Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:21

"And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord GOD: every man's sword shall be against his brother." (Ezekiel 38:21)

"And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother." (Haggai 2:22, which is addressed to Christ as the superlative Zerubbabel).

The Lord refers to northern Israel, through which the invading force shall pass en route to Jerusalem, as "all my mountains", the terrain being indeed mountainous but with numerous passable valley routes from Syria to the north of modern Israel, and it is in the northern "half" of Israel that Gog and his forces shall meet their ruin.

The self-destructive in-fighting referenced here in Ezekiel 38:21 is attributed by Gill to the entropy of mutual disdain and cultural alienation woven into the invading forces; that is, there will be Sunnis (Turks, Libyans, et al) and Shi’a Muslims (Iranians) who are naturally distrustful of, and hate-filled towards, each other.

But more than that (given that Gill saw the invasion as Islamic only, having mistakenly identified Gog as the leader of the Turks rather than what he really is, i.e., the leader of modern-era Russia - see the commentary on Ezekiel 38:2) there will be Russians and Chinese, who though ideologically joined at the hip, nonetheless very probably each have designs on emerging from their projected victory over the West as top dog at the expense of the other.

And then there is also the longstanding abuse the Chinese have afflicted upon their Muslim Uyghur¹ population, so that we can see that, just as the Islamic immigrant populations pre-installed in the West have primed the coming terrible bloodshed and civic unrest of the third of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16 (in which "the rivers and fountains of waters... became blood" (Revelation 16:4), i.e., false religionists (e.g. Muslims) to bring great bloodshed and suffering in the developed world), so there are ethnic, cultural and geopolitical tensions between the gaggle of barbarian rabble assembled under the leadership of Gog, already in place long before the day they will mobilise against Israel.

Moreover, this brother's-sword-against-brother might also point to the well known poor discipline within the huge militaries of the barbarian nations of the East, as seen in the brutalising and slaying of Russian forces in Ukraine by other Russian forces in the form of the regular army being at loggerheads with the Wagner Group mercenaries in 2023.

Remember also that this attack on Israel is to come at a time of great anger in the nations, both East and West, the six plagues preceding these seventh plague events having stirred the godless into ever worsening fits of rage and priming them for this rampage against Israel and making both East and West desirous, at the further behest of the three unclean spirits from the mouth of the Dragon (Satan, operating in the hearts of the rulers of the East), the Beast (i.e. the West’s elites’ powerbase in a secretly scarlet, Marxist but officially "globalist" state) and the False Prophet (the voice of the narrative in the West, working on the masses) of a global war, which they shall indeed get to experience.

In total, therefore, there will not just be obvious demonstrations of God's intervention on the newly Christian nation of Israel's side, but also of God-wrought tremendous division and irrational in-fighting amongst the invading forces, perhaps not just between the different nationalities involved, but additionally within the ranks of each of the respective armies present as another contributing factor to what will amount to the greatest expeditionary military disaster in history.