Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:20
"Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD." (Ezekiel 39:20)
That is, the scavenging and predatory creatures drawn to this scene shall consume the occupants of the "chariots" and the riders of the "horses",
meaning, the tank crews, artillery troops, and soldiers and commanders of all rank, from the lowest private right up to the most senior general.
In Revelation 19's similar wording (albeit seemingly applied symbolically to the godly who, having ascended to temporal authority, will
dismantle by God's grace the power and wealth structures
of the ungodly rulers of the nations)1, it is the riders of metaphorical horses
that are to be consumed, as follows:
"That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great." (Revelation 19:18)
The statement here in Ezekiel 39:20 is concluded with "saith the Lord GOD", that is, "saith the Lord Jehovah", i.e., the covenant God of Israel acting
in covenantal, that is, redemptive mercy towards the literal seed of Jacob concurrently with wrath against His enemies, there being
numerous instances of this form deployed
in the dual redemptive-and-simultaneously-judicial context in the Old Testament prophets.
This scene of the plundering of the fallen enemies of God arrayed against the newly Christian nation of Israel in Ezekiel 39 is a literal
realisation, a prototype, of a more symbolic fulfilment to ensue shortly thereafter in the wider geopolitical sphere beyond, in the
Revelation 19 development mentioned above.
FOOTNOTES
1. In Revelation 19, only "the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven" (v 17) are summoned, with no mention of wild beasts,
and the reason
appears to be because John's prophecy is presented in symbolic terms that merely invoke the language of Ezekiel 39, as opposed to making the
Revelation 19 event the same as the Ezekiel 39 event; the same device is used in Revelation 20's invocation of Gog and Magog as symbolic name for
a future event that is not the same as the Ezekiel 38-39 conflict.
The aforementioned "fowls" are taken by
Gill
to refer to godly princes in the midst of the "heaven" of temporal rulership, which is to happen at the fall of the present ungodly world order, in
accordance with Daniel 2's destruction of the West's godless power blocs and Daniel 7's promise that the "saints of the most High" should "possess the
Kingdom" (Daniel 7:18).
