Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:16
"And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 38:16)
Ezekiel 38:16 opens with a reminder that the Russian-led invasion of Israel will not be an altruistic or friendly motion, but directed against
Israel, i.e., in the interests of Russia and its allies at the expense of Israel.
And, lest the reader has not yet appreciated the scale of the prophesied invasion force, it is said to cover the land "as a cloud", metaphorically
preventing natural sunlight from breaking through, consequently bringing gloom upon every square inch of the territory; this is a powerful figurative
way of expressing the enormity of the invading force, fully in keeping with Russian and Chinese military doctrine's emphasis on the use of overwhelmingly
numerically large attacking forces, absolutely disproportionate to the target objective.
It is this vastness of forces that God has ordained to magnify His glory when He shall undo them; sinful humanity (especially in the relevant nations of the East, styled
"the heathen") will look on the astronomical scale of
the invading force and, assessing it as overkill, conclude that Israel has no chance of resisting it so that when God intervenes, it will demonstrably
confound the judgement and wisdom of humanity, compelling the nations to admit, either openly or in their hearts, that God's hand has moved, thereby bringing great glory
to Him; hence this verse ends with one of the Lord's stated reasons for ordaining Gog's invasion:
"that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes"
As Gills puts it:
...infidels will be convinced of the truth of divine revelation; of the God of Israel being the true God; of Jesus being the Messiah; and of the Christian [i.e. truly Protestant] religion being of God, and shall profess the same. The Targum is, "that the people may know the vengeance of my power, when I shall be sanctified in thee, who shall see thy vengeance, O Gog." (John Gill on Ezekiel 38:16).
This revelation of God's existence, power and status as Holy One of Israel shall be to the "heathen", that is, the denizens of the East, but will obviously not be confined exclusively to them; rather, they will be the first to be directly impacted by it, whereafter the "fires" sent (ordained) by the Lord in Ezekiel 39:6 will affect both East and West directly and comprise a dreadful detail within the "great hail" of Revelation 16's seventh and final plague:
"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." (Ezekiel 39:6)
Note too that this motive of the Lord's, i.e., to be glorified in the sight of the ungodly through intervening against them on behalf of the Hebrew people whom God used the heathen to afflict is a recurring theme in the Word, as the following examples show:
"Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from his [the Assyrian king's] hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only." (Isaiah 37:20) ~ Sennacherib, the prototype "Assyrian" was undone as a foreshadowing of the blow coming against the superlative "Assyrian", none other than Gog, the ruler of Russia, when he apes Sennacherib and invades Palestine in the near future.
"...and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy [Israel's] Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob." (Isaiah 49:26) ~ this entire chapter refers to the coming deliverance of a newly Messianic, Christian nation of Israel from its great distress at the hands of Gog, and the great spiritual blessings to the Gentile world that shall ensue from Israel's conversion to Christ (Isaiah 49:12, Romans 11:15).
It "shall be in the latter days"
This is the second use of such a term in Ezekiel 38, the first being in Ezekiel 38:8 and to recap, it means the following:
- The far distant future from Ezekiel's perspective, who lived circa the 6th Century BC, i.e., some 2,600 years ago.
- It is set in a time when Israel would be restored to and established its historical homeland, "brought back from the sword" (Ezekiel 38:8, i.e., since May 1948, when the modern state of Israel was founded), so we are now living within the admissible scope of the "latter days" the prophet referred to in Ezekiel 38:16.
- It is to happen when the Jews would be dwelling "safely" in their restored country, that is, free from the danger of being carried into captivity again and, in my view, probably under the illusion of security from a peace deal brokered by Russia (with or without any other nation's approval), which alone among the major nations has the clout and influence to corral the Islamic countries arrayed against Israel behind a single deal.
Finally, I would remind the reader that the "latter days" timing of the ensuing conversion of the Jews is repeated throughout the major and minor prophets of the Old Testament (and began in Deuteronomy 4:30-31), as can be seen from the following example in Hosea:
"For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." (Hosea 3:4-5)
