Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 40 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This shorter session tackles two of the most argued-over chapters in the prophets. Dr. Essex first settles who Gog's confederacy is and is not, including why rosh is best read as chief prince rather than as Russia, then walks through six positions on when the invasion happens, giving the strengths and hard questions of each, naming who holds what, and admitting how little company his own lean enjoys. Listen for his caution: this stays academic only until you preach Ezekiel, and then someone will ask you about Gog.
The restoration movements of chapters 33 to 37 ran step by step: the land wiped clean in total desolation, Yahweh taking up the shepherd's office himself, Edom judged and the mountains of Israel prepared, the people gathered from the nations, washed clean, given the new heart and Spirit, raised as a nation from the dry bones, and reunited, two sticks in one hand, as one nation under one king with one central sanctuary in the place the Lord chose for his name. Then chapters 38 and 39 ask what happens to a restored people dwelling securely: a Gentile confederacy invades.
The invader is Gog, from the land of Magog, named among the sons of Japheth in Genesis 10:2. His stated allies box the compass around Israel: Persia, modern Iran's territory, to the east; Ethiopia, Cush, essentially due south down the Arabah and the Gulf of Aqaba to where Africa meets the Indian Ocean; and Put, roughly modern Libya, to the west, while Gog himself comes from the north, the invasion corridor of every ancient conqueror, since desert, sea, and Sinai close the other approaches. Israel surrounded, the alliance descends from the north.
Ezekiel 38:2 and 3 raises the famous question: is rosh a noun, a third nation alongside Meshech and Tubal, or an adjective, Gog as the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal? Meshech and Tubal appear in extrabiblical sources as regions north of Israel, in the area of eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and toward the Caspian, the southern edge of the former USSR; there is no extrabiblical warrant for placing them farther north. Of the recommended commentators only Feinberg still takes rosh as a place name; the rest, and Essex with them, read chief prince. As for the popular equation rosh equals Russia, beloved of eighteenth- to twentieth-century prophetic teaching: the name Russia is linguistically a product of the tenth and eleventh centuries AD, and reading it back into Ezekiel is sheer anachronism. The prophecy had to make sense to the exiles hearing it in 585 BC; you cannot tell them to wait fifteen hundred years to learn what a word means.
Chapter 38 dates the invasion twice: in the latter years (verse 8) and in the last days (verse 16), the Old Testament's fixed horizon when scattered Israel finally repents (Deuteronomy 4) and God sends the son of David to establish them (Genesis 49, Numbers 24, Hosea 3) while judging the nations. And it describes Israel's condition: a land restored from the sword, its people gathered from many nations to mountains that had been a continual waste, living securely, all of them, in unwalled villages without bars or gates, rich in cattle and goods, at the navel of the world. Whatever position one takes must account for a people planted, prosperous, and at peace.
Some liberal commentators read Gog's northern descent as the invasions of Antiochus Epiphanes from Seleucid Antioch. But that requires equating Ezekiel's restoration with the post-exilic return that began in 537 BC, and the language, latter years, end of days, reaches far beyond the remnant's return; by 167 BC the Twelve had already made plain that the promised restoration remained future. None of the recommended commentators holds this.
Others place the invasion before Daniel's seventieth week. But taking Daniel 9's covenant as the very guarantee of peace Israel will accept, it is hard to find a biblically indicated peace before the tribulation for Gog to shatter; Scripture gives no picture of Israel dwelling securely in unwalled villages prior to that covenant. Again, none of the recommended commentators holds it.
Long popular among premillennial dispensationalists, and still held by Dyer in the Bible Knowledge Commentary: the security Gog invades is the covenant peace of the tribulation's first half. Essex answers no, twice over. First, the peace Ezekiel describes belongs, in context, to the time after Messiah's return, when the totality of Israel is gathered, not the mere remnant present during the tribulation. Second, the aftermath forbids it: after God demolishes the invader, Israel burns the weapons for seven years and spends seven months burying bodies to cleanse the land; but Revelation 12 has mid-tribulation Israel fleeing into the wilderness for its life, in no position to conduct a seven-month burial detail. Most dispensationalists have accordingly moved off this view.
The majority position, held by Feinberg, Cooper, and Alexander, with the MacArthur Study Bible note taking it broadly: Gog's invasion is the northern facet of Armageddon, understood as a campaign with movements from every compass point (Revelation 16's kings from the east; Daniel 11's north and south), destroyed when Christ returns as Zechariah 14 describes, the Lord descending to the Mount of Olives and going forth against Israel's enemies. The strongest link is the feast of the birds: Ezekiel 39:17 summons every bird and beast to God's sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, to eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of princes, and Revelation 19:17 issues the same summons, come, assemble for the great supper of God, as Christ slays the gathered armies. The hard question: Ezekiel's Israel is planted and at peace before the invasion, but in the campaign of Armageddon Christ must come to deliver a besieged people; how were they at peace?
Essex's lean, shared, he notes, by Dr. James Rosscup though not in print: Daniel will show a period of some 75 days between the tribulation's 1,260th day and the millennium's full beginning, and in that interval, after Christ has destroyed the Armageddon coalition and begun reestablishing Israel, Gog's alliance rises and is judged in connection with the judgment of the nations. The seven months of burial and seven years of weapon-burning then run naturally into the opening millennium. It preserves both Ezekiel's restored-and-secure Israel and the literal cleanup. Support among the commentators is thin, Essex admits with a smile, but the position answers the hardest questions on both sides.
Now nearly as popular as D, even among dispensationalists: Revelation 20 says that when Satan is released at the millennium's end he gathers the nations, Gog and Magog, against the beloved city, and fire from heaven devours them. Block holds this; Cooper and Alexander take a double interpretation, two invasions, one at the tribulation's end and one at the millennium's end, with Gog perhaps a dynastic title like Pharaoh rather than one individual. The hard question: the millennium's end runs straight into the great white throne and the eternal state, where the Bible no longer speaks in months and years; where do seven years of burning weapons fit? Defenders reply that Scripture allows transitional overlap between ages, exactly the kind of interlude position E itself posits between tribulation and millennium: one economy fades as the next is established, rather than changing overnight.
Essex rules out A and B with confidence and holds a greater hesitancy against C; among D, E, and F each has strengths and each has very hard questions from Ezekiel's context and from other passages. His counsel is the refrain of the course: do not be dogmatic, for good and godly men hold every position, and even more good and godly men hold the others. The question stays academic only until you preach Ezekiel; then someone in the congregation will ask about Gog, and you will need to know the issues and where you stand. As for the horses in the invasion, Essex is unbothered: armies use horses today, and using them does not preclude using other things as well.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all twenty are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. Where is Magog first named in Scripture?
2. How do Gog's stated allies relate to Israel geographically?
3. Why do invasions of Israel historically come from the north?
4. How does Essex read the word rosh in Ezekiel 38:2?
5. What is the decisive objection to equating rosh with Russia?
6. Which commentator among those recommended still takes rosh as a place name?
7. What two phrases fix the invasion's timing in chapter 38?
8. What condition is Israel in when Gog invades?
9. Why does the Antiochus Epiphanes reading fail?
10. What is Essex's first objection to the mid-tribulation position?
11. What is Essex's second objection to the mid-tribulation position?
12. What New Testament passage most strongly echoes the feast of the birds in Ezekiel 39?
13. What is the hard question facing the Armageddon position?
14. Where does Essex himself place Gog's invasion?
15. What advantage does the interval position claim?
16. What is the basis of position F, the end-of-millennium view?
17. How do Cooper and Alexander handle the two appearances of Gog?
18. What presses hardest against the end-of-millennium position?
19. What does Essex answer to the objection about horses in a future invasion?
20. What is Essex's closing counsel on Ezekiel 38 and 39?
All twenty correct. Lecture 14 is complete.
Essex rejects the rosh-equals-Russia reading because prophecy had to make sense to its first hearers. What does that principle guard against in how we read the news into the Bible, and where have you seen it violated?
Ezekiel pictures God hooking Gog and drawing him in, so that even the final rebellion serves the sanctifying of God's name. How does God's sovereignty over evil's last stand shape your confidence amid present disorder?
Three of the six positions stumble over one datum: Israel at peace in unwalled villages. What does it teach about interpretation that a single contextual detail can carry that much weight?
Essex names who agrees with him, admits how few do, and jokes about his office's proximity to Dr. MacArthur. What role should intellectual humility and even humor play when teaching disputed prophecy?
He warns that Gog stays academic until you preach Ezekiel and someone asks. For any doctrine you hold loosely, what is the difference between honest uncertainty and unpreparedness, and how would you answer a genuine questioner?
Ezekiel 38:23
Read Ezekiel 38 and 39 in one sitting, underlining every timing phrase and every description of Israel's condition, then read Revelation 19:11 to 21 and 20:7 to 10 beside them, noting what matches each chapter and what does not. Next session: the final vision of Ezekiel, the temple of chapters 40 to 48, and the question of whether its measurements and sacrifices are literal.