Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:26

"After that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me, when they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid." (Ezekiel 39:26)

This bringing again of the captivity of the house of Israel follows two long millennia in which the term Jew has been a byword, a hated moniker, an insult, a contemptible name for an undeniably wicked and evil people.

In that time also, the Jews had to drink up the fulness of their sins and receive the fulness of abuse from their enemies.

And this excess of wickedness has been undoubtedly added to by the ungrateful continuation of it after they had begun to substantially return to their ancestral homeland, starting in 1948's formation of the modern nation of Israel.

(Note that John Gill on this verse (Ezekiel 39:26) may have predicted (his wording is not entirely clear) that the Jews would do that very thing).¹

But can one say today that the Jews are technically dwelling safely in Israel?

I submit they are not yet (as of 2026), given that they live in constant fear of attack from their surrounding enemies, and so I further submit that there will indeed be a peace treaty, perhaps or even probably brokered by Gog himself (see the commentary on Ezekiel 38:14), the wicked ruler of Russia, that will for a very brief period bring a false sense of security and peace to Israel after the West has been removed as its longstanding protector, and that the Jews residing there shall abide both in a sense of peace and in sinful rebellion against the Lord and His Christ right up until Gog invades their homeland and its very existence comes under direct threat.

"After that they have borne their shame..."

As Gill points out in his commentary on Ezekiel 39:26, some take the sense of this to be "after the Jews have been forgiven for the sins that brought such shame upon them", and that will certainly be the case; others have understood it to be much as "after they have openly admitted and thereby borne their shame, in open repudiation of it and repentance for it", and again, that will undoubtedly happen.

But it may also refer to the fact that the Jews have been scattered - for their sins and therefore shamefully - among the nations, and so the sense would be "after the Jews have suffered the ignominy of a forced diaspora for their sins and thereby borne the consequences of all their trespasses against the Lord".

Note that this section of the Gog-Magog assault's sweet epilogue is a condensed version of an earlier passage in the book of Ezekiel, covering the same key points as those asserted here in Ezekiel 39:21-29:

"For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord GOD, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me: there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out from the people, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your fathers. And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed. And ye shall know that I am the LORD when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD". (Ezekiel 20:40-44)

To reiterate, those key points are:

• The prophecy is directed at the house of Israel, i.e., the literal descendants of Jacob as opposed to the mystic Israel that is the church transcendent.
• Pure worship from them will be accepted ("offerings, oblations, etc."), these terms being metphors for the ordinances of the New Testament church.
• They are to be drawn out from the nations of the world and brought back to their literal homeland, where they shall dwell in humble and pure worship of the Lord.
• The heathen - presumably including not just all false religions, but also apostate Christianity and of course atheism - might be compelled to acknowledge, in their hearts if not with their mouths, that the Lord has restored the Jews after a long separation from them due to their sins; note that Nehemiah 6:16 has a precedent of the heathen perceiving, and being dismayed, at God's merciful dealings with the Israelites after He had afflicted them for their rebellion against the true faith Moses conveyed to them.
• The Jews themselves will likewise make, articulate and own from the heart that very same observation that the heathen will probably unwillingly do.
• The Jews will abhor their own sins and the sins of their fathers as part of a national, heartfelt, Spirit-wrought repentance.
• The Jews will confess and own that their redemption and return to Christ was demerited (as the conversion of any sinner always is) and that the Lord will have done so for His own name's sake, i.e., for the covenant of grace he swore unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob concerning their natural descendents.²

In most of these things are obvious parallels or symbols or types of Christ's redemption of each member of the church transcendent, but that observation must not be allowed to derail the undeniable context of Ezekiel 20 (and indeed, most of the book of Ezekiel), which is God's severity towards the ethnic Israelites for their apostasy and their eventual, distant future (from Ezekiel's perspective) return to the Messianic fold.