Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:8

"After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them." (Ezekiel 38:8)

"And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones, that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison¹, and after many days they shall be visited." (Isaiah 24:21-22)

"When thou [Israel] art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.” (Deuteronomy 4:30)

Here we get to the timing of Gog’s venture against Israel, and note the special qualifications that pin that time down to our present age:

• It is an event scheduled for the “latter years”, that is, in the distant future from the perspective of Ezekiel, who was writing circa the 6th Century BC, as per Gill on Ezekiel 1:1.
• Few would dispute that the present age constitutes those latter years, qualifying as such by the prevailing extremely evil condition of humanity that matches the profile Paul provided in 2 Timothy 3, although Alexander Hislop ², in The Red Republic, makes a distinction between last and latter days), arguing that whereas the last days began when Jesus was born (a common view amongst Reformed theologians and my own personal view also), the term latter days refers to the period around the end of those last days.
• It is to happen when Israel is gathered out of the nations and once more established in the land of Judea, after centuries of exile, "brought back from the sword" (since May 1948, when the modern state of Israel was founded).
• It is to happen when the Jews would be dwelling "safely" as a people in their historic homeland, that is, substantially safe and free from the danger of being carried into captivity again and perhaps under the illusion of security from a peace treaty brokered by Russia (with, or probably without, US approval), Russia alone among the major nations having the clout and influence to becalm the Islamic countries arrayed against Israel. Such a treaty might entail Russia guaranteeing peace as part of an agreed exploitation of Israel’s Leviathan gas field through Russian hydrocarbon extraction technology; under this speculative outcome, Russia would be disingenuously forming a shadow treaty with the barbarian hordes of the East, representing an intention to double cross Israel and seize it all as the opening victory of the new power bloc of the East, meant to signal the death knell of western hegemony.
• It entails Gog, the leader of Magog (Russia) being "visited", not in mercy or grace but, as Gill says, in judgment, and this I take to be the reckoning for the great evil of Russian communism for its role in subverting and perverting the West and the other barbarian nations in the East; it will also include a great judgment upon China's and the other eastern nations’ communism, and upon the greater part of the Islamic world.

The only things to add to that would be Israel is to find itself in the tribulation elsewhere known as "Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7), the resolution of which shall be the God-orchestrated return of the Jews to the Messianic fold, i.e., embracing the mystic David, i.e., Jesus Christ, thereby uniting with the Gentile church transcendent in fulfilment of Romans 11:15; this is the thrust of the following passage:

"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him:

But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.

Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.

For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet I will not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished."

(Jeremiah 30:7-11)

God's quarrel with Israel for millennia has concerned their disobedient departure from the Messianic faith, which began with innovations in worship (every man doing that which was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6), including appointing casual Levites as personal priests (Judges 17:10)) that quickly led to idolatrous forms of Jehovah-worship, abhorred and entirely rejected by the Lord - in addition to Catholics and Orthodox readers who should take note, so should all ostensible Protestants who have embraced innovations in worship!

Apostasy then turned to outright idolatry fixated on pagan gods, but at times Israel was chastened for this, repented in part or showed outward reforms, only to either slide back into paganism or apostate forms of Jehovah-worship, notably that instigated by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, "who made Israel to sin" (1 Kings 22:52) by reinstituting a form of the golden calf idolatry that so enraged Moses (and the Lord) in Exodus 32.

Eventually, the Lord delivered them into Babylonian captivity, and may any careless "Protestant" reader take note that the end result of apostasy is always captivity to the spiritual Babylon that is the Antichurch of Rome (or its eastern fork, which has been beguiling many tradition-loving western conservatives in recent years).

Israel was restored in part, for a brief period, to its homeland and abode thus during the ministry of Christ and lasted until its total termination in the Roman empire's AD70 assault on Jerusalem, the "desolating abomination" of pagan forces overrunning the city (foretold in Daniel 9:37), desecrating and then demolishing the temple, and, until 1948, the Jews consequently abode as outcasts from their homeland.

That judgment was the outworking of the curse the Jews brought on themselves by saying of Christ, "His blood be on us and on our children", fulfilled first in the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem in AD70 (recounted in graphic detail by Flavius Josephus), then in the many persecutions from Islam and the Antichurch over the centuries from the Middle Ages onwards, and finally peaking with the Holocaust, which was on the one hand the superlative requiting of Christ's innocent blood, and on the other was an effort by Satan to exterminate the Jews in advance of their return to the Messianic fold and the part that will play in God's establishment of the Philadelphian church era .

The nation of Israel is therefore currently in position (as of 2026) to soon be dwelling safely in its own land; some observers would, of course, argue that it already is doing so, but with constant threat of attack from its enemies one cannot readily reconcile Israel's present siege mentality and situation with the sense of security conveyed in Ezekiel 38:8; hence one may reasonably surmise that a near future peace treaty of the kind I suspect Russia will broker (see the commentary on Ezekiel 38:14) will be the cause of a more tangible (but deceptive) peace, of the kind alluded to in this verse.