Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:6

1. Gomer

The mysterious Gomer who, like the three brothers named in Ezekiel 38:2 (Magog, Meshech and Tubal) was also a son of Japheth in Genesis 10:2, but here it seems odd that Gomer should be mentioned in contradistinction to his own son, Togarmah, unless:

1. It is to show the former name as a generic for a broader group of people and the latter as a specific sub-class of them that is of their father-tribe’s genetic stock, but substantially different from them to such a degree as to make them stand out as a separate grouping, in which case Gomer refers to several nations and Togarmah to just one nation.
2. It is to show that "the house of Togarmah" is a more specific descriptor added as a suffix to Gomer to (a) ensure the reader understands that all of the participants in this attack on Israel are descended from the same generation of brethren, namely, Japheth's immediate sons and (b) that of Gomer's posterity, it is only the Togarmahites who are intended, i.e., the verse is saying "Gomer (and his bands), specifically, the house of Togarmah of the north quarters".

I take the second theory to be weak, as there are other sons of Japheth not referenced at all in this enterprise, namely, Madai, Javan and Tiras and so there is no consistent reason why Togarmah needs to be presented as anchored to the immediate sons of Japheth via Gomer, and accordingly, if only the Togarmahites are intended, then there would be no need to reference Gomer at all.

That therefore means that Gomer in this verse of Ezekiel refers to a group of nations descended from Gomer's sons, Ashkenaz and Riphath, and that "the house of Togarmah" refers to a much more distinct, readily identifiable and singular nation.

It also means that Togarmah is ethnically close to, yet discernibly distinct from, that group of Gomerite nations descended from Ashkenaz and Riphath.

We return to consider Togarmah further below, but first we ought to attempt to identify Ashkenaz and Riphath.

Ashkenaz has long been considered by the Jews to be the father of today's Germans, hence they speak of German Jews as "Ashkenazi Jews", (whose dialect of German was historically Yiddish) and indeed, that term and association has been very widely received without challenge, presumably because "the Jews should know", and for that reason a casual Google search of Ashkenaz will tell you that Germany is its modern form.

The chronology, as established in Middle Ages rabbinical literature, is that the children of Ashkenaz were first annexed to, or part of, the Scythians (the forerunners of the modern Russians and, probably, the Slavs in general - see my notes on Russians and other Slavs in the commentary on Ezekiel 38:2), then to the Germanic tribes from the 11^th-12^th Centuries onwards.

However, not all the Jewish rabbis of that time agreed on this, with some instead seeing Ashkenaz as the father of the Khazars, a veritably Turkic tribe which, by numerous accounts, saw many of its members convert to Talmudic Judaism in the 10^th Century.

In simplest terms, there was no consensus amongst Jewish scholars at the point at when Ashkenaz-as-Germany was presented as a theory, but regardless of that, it became the prevailing view among Jews and, later among many non-Jews as well¹, and has led to Jewish traditions invoking the name Ashkenaz in their title - for more, see this article on Ashkenazi Jewish traditions.

This is a classic case of theory transforming into fact through tradition, and you can see this is the Jewish Encyclopaedia's article on Ashkenaz, which simply ignores other historical (including rabbinical) understandings of the term.

Meanwhile, the Armenians have long considered themselves to be the descendents of Ashkenaz, a view still popular today among them, it being a common name given to their males at birth, but again, it is based on tradition rather than irrefutable evidence; remember, all the modern nations began in the sub-Caucasus area and so all of them have left traces of having resided or passed through that region, reminding us that the account of Noah's posterity spreading out from the Ararat area is, in fact, like all of the Word of God, infallibly true.

So which of the above-named historical views is right?

The majority Jewish view that Ashkenaz is Germany?

The minority Jewish view that Ashkenaz is Khazaria?

The Armenian view that Ashkenaz is Armenia?

Or what if all three of them are wrong, and that Ashkenaz is none of the above?

To answer that, one would begin by reminding the reader that all three of the above views began as unsubstantiated notions that later became traditions and, as is always the case where false religion is involved - and both the Jews and the Armenians have false religions - tradition crystallises into received wisdom or "fact".

We therefore need a better way to identify Ashkenaz than the writings and traditions of false religionists or the dubious etymologies that see euphonic similarity between "Gomer" and "Germania", and we come to that below, after we review Gomer's other son named in Genesis 10:3, i.e., Riphath.

Riphath has far fewer asserted interpretations, having vanished as a name for the most part in the writings of antiquity, although there is a quasi-consensus that his descendants occupied, at least in-transit east, the western foothills of the Urals (presumably the southern Urals), as mentioned by this article.

There is also a less popular theory that he was the father of the ancient Celts which, given their westward-wandering inclinations, would render the Urals link extremely incompatible.

It is therefore apparent that there is neither etymological nor reliable traditional means for identifying the descendents of Riphath, who may have abode until this day distinct from their brethren, the children of Ashkenaz, or who may instead have become subsumed by them, but in either case, it is sufficient for both of them to be referenced collectively as Gomer.

So, having exhausted etymologies, spurious traditional views and fragmented records from antiquity, we have no recourse left in identifying Gomer other than turning to the Contemporaneousness Principle first mentioned in the commentary on Ezekiel 38:2.

Using the Contemporaneousness Principle to Find Gomer

There is enough in Ezekiel 38:6 to enable us to identify Gomer's modern incarnation, and we do this through noting that Gomer (and Togarmah, for that matter), as it arrives at its time-of-fulfilment form ², is a powerful barbarian force aligned militarily with Russia and therefore of the fold of the East, unlike Germany, which is distinctly, as it always was, of the West.

And this observation is what was alluded to by the phrasing, “Gomer, and all his bands”, i.e. “Gomer and his huge armies” (and “the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands”, i.e., “Togarmah, a nation northwards from Israel, with a very large military”).

The bands epithet is deliberate by the Lord to draw our attention to an important distinctive characteristic, because each of these nations had to be given a name in the prophecy, and while their tribal identities would perhaps have been knowable to the Hebrews of Ezekiel's day (ca. six centuries BC), it became lost over time, so another identifier suffixed to the name of Gomer (and Togarmah) was needed to help us identify them as we approach the time of their gathering under the leadership of Gog.

And so I submit that Gomer is, via Ashkenaz and Riphath (Gomer’s other two sons named in Genesis 10:3), in fact none other than Russia's chief ally, modern-day China, along with China's east Asian communist allies, especially North Korea (and perhaps even Vietnam), whose armed forces are also notably vast. ³

Togarmah

Togarmah, though one of Gomer’s sons according to Genesis 10:3, is named here as a separate end-times nation distinct from the other two elements of Gomer reviewed above (Ashkenaz and Riphath), and like Gomer, Togarmah also is to be identifiable by his "bands" (huge armed forces).

This nation was understood by Gill to refer to some part of what is nowadays Turkey, or Tartary in the grassy steppes of Russia and central Eurasia beyond, and cannot be simply the Turkic-speaking tribes as a whole, but more specifically, Turkey itself, the Turks being ethnically distinct from the Turkic-speaking tribes of Eurasia.

This is because, as we have already seen, Tartary (i.e. where the Tatars abide) falls under the head of Meshech in Ezekiel 38:2, subsumed within modern Russia, leaving "the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, with his bands" as referring to a distinct linguistically Turkic nation located north of Israel with a large military.

Only one such nation exists, i.e., Turkey, which has the second largest military in NATO (only the US military is numerically superior)⁴

However, there are two obvious problems with this theory:

1. Turkey is currently aligned with the West as a member of NATO.
2. The Turks are not east Asian like the Chinese and Koreans, so how can both China and Turkey (via Togarmah) be of Gomer’s posterity?

Objection #1: Turkey is a Western-Aligned NATO Country

In addressing the first objection, Turkey is increasingly a recalcitrant NATO member, busy in recent years flirting with Russia and angering the rest of NATO.

For example, it vetoed and thereby considerably delayed Sweden's and Finland's accession to NATO (consequently serving a distinctly Russian interest) until those two Nordic countries agreed to its demands concerning "Kurdish terrorists" and Koran-burning within their borders and, before that, it infuriated the US by procuring Russian military equipment⁵.

Turkey also sent warm messages of support to Vladimir Putin during Yevgeny Prigozhin's abortive Wagner Group Coup Attempt in 2023, in the midst of Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine yet, paradoxically, formally supports Ukrainian territorial integrity; but this is almost certainly just to placate its fellow NATO members, who very probably distrust Turkey's offer to provide a peacekeeping role in Ukraine.

But there are also more solid evidences of Turkey's inclination or intention to pivot fully to the East, in the form of its invitation in 2025 to become a "partner country" with the Russian-led BRICS (Brazil Russia India China South Africa) monetary system, which is being developed initially as a counterweight to the US-controlled Petrodollar exchange system.

...Türkiye’s interest in engaging with BRICS+ reflects a broader recalibration of its foreign policy, seeking greater strategic autonomy amid the erosion of Western-centric global structures... (Dr. Serhat Süha Çubukçuoğlu, Senior Researcher / Director of Türkiye Office at TRENDS Research & Advisory, writing in Türkiye and BRICS+: Strategic Ambitions in a Shifting Global Order, August 2025).

The above quote is a very candid admission that Turkey sees the West weakening and is now fluttering its eyelids at the BRICS bloc.

But arguably more ominously, Turkey is now formally a "dialogue partner" of the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation), seen by some as a prototype anti-NATO, covering common military, political and economic interests.

Obviously, therefore, as of 2026, Turkey's position might best be described as “on the fence”, or “running with the foxes, hunting with the hounds”.

Like all Islamic nations, Turkey holds a longstanding animosity towards Israel that transcends the Sunni-Shi’a dispute⁶, and would find itself unavoidably tempted by any enterprise directed at overrunning and despoiling Palestine, especially if the West were deemed unlikely to intervene.

The foundations are therefore present, along with the military brute force and the recent precedence of arms supply arrangements with Russia, to poise Turkey for a near-term switch to Moscow and out of the NATO fold entirely, formally or informally.

Objection #2: The Turks are not East Asian

This is a weak or even irrelevant objection for the obvious reason that other ethnically diverse tribes are descended from other Japhethite siblings; the Indians from Madai (via the Medes) and the Russians from Magog (probably via the Scythians), so there is no compelling reason why all the descendents of Gomer should appear ethnically alike.

Nevertheless, some experts have invoked such things as linguistic similarities between the Turkish and Korean languages to support ethnic likeness, but that is never a definitive confirmation of fraternity⁷.

Some have also sought to establish an origin of the Turks in what is modern-day China, but appear to conflate the speakers of the various Turkic languages of central Asia with the modern Turks themselves; certainly, some members of the linguistically Turkic tribes of south-central Eurasia possess discernible far eastern facial features, as I observed first-hand during several visits to Kyrgyzstan, but as mentioned before when discussing Ezekiel 38:2, those tribes are descended primarily from Meshech, not Gomer, and therefore are only Togarmahites linguistically, even though there must in their ethnic make-up be inevitable traces of minimal or peripheral cross-breeding with both Togarmahites and the remaining Gomerites over the millennia, especially during eras of migration, but not to the extent that their Meshechian essence is no longer the predominant one within their ethnicity.

That then leaves the Turks as retaining a cohesive core essence as a distinct family within Gomer, "the house of Togarmah" and more than that, contained within a single nation, whereas the rest of Gomer seems to be spread across China, Korea, Japan, and the other far eastern nations.

And so it is this Togarmah "of the north quarters" (relative to Israel's location), that is modern Turkey, a nation of great self-estimation and pride that, to outsiders in the West, looks ridiculous given its lack of geopolitical influence but which to the Turks is taken deadly seriously.

In the pecking order of the nations of the East, Turkey is incontestably behind Russia and China, despite its large military, which is dwarfed by theirs and which lacks nuclear weapons, the ultimate coercive force that any nation can wield.

Turkey, therefore, is a follower, not a leader, among the eastern countries; it seeks to fall in line behind economic and military alliances initiated by others, whilst proposing none of its own (because it lacks the economic power and geopolitical reach).

Turkey, for these reasons, can only play a tag-along role in the coming attack on Israel which Russia shall lead.

Current Relations Between Russia and its Allies Named in Ezekiel 38

To recap, Russia's allies listed in the coming assault on Israel are:

• China
• North Korea
• Iran
• Libya
• "Ethiopia" (Horn of Africa countries)
• Turkey

Russia's relationship with China is widely seen in the West as at best peer-to-peer, but perhaps more often as Russia assuming the role of junior partner due to the much greater size of China's economy and its far larger armed forces.

However, I agree with the anticommunist authors who assess the relationship as being converse to that, i.e., it is Russian-led, with Moscow remaining as the de facto world headquarters of Stalinist-Maoist communism, despite its fake transformation to a democracy in the early 1990s, and, before that, despite the staged Sino-Soviet split from 1961-1989, exposed by the KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn in his 1984 book, New Lies for Old, as a charade to wrongfoot the West.

China, for all its economic power, enormous navy, army and air force, and for all its new advanced weapons systems (which more or less are in entirety blatant plagiarisms of American designs), nonetheless lacks two things that Russia possesses, namely, technological inventiveness (they can copy but can't innovate⁸) and the unfathomable number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that Russia has (despite China trying to play catch-up for years and years).

Russia therefore has the biggest stick, through its nuclear munitions, to be "last man standing" in any eastern showdown and has far greater experience in waging asymmetrical warfare (i.e. subversion) against the West, including communist infiltration of institutions, than China has.

China's role is rather to support Russian nuclear assaults when the planned World War Three arrives, with an overwhelming swarm of manpower and, it increasingly appears, to draw out and divert the US in the Pacific so as to give Russia a free run in Europe, which Russia has long desired to bring into its own sphere of influence at the expense of the Atlanticism that is the central object of hatred in its modern version of Eurasianism (i.e. neo-Eurasianism), as articulated perhaps most notably by Aleksandr Dugin, a "far-right" (read "final phase Marxist")⁹ author and seen by many as Vladimir Putin's "muse".

Meanwhile, China’s economy, according to the dissident Chinese commentator Mr. D. Wang of Lude Media, is presently being steered away from supplying western consumer demands and towards a predatory reconstruction model in which it would capitalise on military gains made by its alliance with Russia.

Commenting in a February 2024 interview with J.R. Nyquist, Wang made the following observation concerning China’s ailing economic situation:

...the solution for Xi is to move human resources to build up the military complex to get benefits from the Russian war in Ukraine and other global hotspots. The critical point is that when there is a sudden decoupling of China from the United States, Xi has to put everything into the military industrial complex to replace the previous economic pattern. At the same time, when Xi’s economy falls into the military pattern this will push Xi toward war – toward a global conflict.

....The CCP wants to support Russia with weapons because this facilitates China’s transition from producing consumer goods to producing military goods. So, the CCP depends on the Ukraine War to maintain their economic system and, eventually, if the Russians take over Ukraine, China will take control of key economic assets in Ukraine to pay for this war. This model is being established, and this model is very familiar to Russia. So, they are going to aim at the next war [i.e. World War Three], and they are going to continue this process [of expanding and expropriating resources]. You have to understand, all these military operations have to be paid for with something. The side that Russia defeats is going to pay for that war. (D. Wang, in Interview with Lude and Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Putin, 9th February 2024).

The above disclosure from a Chinese dissident should serve to outline why China would follow Putin’s lead into the doomed assault against Israel later this decade.

Then combine that new Chinese economic model with the catastrophe of a misfiring BRICS regime (which I am predicting based on my understanding of Revelation 16's second plague) and the motivational ingredients are there for the barbarian attack on Israel, that is, to reboot their devastated economies after BRICS miscarries; and for the Islamic element accompanying them, there is the obvious additional motive arising from the longstanding Muslim wish to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.

North Korea, though a client state of China by most accounts, was originally a pet project not of China but of Russia and it seems untenable, given Russia's headship role in the communist nations of the East, that it would simply surrender control of such a useful thorn-in-the-side asset to another powerful communist country, unless it has been done by delegation rather than abandonment, or else to project the appearance that Russia is not North Korea's principal.

Like China, North Korea's outsized army has been training with Russia's forces in recent years and the country has contributed troops to the war in Ukraine, establishing a contemporaneous precedent for Russian-led real world military operations involving the nations named in Ezekiel 38's opening verses.

Iran has no major formal military alliance with Russia or China, but such arrangements have never been as important to those countries as they are to the West; for them, irrational red tape is for the masses to suffer unto while, at geopolitical level, they appear to either like to keep alliances informal or else well hidden from the world beyond, including their own native populations, and here I would cite once more the bogus Sino-Soviet Split of the 1960s-1980s as an example of a strong and thoroughly committed alliance obscured, not just by the absence of formal treaties, but behind a charade of veritable enmity.

One can observe traces of Russia's and Iran's mutual loyalty (which is based not on ideology but on common geopolitical interests) in the form of Iran's supply of drones to Russia for the war in Ukraine and in Russia's strong hint in autumn 2025 that "someone" might supply Iran with nuclear weapons if Israel and the US continue to assault its nuclear weapons programme.

Iran holds great influence over the Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and supplies them with weaponry, including missiles for barraging Israel from time to time, but in turn, Moscow holds sway over Iran and suffers it to make no major plays on the world stage without Russia approval, making Iran to a meaningful extent a client state of Russia's.

Somalia is one of those lawless anything-goes Islamic car-crash countries (as obvious from the vile behaviour of its many émigrés in western nations) that has been a traditional ally or tinpot proxy of Russia in Africa, starting in the early 1960s when Russia commenced diplomatic relations with it and trained its ragtag armed forces, as well as supplying the country with loans and, despite a falling out between them during the Ethio-Somali war of the late 1970s, Russia and Somalia are again on the same "team barbarian" as the build-up to final confrontation with the West proceeds apace.

Sudan is another Horn of Africa client state of Russia, from whom it receives some 87% of its military equipment.

Russia also has (or is close to having) a Red Sea naval base in Sudan, has its Wagner mercenaries actively operating in the country, and has mineral mining agreements in place with the authorities there.

Meanwhile Turkey, to recap, has been flirting with Russia and its allies through the BRICS and SCO structures, as well as buying military hardware from Russia and sending messages of support to Putin when, for a moment, it looked like the Wagner coup might succeed.

Some might object by saying that such a proposed alliance would flounder on China’s mistreatment of its Uighur population who, like their linguistically Turkic kinsmen beyond China, are Sunni Muslims.

However, as of early 2025, it has been reported that Beijing is seeking to frame a “Central Asian Policy” designed to alleviate concerns from the various “-stans” of Central Asia about this very issue¹⁰, presumably to avoid difficulties in receiving hydrocarbon supplies via pipelines passing through those territories.

We must expect they shall succeed with this act of diplomacy and that it will smooth the way for their alliance with Turkey et al, so look out for more news like the following:

We now are facing something we have never seen before! The Turks and the Iranians are coordinating and cooperating. The Iranian foreign minister shows up in Turkey and he was treated like the second coming, while Anthony Blinken was treated like the red headed step child. All of these states are more capable than they were 50 years ago. They are quite capable of coordinating their actions to destroy Israel. This is a very dangerous situation. (Colonel Douglas MacGregor on Twitter / X, 15th November 2023).

A Very Clear and Present Axis of the East

It cannot be disputed that the nations of the East are, economically and militarily, in league and are planning a terrible war with the West.

What also cannot be disputed is that the head among them is the nation with the greatest nuclear arsenal, i.e., Russia, even though its economy is comparable to that of the distinctly unthreatening nation of Italy, showing that "might is right" as far as ungodly power projection and influence goes.

And yes, China obviously has aspirations to eventually assume the role of top dog, but first Russia and it must band to take on and defeat the West.

That in turn means both must have as much access to hydrocarbons in advance of hostilities as possible, this issue being a key reason why Germany floundered in World War Two, and so they must desire the West's ejection from the Middle East.

For that to happen, the West must be diverted away from the region, by whatever means, and the gaggle of angry, Israel-hating Islamic states in the region have to be brought in as allies (or useful proxies) willing to make plays under direction from Russia's geostrategic planners.

In addition to underlining the well documented long history of mutual assistance between the communist bloc and the Islamic world, this geopolitical snapshot clearly presents Russia as assuming not just the leadership role, but also acting as “big protector” of the Islamic component of the barbarian hordes of the East, as neatly summed up thus:

"Today, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policy, Russia remains the most loyal ally and protector of Islam.” (Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic within Russia and devoted ally of Vladimir Putin, speaking in May 2017).

But why no Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia?

Naturally one might ask why Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are omitted from the list of nations following Russia in Ezekiel 38.

The answer, one might surmise, is that even though their people may perhaps be desirous of Israel's ruin, their rulers are still more beholden to the West than to Russia (albeit western-armed and -equipped Saudi Arabia has shown an interest in joining BRICS), so it seems likely they are cautiously inclined to adopt a wait-and-see approach.

However, I would not exclude the possibility of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and one or more of the neighbouring "-stan" nations of central Asia, all of whom fall as much under the head of Meshech as the Tatars, Chuvash, et al of Russia do (see the commentary on Ezekiel 38:2), but be it noted that there are many petty disputes still raging among them.

A Reminder: Tradition and Etymology are Weak Interpretive Devices

I trust that by now the reader agrees with me that both tradition - even that which has become established as "fact" - as well as etymology, are weak means of identifying the present-day successors of the tribes founded by the Noahic patriarchs, and that instead the Contemporaneousness Principle (described above) is the most reliable way to solve these riddles.

All of the modern nations left traces in the Caucasus region and the lands around it because that is where humanity's diaspora originated when Noah's Ark came to rest in Ararat, and so arguments derived from archaeological discoveries or the writings of antiquity, trying to fix Turkey as the land of Magog are inadmissible because they lack conclusiveness.

Hence we defer to a better way: looking at the geopolitical conditions as we stand on the eve of the prophecy's fulfilment, and again, to remind the reader, we know we are at that point because of the criteria listed in Footnote 2 below.