Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:22

"And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone." (Ezekiel 38:22)

"For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies; he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter... For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch." (Isaiah 38:2 and 38:8-9)¹

“Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.” (Nahum 1:6)

The first horror listed in Ezekiel 38:22 is pestilence, i.e., an epidemic of disease, or in simpler terms, a plague, and a fitting thing to be directed against the armies of the East, given the role the Chinese government played in developing the Covid-19 bioweapon (and its apparent longer term effect of justifying very dangerous mRNA vaccines directed at the populations of the West).

But this plague is to be horrendous and terrifying, being perhaps one and the same as that depicted in Zechariah 14 (which includes yet another account of the Gog-led attack on Israel and the Messianic aftermath and the blessings upon the church beyond):

"And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour." (Zechariah 14:12-13)

Gill has taken that overly metaphorically, applying it as a summary of the various plagues under the Seven Last Plagues to fall upon the Antichristian party; but he was wrong, not knowing that such things as atheism and Marxism would come along in the present era.

Rather, therefore, this verse is to be substantially taken as literal, or minimally metaphorically, and is therefore very likely an actual plague, either miraculously performed by God (which I am inclined to think is correct) or perhaps a mishandled bioweapon that attacks and rots the flesh, for concurrent with it shall be the in-fighting of the enemy forces, as mentioned both in Ezekiel 38:21 and in Zechariah 14:13, that is to be pretty much literally understood, or minimally so, as murderous bickering between the diverse cultures and nationalities of the invading force.

Alternatively, it may not simply be confined to the invasion of Judea by Gog and might expansively apply to the horrors of the fire sent by the Lord on the major cities of the East and West in Ezekiel 39:6, which I submit comes with the "great hail" (terrible war) of Revelation 16's seventh and final plague, a war that I take to be nuclear; however, since the Zechariah 14 plague is reserved for those who "fought against Jerusalem", it seems a better fit to confine the Zechariah 14 plague to the Gog-led invasion force.

Meanwhile, Gill surmised the "pleading with blood" to be, in addition to internal chaos amidst the invaders, military assault from the forces of the newly converted Jews aided by their Gentile Christian allies; however, this could only be the case when the Lord's public witness (the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11) had ascended into "heaven" (governance) when "one tenth part of the great city" (i.e. one major western nation) had fallen (into the hands of the godly); as far as I can discern, most of the old writers held that country to be my own homeland of Britain, but I believe it will be the United States; nevertheless, I think the above-described wonderful transformation in rulership in America can only happen after the Ezekiel 39:6 fires obliterate the current governments of the major nations and so I think Gill's suggestion about godly Gentile rulers joining forces with the newly Christian nation of Israel in crushing what remains of the Gog-led invasion force is wrong.

Therefore I think the "pleading wth blood" comes initially from the friendly fire scenarios breaking out among the invaders, who perhaps will blame each other for the epidemic raging through their ranks, or the general confusion caused by the diversity of their backgrounds, such being a commonly cited factor in the dismal performance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s forces during World War One.

This is not to say that the Israeli defensive forces will do nothing, for it is prophesied explicitly in Zechariah 14:14 that they shall mount a defence (“And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem” and with great valour so that “he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David” (Zechariah 12:8)), in much the same emboldening and liveliness the Lord shall send to His public witness at that time in the West (see Revelation 11:11), but I think here in Ezekiel 38:21 the overriding sense is that the main volume of bloodshed brought upon the attacking forces will probably be primarily internecine.

I also think further bloodshed will come from the “rain”, “great hailstones, fire and brimstone” that God will supernaturally bring upon the invading forces.

Now, while I think the great hail of Revelation 16:21 refers to a nuclear war (since the context is a global – not localised – conflagration), here I think it refers more literally to either an unforeseen astronomical event or to a tectonic movement¹ (for which latter idea evidence might be derived from Zechariah 14:4’s depiction of the cleaving of the Mount of Olives), but in all permutations, what will be undeniable is the Hand of God in action in this smiting of the Gog-led forces (as explicitly proven by Ezekiel 39:21, "...all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them"), and therefore any human contribution on the side of Israel in the initial phase of Gog’s destruction can only be minimal and incapable of diverting the attention of the world away from the Lord’s Hand in this affair.

Accordingly, this calamity upon Gog’s forces has to not look like bad luck or military misadventure or anything that can be explained away by prosaic means.

Rather, this has to be plainly and abundantly and undeniably due to the Lord Himself miraculously intervening to save the newly Messianic Israel from imminent annihilation.