nation, city, and temple: "and hid my face
from them"; or caused his Shechaniah to remove from them, as the same paraphrase;
See Gill on Eze_39:23.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:24 According to their uncleanness and according to their
76

77. transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them.
Ver. 24. According to their uncleanness.] I have not shown my sovereignty, or
exercised tyranny towards them, but done them right.
25 “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord
says: I will now restore the fortunes of Jacob[d]
and will have compassion on all the people of
Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name.
CLARKE, "Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob - Both they and the
heathen shall know that it was for their iniquity that I gave them into the hands of their
enemies: and now I will redeem them from those hands in such a way as to prove that I
am a merciful God, as well as a just God.
GILL, "Therefore thus saith the Lord,.... The Jews having been long punished for
their sins; and being brought to repentance for them, and to faith in Christ, as they will
be in the latter day: hence it follows,
now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob; or the captives of Jacob, the people
of Israel, that have been carried captive into all lands; these shall be gathered from
thence, and brought into their own land:
and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel; all the twelve tribes; which
shows that this has not respect to the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity;
for then the Lord had mercy on the house of Judah only; or the two tribes of Judah and
Benjamin; but their return from their present captivity, and future conversion,
77

78. when all Israel shall be saved; as the fruit and effect of the rich sovereign grace and
mercy of God unto them, Rom_11:25,
and will be jealous for my holy name; or, "zealous" (l) for the glory of it, that it be
no more blasphemed among the Heathen; and that it be glorified among his own people.
JAMISON, "bring again the captivity — restore from calamity to prosperity.
the whole house of Israel — so “all Israel” (Rom_11:26). The restorations of Israel
heretofore have been partial; there must be one yet future that is to be universal (Hos_
1:11).
COFFMAN, “"Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Now will I bring back the
captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel; and I will be
jealous for my holy name. And they shall bear their shame, and all their trespasses
whereby they have trespassed against me, when they shall dwell securely in their
land, and none shall make them afraid; when I have brought them back from the
peoples, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in
the sight of many nations. And they shall know that I am Jehovah their God, in that
I caused them to go into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto
their own land; and I will leave none of them any more there; neither will I hide my
face any more from them; for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel,
saith the Lord Jehovah."
ISRAEL TO RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT (Ezekiel 39:25-29)
This final paragraph is not a part of the Gog prophecy. "The prophecy here returns
to the point of view in Ezekiel 33-37."[23] "These verses also form a fitting
conclusion to the whole prophecy of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1-39) down to this point."[24]
"I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel ..." (Ezekiel 39:29). This
promise had already been conveyed to Israel in Ezekiel 6:27 and in Ezekiel 37:14,
also in Joel 2:28 and Zechariah 12:10; and, "The citation of Joel's words by Peter
on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17) prove that he regarded the remarkable effusion
of the Holy Spirit upon that day as a fulfillment of the promise here recorded by
78

79. Ezekiel."[25] Therefore, we must construe the verb, "I have poured out" in this
promise as a prophetic perfect, in which a promise of God is given as something
already done.
There is no evidence whatever that Israel as a whole ever manifested any evidence of
being possessed of the Spirit of God during the pre-Christian centuries, nor in their
wholesale rejection of the Christ when he came.
Returning, for a moment to the Gog, Magog prophecy, we should observe that Gog
is depicted as "the last enemy," "at the end of the times," and that it is presented as
gathering together against God and his people the nations from the "uttermost parts
of the earth." All of the ancient enemies of Israel such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon,
Antiochus, all long ago departed from the stage of human affairs and had
presumably perished. But notice also another tremendously important deduction
that is required by this. "The boundaries of Israel, at that remote time, shall stretch
far beyond the limits of ancient Palestine"![26]
For those who wish to pursue further the implications of this remarkable prophecy,
we refer to that place in the Apocalypse of the Apostle John (Revelation 20:9,9),
where according to Keil, and also according to the conviction of this writer, the Gog,
Magog prophecy is concluded.
ELLICOTT, “(25) Now will I bring again the captivity.—It was needed for the
exiles in their distress that the prophet at the close of this far-reaching prophecy
should bring out the first step in the long course of events leading to its fulfilment,
because that step was one of especial interest and comfort to them; but even this
promise is mingled with predictions which still look on to the then distant future.
POOLE, “ Therefore; since my name, my power, and justice are vindicated, and the
heathen see it was Israel’s iniquity brought them into captivity, and Israel knows
this too.
79

80. Now; from this time of Gog’s overthrow. Jacob; the seed of Jacob, here called by
their father’s name.
Have mercy: this reducing captive Jews is mere mercy: it is very true by sin they
deserved to be made captives, and it is as true they never did or could deserve a
deliverance from captivity; it was not extremity of justice that so punished, but it
was the riches of mercy that so pardoned and redeemed.
Upon the whole house of Israel; on the ten tribes with the two. And all this in zeal
for my holy name, by which I am engaged to be their God.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:25 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD Now will I bring again
the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be
jealous for my holy name;
Ver. 25. Now will I bring again.] Three things he here promiseth his people,
notwithstanding all the sorrow, (1.) Effectual vocation; (2.) Justification here; (3.)
Glorification. [Ezekiel 39:29] The Sun of righteousness loves not to set in a cloud.
And will be jealous.] Or, Zealous; "the zeal of the Lord of hosts," his free grace,
"shall effect it,"
PETT, “Verses 25-27
‘Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, Now I will reverse the captivity of Jacob,
and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name.
And after they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses by which they have
trespassed against me, then they will dwell securely in the land and none will make
80

81. them afraid, when I have brought them again from the peoples, and gathered them
from their enemies’ lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of the nations.”
The literal text is ‘and they will bear their shame ---’ but in translation it is
necessary to bring out the sense. The point is that they will bear their shame and
then afterwards will be brought into the land. Hebrew tenses do not express strict
chronology.
In this final summary God indicates once again the restoration of His people. He
will reverse the situation He had brought about, and He will do it because He is
intent to maintain the honour of His name (He is ‘jealous’ for His name). Once they
have borne their sins to the fullest necessary extent (compare Isaiah 40:1-2) they will
be released from their captivity and brought again to their land. Stress is made on
the fact that this will be of the whole house of Israel. All twelve tribes will be
restored. The Bible knows nothing of ‘lost tribes’. Thus ‘Israel’ will now be limited
to those who return and those who acknowledge their part in that return by their
behaviour in their one time exile, by looking on Israel as their true home (as Daniel
and Nehemiah did. They had returned in their hearts even though their positions
would not allow them to return).
‘Then they will dwell securely in the land and none will make them afraid.’ This will
be the final result. It was partly achieved in the first restoration, but its greater
fulfilment awaits the final days of deliverance as depicted in these chapters, when
His people will dwell together in God’s greater land of which the earthly is bit a
shadow. History is seen as a combined whole. This is the nature of Biblical
prophecy.
‘And am sanctified in them in the sight of the nations.’ The purpose of their
deliverance and restoration is so that God might be ‘set apart’ in men’s eyes as the
One Who is Almighty and can do anything by His power and yet as the One Who is
righteous and fully punishes sin.
EBC, “ Ezekiel 39:25-29.-The closing verses do not strictly belong to the oracle on
81

82. Gog. The prophet returns to the standpoint of the present, and predicts once more
the restoration of Israel, which has heretofore been assumed as an accomplished
fact. The connection with what precedes is, however, very close. The divine
attributes, whose final manifestation to the world is reserved for the far-off day of
Gog’s defeat, are already about to be revealed to Israel. Jehovah’s compassion for
His people and His jealousy for His own name will speedily be shown in "turning
the fortunes" of Israel, bringing them back from the peoples, and gathering them
from the land of their enemies. The consequences of this upon the nation itself are
described in more gracious terms than in any other passage. They shall forget their
shame and all their trespasses when they dwell securely in their own land, none
making them afraid. The saving knowledge of Jehovah as their God, who led them
into captivity and brought them back again, will as far as Israel is concerned be
complete; and the gracious relation thus established shall no more be interrupted,
because of the divine Spirit which has been poured out on the house of Israel.
II.
It will be seen from this summary of the contents of the prophecy that, while it
presents many features peculiar to itself, it also contains much in common with the
general drift of the prophet’s thinking. We must now try to form an estimate of its
significance as an episode in the great drama of Providence which unfolded itself
before his inspired imagination.
The ideas peculiar to the passage are for the most part such as might have been
suggested to the mind of Ezekiel by the remembrance of the great Scythian invasion
in the reign of Josiah. Although it is not likely that he had himself lived through that
time of terror, he must have grown up whilst it was still fresh in the public
recollection, and the rumour of it had apparently left upon him impressions never
afterwards effaced. Several circumstances, none of them perhaps decisive by itself,
conspire to show that at least in its imagery the oracle on Gog is based on the
conception of an irruption of Scythian barbarians. The name of Gog may be too
obscure to serve as an indication; but his location in the extreme north, the
description of his army as composed mainly of cavalry armed with bows and
arrows, their innumerable multitude, and the love of pillage and destruction by
which they are animated, all point to the Scythians as the originals from whom the
picture of Gog’s host is drawn. Besides the light which it casts on the genesis of the
82

83. prophecy, this fact has a certain biographical interest for the reader of Ezekiel. That
the prophet’s furthest vista into the future should be a reflection of his earliest
memory reminds us of a common human experience. "The thoughts of youth are
long, long thoughts," reaching far into manhood and old age; and the mind as it
turns back upon them may often discover in them that which carries it furthest in
reading the divine mysteries of life and destiny.
"Thus while the Sun sinks down to rest
Far in the regions of the west,
Though to the vale no parting beam
Be given, not one memorial gleam,
A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear halls where first he rose."
For it is not merely the imagery of the prophecy that reveals the influence of these
early associations; the thoughts which it embodies are themselves partly the result of
the prophet’s meditation on questions suggested by the invasion. His youthful
impressions of the descent of the northern hordes were afterwards illuminated, as
we see from his own words, by the study of contemporary prophecies of Jeremiah
and Zephaniah called forth by the event. From these and other predictions he
learned that Jehovah had a purpose with regard to the remotest nations of the earth
which yet awaited its accomplishment. That purpose, in accordance with his general
conception of the ends of the divine government, could be nothing else than the
manifestation of Jehovah’s glory before the eyes of the world. That this involved an
act of judgment was only too certain from the universal hostility of the heathen to
the kingdom of God. Hence the prophet’s reflections would lead directly to the
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84. expectation of a final onslaught of the powers of this world on the people of Israel,
which would give occasion for a display of Jehovah’s might on a grander scale than
had yet been seen. And this presentiment of an impending conflict between Jehovah
and the pagan world headed by the Scythian barbarians forms the kernel of the
oracle against Gog. But we must further observe that this idea, from Ezekiel’s point
of view, necessarily presupposes the restoration of Israel to its own land. The
peoples assembled under the standard of Gog are those which have never as yet
come in contact with the true God, and consequently have had no opportunity of
manifesting their disposition towards Him. They have not sinned as Edom and Tyre,
as Egypt and Assyria have sinned, by injuries done to Jehovah through His people.
Even the Scythians themselves, although they had approached the confines of the
sacred territory, do not seem to have invaded it. Nor could the opportunity present
itself so long as Israel was in Exile. While Jehovah was without an earthly sanctuary
or a visible emblem of His government, there was no possibility of such an
infringement of His holiness on the part of the heathen as would arrest the attention
of the world. The judgment of Gog, therefore, could not be conceived as a
preliminary to the restoration of Israel, like that on Egypt and the nations
immediately surrounding Palestine. It could only take place under a state of things
in which Israel was once more "holiness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of His
increase," so that "all that devoured him were counted guilty". [Jeremiah 2:3] This
enables us partly to understand what appears to us the most singular feature of the
prophecy, the projection of the final manifestation of Jehovah into the remote
future, when Israel is already in possession of all the blessings of the Messianic
dispensation. It is a consequence of the extension of the prophetic horizon, so as to
embrace the distant peoples that had hitherto been beyond the pale of civilisation.
There are other aspects of Ezekiel’s teaching on which light is thrown by this
anticipation of a world-judgment as the final scene of history. The prophet was
evidently conscious of a certain inconclusiveness and want of finality in the prospect
of the restoration as a justification of the ways of God to men. Although all the
forces of the world’s salvation were wrapped up in it, its effects were still limited
and measurable, both as to their range of influence and their inherent significance.
Not only did it fail to impress the more distant nations, but its own lessons were
incompletely taught. He felt that it had not been made clear to the dull perceptions
of the heathen why the God of Israel had ever suffered His land to be desecrated
and His people to be led into captivity. Even Israel itself will not fully know all that
is meant by having Jehovah for its God until the history of revelation is finished.
Only in the summing up of the ages, and in the light of the last judgment, will men
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85. truly realise all that is implied in the terms God and sin and redemption. The end is
needed to interpret the process; and all religious conceptions await their fulfilment
in the light of eternity which is yet to break on the issues of human history.
PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:25-29
This section Hengstenberg regards as the close of the whole system of prophecies of
a predominantly comforting character from Ezekiel 33:21 onwards;" Keil views it
as the proper conclusion to the prophecy concerning Gog and the series of
predictions from Ezekiel 35:1 onwards. It is in substance a recapitulation of God's
gracious promise to bring again the captivity of Israel, of which the prophet had just
been reminded in verse 23, and to which accordingly he now in thought goes back. It
traces the whole course of the Divine dealings with the nation from the point of the
exile onwards.
Ezekiel 39:25
I will bring again the captivity of Jacob. (For the use of "Jacob" as a designation of
the people, see Ezekiel 28:25; Ezekiel 37:25.) The promise goes back to
Deuteronomy 30:3; Jeremiah 29:14; Jeremiah 30:3; Jeremiah 31:23; Jeremiah
32:44; and other passages. That its fulfillment began with the return from Babylon
is not inconsistent with the view that its fulfillment will terminate with the final
ingathering of Israel out of the nations by her conversion to Christianity, and her
consequent admission to the Church. That its first cause will be "mercy" to the
whole house of Israel will not prevent that cause from being at the same time a
jealous regard for the Divine holiness (comp. Ezekiel 36:21, Ezekiel 36:22).
26 They will forget their shame and all the
unfaithfulness they showed toward me when they
85

86. lived in safety in their land with no one to make
them afraid.
CLARKE, "After that they have borne their shame - After they shall have
borne the punishment due to a line of conduct which is their shame and reproach, viz.
idolatry.
GILL, "After that they have borne their shame,.... And disgrace, among the
nations where they are scattered; being captives, exiles, in distress and affliction, and
under the manifest tokens of the divine wrath and vengeance: it may be rendered, "and
they shall bear their shame" (m); that is, as Jarchi glosses it,
"when I shall do good to them, and not render to them according to their wickedness,
then they shall bear their shame, and be confounded, and not able to lift up their face;''
as penitent persons, under a sense of divine wrath, blush, and are ashamed to look up to
God; see Ezr_9:6. Menachem interprets the word in the sense of atonement and
forgiveness, as it is used in Psa_32:11, as if the meaning was, then they shall have their
sins, which caused shame, forgiven them. Kimchi's gloss is,
"they shall carry in their mouths, and make mention of their shame they had in
captivity.''
And all their transgressions whereby they have transgressed against me;
that is, the punishment of all their trespasses in their captivity, or the shame of them,
being now brought to repentance; and which will be aggravated to them, when they
remember that these were committed by their forefathers, and since approved of by
them.
When they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid; as they did
in the times of Christ; they were in entire peace, and no enemy disturbed them; and were
in the possession of their own land, and enjoyed the blessings of it, and had their
religious as well as civil liberties; and yet rejected the Messiah, his doctrine, ordinances,
and salvation by him.
JAMISON, "After that they have borne their shame — the punishment of their
sin: after they have become sensible of their guilt, and ashamed of it (Eze_20:43; Eze_
36:31).
86

87. POOLE, “ After they have long suffered, and now shall suffer no longer; for it is
enough my people know, and the heathen know, that I am the Lord.
Borne their shame; reproach for their sins cast on them by the heathen, with great
reflections on their God: this was part of the punishment of them all, and the
greatest grief to the best among them, that their God was reproached.
Their trespasses; the punishment of those trespasses whereby they sinned against
God, which this prophet plainly and frequently chargeth them with.
When they dwelt safely; and this done amidst that prosperity and safety which
should have obliged them to love and obedience; but when they were safe at home,
they sinned as if danger would never overtake them.
None made them afraid; no enemy to endanger and alarm them. Strange
ingratitude, to east off the fear of God, and his law, when he had set them free from
the fear of enemies!
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:26 After that they have borne their shame, and all their
trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their
land, and none made [them] afraid.
Ver. 26. After that they have borne their shame.] Are become soundly ashamed of
their sinful practices: Hoc enim ingenium est verae fidei, saith Oecolampadius, for
this is the nature of true faith, to blush and bleed for sins past.
When they dwelt safely in their land.] And so settled on their lease through carnal
security.
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88. PULPIT, “After they have borne their shame (comp. Ezekiel 16:52, Ezekiel 16:54;
Ezekiel 32:24, Ezekiel 32:30; Ezekiel 34:29; Ezekiel 36:6). The captivity of Israel
would not be brought back until her people had been thoroughly chastised for their
iniquities, and that chastisement had wrought in them a spirit of penitence and a
disposition towards obedience. Then should Jehovah interpose for their deliverance
by gathering them out of their enemies' lands and leading them back to their own
land; and these two experiences, the Captivity and the Restoration, the driving out
and the bringing in, should complete their conversion to Jehovah, and secure their
perpetual enjoyment of Jehovah's favor.
27 When I have brought them back from the
nations and have gathered them from the
countries of their enemies, I will be proved holy
through them in the sight of many nations.
CLARKE, "When I have - gathered them - Antiochus had before captured many
of the Jews, and sold them for slaves; see Dan_11:33.
GILL, “When I have brought them again from the people,.... That is, then shall
they be ashamed, and repent of all their trespasses and sins:
and gathered them out of their enemies lands; from the provinces of their
enemies, as the Targum; when they are collected together in a body out of each of the
nations where they are now dispersed, and brought to their own land:
and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations; when they shall publicly
repent of their sins, and forsake them, and seek the Lord their God, and the King
Messiah, and embrace and profess him, and acknowledge that God has been righteous
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89. and holy in all his dispensations towards them.
JAMISON, "sanctified in them — vindicated as holy in My dealings with them.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:27 When I have brought them again from the people, and
gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of
many nations;
Ver. 27. And am sanctified in them,] i.e., Have fully shown my sanctity and majesty,
both by their punishment and by their deliverance.
28 Then they will know that I am the Lord their
God, for though I sent them into exile among the
nations, I will gather them to their own land, not
leaving any behind.
CLARKE, "And have left none of then any more there - All that chose had
liberty to return; but many remained behind. This promise may therefore refer to a
greater restoration, when not a Jew shall be left behind. This, the next verse intimates,
will be in the Gospel dispensation.
GILL, "Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God,.... See Gill on Eze_
39:22;
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90. which caused them to be led into captivity among the Heathen; for their sins
and transgressions: and so the Targum adds,
"because they sinned before me:''
but I have gathered them into their own land; being now penitent for their sins,
and believing in the Messiah: and so the Targum,
"and now, because they are converted, I have gathered them, &c.''
and have left none of them any more there; among the Heathen, or in the land of
their enemies; everyone shall be returned to the land of Canaan, be they where they will,
as when they came out of Egypt: and this is typical of the salvation of God's elect, or
mystical Israel; not one of them shall be lost or perish, but all shall be brought to
repentance: this again shows, that this prophecy did not respect the return of the Jews
from the Babylonish captivity; since then many were left behind.
JAMISON, "The Jews, having no dominion, settled country, or fixed property to
detain them, may return at any time without difficulty (compare Hos_3:4, Hos_3:5).
COKE, “Ezekiel 39:28. And have left none of them, &c.— Amid the variety of
conjectures passed upon these chapters, may we not be allowed to add one more;—
proposed merely as a quaere to the learned, and as a subject of investigation?
namely, that this prophesy primarily refers to the judgment of God by Cyrus upon
the Babylonians, and the restoration of the Jews in consequence; and secondarily to
some future judgment, introductory to their grand restoration; for that the last
verse of this chapter refers to the effusion of Gospel-grace, there can be no doubt.
The last clause of it should be rendered, After, or when I shall have poured out my
Spirit, &c. according to Houbigant. Certainly, it is as reasonable to understand this
of Cyrus as of Cambyses; and Calmet has well observed, that it is nothing
extraordinary in the style of the prophets, to disguise the proper names of the
princes or persons of whom they speak. If they were always to name persons, and to
express them in a formal and exact manner, the prophesy would differ nothing from
a history. I would just add, that, to understand this of the fall of Babylon, and the
restoration of the Jews, seems far more consonant to the general tenor of Ezekiel's
prophesies, than to refer it to any distant and unknown people and event; and we
shall find by turning back to those great prophets, whom we have before considered,
that they have not failed to foretel this event; and it is reasonable to suppose, that
Ezekiel, who is so similar to them in subject throughout, would not omit to do so.
The reader will observe several very similar traces in their prophesies respecting the
fall of Babylon, to this of Ezekiel's, concerning the fall of Magog; and if Ezekiel's
prophesy (on this subject suppose) be more dark and obscure than theirs, we have a
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91. very sufficient reason for that obscurity in the circumstances and situation of
Ezekiel, who was a captive in the land of the Chaldeans; and who, having foretold
the fall of Egypt by the Babylonians, (see chap. Ezekiel 30:24.) could not well
predict the fall of the Babylonians themselves, otherwise than in dark and figurative
terms.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, When God begins he will make an end; his enemies shall feel
his vengeance and perish utterly.
1. He threatens the destruction of Gog and his army, and the desolation of his
country. His soldiers, for whom he drained his kingdom, and left but a sixth part
behind him, shall be disabled from hurting God's people, and fall upon the
mountains of Israel, a prey to every beast and bird; and, while the king with his
army miserably perishes there, the fire of God, some consuming judgment, shall
devour his country; and even the isles of his dominion, which promised themselves
security from their situation, shall be consumed together: for, when God riseth up to
judgment, no place or person is privileged, or may hope for exemption. Note; (1.)
The mightiest armies before God are as easily crushed as the moth. (2.) While the
ambitious unjustly labour to usurp the rights of others, God justly punishes them
with the loss of what was their own.
2. God will thus make himself known and glorious. His people will prove his power,
faithfulness, and grace, signally manifested on their behalf, and be engaged thereby,
renouncing all their former idolatries, to cleave to him alone: for nothing tends to
separate the heart from sin so effectually as the right knowledge of God. And his
enemies the heathen shall know him too by these examples of his vengeance, shall
fear to provoke his jealousy, nor dare any more to molest his people. Note; The
judgments of God on others should be our warnings.
2nd, What God hath spoken as absolutely to be accomplished, is as sure as if it were
already done. It is come, it is done: for faith realizes both as present.
By three things the dreadful destruction of the army of Gog is represented.
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92. 1. By the vast quantity of weapons of war which, among other spoil, should be
collected, and furnish the people of Israel with fuel during seven years; and every
chip that they burned would serve to remind them of God's mercy, and to awaken
their gratitude.
2. By the length of time which it will take to bury the dead, and the numbers
employed in the service. The whole house of Israel, assisted by the passengers, who
would willingly labour to remove so great a nuisance, shall be no less than seven
months employed in cleansing the land, and collecting the bodies to their burying-
place, the valley of the passengers, on the east of the sea, of the sea of Gennezareth,
which shall from this event receive a new name, and be called the valley of Hamon-
gog, and the city near thereunto Hamonah, alluding to the multitudes there buried.
And it shall be a renown to Israel in that day, when God shall be glorified; such an
astonishing instance of the divine interposition in their favour shall make them
respected, and their humanity to the dead redound greatly to their honour. And at
the seven months' end, when the multitudes that fell together are covered in the
earth, certain persons shall be appointed to go through the land, and bury the
scattered corpses; whilst every traveller who passes by, when he sees a bone, shall
set up a mark for the notice of the searchers appointed, until the land be thoroughly
cleansed. Note; (1.) When our nostrils are offended with the putrefaction of a
corpse, we should remember the sin which has made these bodies so vile. (2.) They
who have experienced great national mercies, should unite in their labour to cleanse
their land from every pollution of sin; and to this every lover of his country will
gladly lend a helping hand. (3.) To advance God's glory is Israel's great renown.
3. There will be enough for every bird and beast to feed upon; and they are
commanded to come and devour the slain, sacrificed to divine justice. Corpses
enough there will be, not merely for a meal, but to fatten them; and this not only of
the common soldiers, but of the mighty, and the princes of the earth, strewed
around with their horses and chariots, fallen in one promiscuous ruin.
Thus God will make the heathen to see and observe his judgments against the
enemies of his people, and will advance his own great glory thereby: while the house
of Israel shall exult in his salvation, and receive fresh confirmation of God's care
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93. and love, engaging their confidence in him from that day forward. Let God's Israel
then to the end of time trust in the Lord, yea, for ever: for he will never disappoint
the expectations of them who place their whole confidence in him.
3rdly, Much had the people of God suffered from the blasphemies of their enemies,
much under the heavy hand of God upon them in afflictions; but now he will deliver
them out of all their troubles.
1. The heathen shall be silenced, and convinced of God's designs in the sufferings of
his people. They thought the captivity of Israel was owing to their weakness, or the
inability of their God to protect them; but by this amazing exertion of divine power
on their behalf, they shall see that the only cause of their suffering was their sin, for
which they were given into their enemies' hands; and that God dealt with them
according to their transgressions, in all the evils that he brought upon them. So that
what he did was with a view to his own glory, visiting their iniquity with a rod; yet,
as by the event appeared, not suffering his truth to fail, nor wanting power to
recover and restore them to their former splendour, when they had smarted
sufficiently under his corrections.
2. God's faithful people shall know his designs of grace towards them,
notwithstanding all that they have suffered. Jealous for his own honour, which the
heathen had reproached, he will magnify himself in Israel's deliverance, since they
have borne their shame, and all their trespasses, and testified unfeigned repentance
for their provocations, aggravated by the mercies, peace, and comforts that they had
enjoyed, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid.
Therefore he will now turn his hand, recover them from their dispersion, and bring
them to their own land; and hereby God will be sanctified in the sight of many
nations, who will own his dispensations towards his Israel to have been righteous,
just, and good. And the faithful, while they acknowledge God's justice in their
sufferings, shall experience his rich grace in their salvation, and know him to be
their God, their covenant God, who will no more withdraw the light of his
countenance from them as a nation, but will pour out his Spirit upon them in a most
glorious manner. Note; (1.) True penitents are willing to bear their shame, and own
their sufferings to be less than their iniquities deserve. (2.) When by divine grace we
return to God, he will return to us, and lift up again upon us the light of his
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94. countenance.
POOLE, “ Know; on fullest experiences, and clearest evidences, see, acknowledge,
and publish to each other.
The Lord; the Mighty One, the just Judge, who determineth righteously between
men and men, yea, between them and himself.
Their God; who, in covenant with their fathers, hath remembered it for the good of
their children, who did assure them, that if they violated his covenant he would
punish, and when they repented he would show mercy.
Which caused; who by his own hand raised up enemies against, and then delivered
them into the enemies’ hand, so sent them into a sad and long captivity.
But I have gathered them; but now done more for them than when I brought them
out of Babylon? whence the two tribes (yet not all of them, for some staid behind)
and a few of the house of Israel returned; now the whole of the twelve tribes shall be
gathered.
Unto their own land; that country they so dearly loved, somewhat for their fathers’
sake, whose ancient seat it was, but more for the goodness of it, which flowed with
milk and honey. Have left none: this recovery it seems shall be much more universal
than the former in Zorobabel’s time: as, coining out of Egypt, not a feeble person
left behind; so nor here, if the words be to be literally explained.
There; in the land of captivity, the enemies’ country.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:28 Then shall they know that I [am] the LORD their God,
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95. which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered
them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there.
Ver. 28. And have left none of them any more there.] Here the Jews triumph and
say, When was this promise ever fulfilled? and how, then, can the Messiah be come
already? Hereunto it is rightly answered, that this prophecy is to be taken partly
literally, and so it was fulfilled at the return of the captives out of Babylon. See Ezra
3:1. Partly spiritually; and so Christ will at the last day raise up every one of his
elect, - that Israel indeed, - and gather them to himself; not one of them shall be
missing. (a)
PETT, “Verse 28-29
“And they will know that I am Yahweh their God, in that I caused them to go into
captivity among the nations, and have gathered them to their own land. And I will
leave none of them there any more. Nor will I hide my face any more from them. For
I (will) have poured out my Spirit on the house of Israel, says he Lord Yahweh.”
After the great encounter with Gog is over, God’s people will dwell in safety. They
will remember all that God has done and recognise His goodness and glory and
holiness. They will know that He is Yahweh. Note the three promises, 1) I will leave
none of them there any more. 2) I will not hide my face from them any more. 3) I
will have poured out my Spirit on the house of Israel.
These promises bring out the nature of the future ‘Israel’ as seen in Ezekiel’s eyes,
and summarise the message of his book. Israel finally is made up of those who have
gathered to God, are committed to Him and are thus His people. He expressed it in
the only way he then could.
‘I will leave none of them there any more.’ Those who are His true people will have
left the nations and been united with the people of God under God’s Kingly Rule.
They will be one together in their covenant with God. They will look to Him only.
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96. The nations will trouble them no more. They will have been suitably dealt with. The
enemies of darkness will once and for all have been eliminated.
‘I will not hide my face from them any more.’ Their fellowship with God will be
total and complete. His face will always be turned towards them, and they in turn
will look to Him, and this will be so for ever. They will walk in the light of Yahweh.
‘I (will) have poured out my Spirit on the house of Israel.’ The perfect tense is used
to demonstrate that this has already occurred in the mind of God, but it looks to the
future. His people will be those on whom He has poured out His Spirit. They will be
the true Israel, spending eternity in the presence of God. They will be those on
whom He has poured out His Spirit, which incorporates the church, the new Israel,
the ‘Israel of God’, and will be distinguished by the fact that they ‘have a new heart
and a new Spirit,’ a softened heart, an obedient heart, and they will delight in doing
only His will (Ezekiel 36:26-28). Thus will have begun the everlasting kingdom. God
will finally have triumphed.
PULPIT, “Ezekiel 39:28, Ezekiel 39:24
And the heathen shall know. The special lesson for them should be not so much
teaching concerning God's supremacy over them, or concerning their relation to
Israel, as concerning the principles of God's dealings with Israel. They should learn
that if Israel had for a season been abandoned to the sword and driven into exile, it
was not because of Jehovah's inability to protect them, but because of their
wickedness which had caused him to hide his face from them—an expression which
in Ezekiel occurs only here and in verse 29, though it is found in the Pentateuch
(Deuteronomy 31:17, Deuteronomy 31:18) and in the older prophets (Isaiah 8:17;
Isaiah 54:8; Isaiah 57:17; Isaiah 64:7; Jeremiah 33:5).
29 I will no longer hide my face from them, for I
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97. will pour out my Spirit on the people of Israel,
declares the Sovereign Lord.”
BARNES, "Eze_39:29
Compare Act_2:17. Peter distinctly appropriates these prophecies (marginal
references) to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the
inauguration of the Church of Christ by that miraculous event. This was the beginning of
the fulfillment. They shall find their consummation when time shall be no more.
CLARKE, "For I have poured out my Spirit - That is, I will pour out my Spirit;
see the notes on Eze_36:25-29 (note), where this subject is largely considered. This
Spirit is to enlighten, quicken, purify, and cleanse their hearts; so that, being completely
changed, they shall become God’s people, and be a praise in the earth. Now, they are a
proverb of reproach; then, they shall be eminently distinguished.
GILL, "Neither will I hide my face any more from them,.... The Jews, upon their
future conversion, will always have the worship of God among them, and his presence
with them; he will always take notice of them; they will ever be under his protection and
care; he will never remove his Shechinah from them any more, as the Targum: a further
proof that this refers to future times; for, after their return from Babylon, God did hide
his face, and remove his presence from them, and left them to ruin and destruction by
the Romans:
for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God;
this refers not to the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but to one that is yet
to come, when the Jews will be converted in the latter day; after which God will no more
depart from them, nor shall they depart from him; see Zec_12:10.
JAMISON, "poured out my Spirit upon ... Israel — the sure forerunner of their
conversion (Joe_2:28; Zec_12:10). The pouring out of His Spirit is a pledge that He will
hide His face no more (2Co_1:22; Eph_1:14; Phi_1:6).
POOLE, “ Neither will I hide my face: see Ezekiel 39:23. I will not turn from them
in displeasure.
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98. From them; from the whole house of Israel. This is no assurance to any pretender of
great interest in God, who yet lives in sin.
Poured out, in abundant measures of wisdom and holiness, my Spirit; which is a
Spirit of sanctification to make them holy, and a Spirit of strength to confirm them
in holiness, and of adoption to sweeten obedience to them; they shall not, they will
not depart from me, according to the promises, Ezekiel 11:19,20 36:25-27 37:23-28
Jeremiah 31:31, &c.; Jeremiah 32:37-40. It was sin that caused God to hide his face,
and now grace shall be given to keep them out of sin, and to engage them to constant
obedience, that God may rejoice over them to do them good in this their latter end.
TRAPP, “Ezekiel 39:29 Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have
poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.
Ver. 29. Neither Will I hide my face any more from them.] They shall have beatiful
vision and fruition for ever. See on Ezekiel 39:25.
For I have poured out my spirit.] Have already, and will do yet more liberally in the
days of the gospel. [Acts 2:2-7 John 7:38]
PULPIT, “I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel. Already Jehovah
had promised to put his Spirit in his people (Ezekiel 36:27; Ezekiel 37:14); now the
fact that he has implemented that promise by a copious effusion of the same he cites
as a proof that Israel shall no more forfeit his favor because no more shall she
forsake his ways (comp. Isaiah 59:21). The same promise had been previously given
by Joel (Joel 2:28), and was afterwards renewed by Zechariah (Zechariah 12:10).
The citation of Joel's words by Peter on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17) shows that
he regarded the remarkable effusion of the Holy Ghost on that memorable occasion
as a fulfillment of the premise here recorded by Ezekiel. Yet the promise was not
then exhausted. Rather it has often since been implemented, and will doubtless
receive its consummation in the New Jerusalem. "No historical Church, Jewish or
Gentile," writes Plumptre, "has ever yet realized the picture here sketched by
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99. Ezekiel. We ask, as before—Will it ever be realized on earth? or must we look for it
only in the heavenly city whose Builder and Maker is God?"
NOTE.—In addition to what has been stated at the beginning of this prophecy
(Ezekiel 38:1) with reference to the general significance of this invasion by and
overthrow of Cog, that it points to some tremendous conflict in the latter days
between the powers of the world and the Church of Christ, a few words may be
offered in support of the preposition that nevertheless there is no reason to expect
that this conflict will take the form of an actual invasion of the land of Israel or of a
real fire-and-sword battle with the Church, or that Gog will step upon the field as a
veritable flesh-and-blood personality, and his armies find a grave in the manner
sketched by the prophet. That the whole delineation is symbolic, and embodies
spiritual truths under material emblems, will hardly be doubted by one who
impartially weighs the following considerations, which have been admirably
brought together by Fairbairn.
1. The designation given to the great assailant of the latter times—Gog, which
discovers itself to be an ideal name, if by nothing else by the manner in which it has
been formed.
2. The composition of his army, which is drawn from the four quarters of the globe,
in fact, from the extremities of the earth, and consists of peoples not only remote
from one another, but "the most unlike naturally to act in concert for any particular
purpose."
3. The object of his attack—the land of Israel, a territory so small that it is
inconceivable a host so great should have been required to capture it, and so poor
that had the invaders got all it contained it "could not have served to maintain them
for a single day."
4. The fruits of Israel's victory—firewood for seven years out of the enemies'
weapons, and seven months of labor in burying their corpses. "It would be but a
very moderate allowance, on the literal supposition, to say that a million of men
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100. would thus be engaged, and that on an average each would consign two corpses to
the tomb in one day; which for the hundred and eighty working days of the seven
months would make an aggregate of three hundred and sixty millions of corpses!
Then the putrefaction, the pestilential vapors arising from such masses of slain
victims, before they were all buried. Who could live at such a time?"
5. The impossibility of harmonizing prophecy on the hypothesis that Ezekiel's
picture must receive a literal interpretation, since Isaiah (34.), Joel (Joel 3:12, Joel
3:14), and Zechariah (14), who all appear to depict the same conflict as Ezekiel
portrays, each pitches its scene in a different locality.
6. The gross carnality of the whole picture on the assumption that it must be literally
interpreted, which is wholly inconsistent with that spirituality one associates with
the Messianic times. "Persons," writes Fairbairn, "who in the face of all these
considerations can still cling to the literal view of this prophecy, must be left to
themselves; they are incapable of being convinced in the way of argument."
100