Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:10
"So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD." (Ezekiel 39:10)
The bounty of scrap metal and other materials, as well as the diesel and kerosene of the invading force, will now be at Israel's disposal
(see my commentary on the previous verse), showing that God will turn the tables so
that the invaders will themselves become victims of the very crimes they were set on committing against Israel.
John Gill on this comments thus:
"neither cut down any out of the forest:
out of the forest of Lebanon, or any other, where they used to fetch wood for their necessary uses; but so great a quantity of armour shall now be brought home by them to their houses, that they should have no need to be at the trouble and expense of fetching wood from the forests [which is a ready metaphor for saying that the Christian nation of Israel will have such a bounty of energy supplies and metal from the defeated armies of Gog that they will have no need to source energy from elsewhere; this is a poetic justice upon Gog for what I expect will be his hydrocarbon-grab motive against Israel; he will have thought to take their resources, including the rich bounty of their large Leviathan gas field, but instead they will have made fuel and energy out of his armies!]
"for they shall burn the weapons with fire;"
the reason of which will be, because they will have no occasion for them hereafter; for when this battle is over, which seems to be the same with that at Armageddon [i.e of Revelation 16:16], there will be an entire destruction of all the enemies of Christ and his church; the world will be cleared of them, and there will be war no more, and so no more use of weapons; this will be the last battle that will be fought; see Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3.
"and they shall spoil those that spoil them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD"
not only take their weapons and burn them, but strip them of their garments, and take away their gold, and silver, and jewels, and everything of value they shall find about them." (John Gill on Ezekiel 39:9-10)
In this spoiling, there is additional reference and support in Zechariah 14’s description of the heathen’s encroachment into Israel at the time
of its return to the Messianic fold (a conversion event which I believe occurs on a single, literal day, en masse, when Israel finds itself alone in
the world, abandoned by the West and unable to use its own weaponry against the attackers, perhaps deterred from doing so because of Russia's enormous
nuclear arsenal),
reaching the bounds of Jerusalem itself (and breaking into half of the city and ransacking private property and molesting the
women (Zechariah 14:2), as every invading force in military history has been wont to do, so that the distress of Israel shall
be great and reach unto Heaven and provoke in the Lord a great fury and jealousy for His people (Ezekiel 38:18-19))1 :
"...and the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance." (Zechariah 14:14).
All of which bounty can be taken metaphorically for the material value and usefulness of the vast spoil to be taken in Israel of the fallen foe.
FOOTNOTES
1. Gill, uncertain of the literality of Zechariah 14:2's ravishing of the women of Jerusalem tentatively proposes a symbolic interpretation
based on the spiritual Jerusalem (the church) being under assault from a spiritual Gog (the Pope) that manages to capture the "outer court" (Revelation 11:2), i.e., an envisagement of Rome retaking into its
fold (perhaps in a de facto sense through ecumenicism, if not in a literal sense) all the carnal, nominally Protestant professors of faith at the time of
the killing of the Two Witnesses (i.e. the present day, as of 2026, when the Lord's public witness on social media and in every major western city,
and many minor ones, is gagged
through hate speech laws).
I personally assess Gill's concept (which Thomas Goodwin also proposed in
An Exposition of the Revelation)
as partially admissible, insofar as Rome appears to be
mounting a final, last-ditch bid at a comeback through useful proxies and front groups like
Turning Point USA and
Tommy Robinson's revivalist motions here in the UK (which
are just lip-service, going "back to tradition", etc. and contain no element of repentance and turning back to look again at the Reformation.
However, I think Zechariah 14:2 has a more literal, albeit still nuanced, meaning and if it does not mean that many of the Jewish women of Jerusalem will
be ravished by Gog's invading force, it may instead refer to the large Arab minority who dwell in the city, some
30-40% of its population;
even though the invaders
will include many Islamist soldiers, (a) Muslims are sexual degenerates anyway, even towards their own women, and (b) among the invading force will also be
many Chinese and Russian soldiers; or indeed, it may be the case that the ravaging of women by the Russian and Chinese elements, if only applicable to the
Arab population of the city (through providential protection of the Jewish women of Jerusalem), could be a cause of the foretold in-fighting amidst
Gog's forces (see Ezekiel 38:21).
