1Und du, Menschensohn, weissage wider Gog und sprich: So spricht der Herr, Jehova: Siehe, ich will an dich, Gog, Fürst von Rosch, Mesech und Tubal. 2Und ich werde dich herumlenken und herbeiführen, und dich heraufziehen lassen vom äußersten Norden her, und dich auf die Berge Israels bringen. 3Und ich werde dir den Bogen aus deiner linken Hand schlagen und deine Pfeile aus deiner rechten Hand werfen. 4Auf den Bergen Israels wirst du fallen, du und alle deine Haufen und die Völker, die mit dir sind; den Raubvögeln allerlei Gefieders und den Tieren des Feldes habe ich dich zur Speise gegeben; 5auf dem freien Felde sollst du fallen. Denn ich habe geredet, spricht der Herr, Jehova. 6Und ich werde Feuer senden unter Magog und unter die, welche auf den Inseln sicher wohnen. Und sie werden wissen, daß ich Jehova bin. 7Und ich werde meinen heiligen Namen kundtun inmitten meines Volkes Israel, und werde meinen heiligen Namen nicht mehr entweihen lassen. Und die Nationen werden wissen, daß ich Jehova bin, der Heilige in Israel. 8Siehe, es kommt und wird geschehen, spricht der Herr, Jehova. Das ist der Tag, von welchem ich geredet habe. 9Und die Bewohner der Städte Israels werden hinausgehen, und werden Feuer machen und heizen mit Waffen und Tartschen und Schilden, mit Bogen und Pfeilen und mit Handstäben und Lanzen; und sie werden Feuer damit machen sieben Jahre lang. 10Und sie werden kein Holz vom Felde holen noch aus den Wäldern hauen, sondern werden Feuer machen mit den Waffen. Und sie werden ihre Räuber berauben und ihre Plünderer plündern, spricht der Herr, Jehova. 11Und es wird geschehen an jenem Tage, da werde ich Gog eine Grabstätte geben in Israel, das Tal der Wanderer auf der Ostseite des Meeres; und es wird den Wanderern den Weg versperren. Und daselbst werden sie Gog und seine ganze Menge begraben, und sie werden es nennen: Tal der Menge Gogs . 12Und das Haus Israel wird sie begraben, um das Land zu reinigen, sieben Monate lang; 13und das ganze Volk des Landes wird sie begraben, und es wird ihnen zum Ruhme sein an dem Tage, da ich mich verherrlichen werde, spricht der Herr, Jehova. 14Und sie werden Männer aussondern, die beständig im Lande umherziehen, und solche, welche mit den Umherziehenden die auf der Fläche des Landes Übriggebliebenen begraben, um es zu reinigen; nach Verlauf von sieben Monaten werden sie es durchsuchen. 15Und die Umherziehenden werden im Lande umherziehen; und wenn einer ein Menschengebein sieht, so wird er ein Mal daneben errichten, bis die Totengräber es im Tale der Menge Gogs begraben. 16Und auch der Name der Stadt soll Hamona sein. Und so werden sie das Land reinigen. - 17Und du, Menschensohn, so spricht der Herr, Jehova: Sprich zu dem Gevögel allerlei Gefieders und zu allen Tieren des Feldes: Versammelt euch und kommet, sammelt euch von allen Seiten her zu meinem Schlachtopfer, das ich für euch schlachte, einem großen Schlachtopfer auf den Bergen Israels, und fresset Fleisch und trinket Blut! 18Fleisch von Helden sollt ihr fressen, und Blut von Fürsten der Erde sollt ihr trinken: Widder, Fettschafe und Böcke und Farren, in Basan gemästet allesamt. 19Und Fett sollt ihr fressen bis zur Sättigung und Blut trinken bis zur Trunkenheit von meinem Schlachtopfer, das ich für euch geschlachtet habe. 20Und ihr sollt euch sättigen an meinem Tische von Rossen und Reitern, von Helden und allerlei Kriegsleuten, spricht der Herr, Jehova. 21Und ich werde meine Herrlichkeit unter den Nationen erweisen ; und alle Nationen sollen mein Gericht sehen, welches ich gehalten, und meine Hand, die ich an sie gelegt habe. 22Und von jenem Tage an und hinfort wird das Haus Israel wissen, daß ich, Jehova, ihr Gott bin. 23Und die Nationen werden wissen, daß das Haus Israel um seiner Ungerechtigkeit willen weggeführt wurde, weil sie treulos gegen mich gewesen sind, und ich mein Angesicht vor ihnen verborgen und sie in die Hand ihrer Bedränger gegeben habe, so daß sie allesamt durch das Schwert gefallen sind. 24Nach ihrer Unreinigkeit und nach ihren Übertretungen habe ich mit ihnen gehandelt, und habe mein Angesicht vor ihnen verborgen. - 25Darum, so spricht der Herr, Jehova: Nun werde ich die Gefangenschaft Jakobs wenden und mich des ganzen Hauses Israel erbarmen, und werde eifern für meinen heiligen Namen. 26Und sie werden ihre Schmach tragen und alle ihre Treulosigkeit, mit welcher sie treulos gegen mich gehandelt haben, wenn sie in ihrem Lande sicher wohnen und niemand sie aufschreckt, 27wenn ich sie aus den Völkern zurückgebracht und sie aus den Ländern ihrer Feinde gesammelt, und ich mich an ihnen geheiligt habe vor den Augen der vielen Nationen. 28Und sie werden wissen, daß ich, Jehova, ihr Gott bin, indem ich sie zu den Nationen weggeführt habe und sie wieder in ihr Land sammle und keinen mehr von ihnen dort übriglasse. 29Und ich werde mein Angesicht nicht mehr vor ihnen verbergen, wenn ich meinen Geist über das Haus Israel ausgegossen habe, spricht der Herr, Jehova.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY AGAINST GOG. (Eze. 39:1-29)
Repeated from
Ezek 38:3, to impress the prophecy more on the mind.
2 leave but the sixth part of thee--Margin, "strike thee with six plagues" (namely, pestilence, blood, overflowing rain, hailstones, fire, brimstone,
Ezek 38:22); or, "draw thee back with an hook of six teeth" (
Ezek 38:4), the six teeth being those six plagues. Rather, "lead thee about" [LUDOVICUS DE DIEU and Septuagint]. As Antiochus was led (to his ruin) to leave Egypt for an expedition against Palestine, so shall the last great enemy of God be.
north parts--from the extreme north [FAIRBAIRN].
3 bow--in which the Scythians were most expert.
4 (Compare
Ezek 39:17-
Ezek 39:20).
upon the mountains of Israel--The scene of Israel's preservation shall be that of the ungodly foe's destruction.
6 carelessly--in self-confident security.
the isles--Those dwelling in maritime regions, who had helped Gog with fleets and troops, shall be visited with the fire of God's wrath in their own lands.
7 not let them pollute my holy name--by their sins bringing down judgments which made the heathen think that I was unable or unwilling to save My people.
8 it is come . . . it is done--The prediction of the salvation of My people, and the ruin of their enemy, is come to pass--is done: expressing that the event foretold is as certain as if it were already accomplished.
9 The burning of the foe's weapons implies that nothing belonging to them should be left to pollute the land. The seven years (seven being the sacred number) spent on this work, implies the completeness of the cleansing, and the people's zeal for purity. How different from the ancient Israelites, who left not merely the arms, but the heathen themselves, to remain among them [FAIRBAIRN], (
Judg 1:27-
Judg 1:28;
Judg 2:2-
Judg 2:3;
Ps 106:34-
Ps 106:36). The desolation by Antiochus began in the one hundred and forty-first year of the Seleucidć. From this date to 148, a period of six years and four months ("2300 days,"
Dan 8:14), when the temple-worship was restored (1 Maccabees 4:52), God vouchsafed many triumphs to His people; from this time to the death of Antiochus, early in 149, a period of seven months, the Jews had rest from Antiochus, and purified their land, and on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month celebrated the Encćnia, or feast of dedication (
John 10:22) and purification of the temple. The whole period, in round numbers, was seven years. Mattathias was the patriotic Jewish leader, and his third son, Judas, the military commander under whom the Syrian generals were defeated. He retook Jerusalem and purified the temple. Simon and Jonathan, his brothers, succeeded him: the independence of the Jews was secured, and the crown vested in the Asmonean family, in which it continued till Herod the Great.
11 place . . . of graves--Gog found only a grave where he had expected the spoils of conquest.
valley--So vast were to be the masses that nothing but a deep valley would suffice for their corpses.
the passengers on the east of the sea--those travelling on the high road, east of the Dead Sea, from Syria to Petra and Egypt. The publicity of the road would cause many to observe God's judgments, as the stench (as English Version translates) or the multitude of graves (as HENDERSON translates, "it shall stop the passengers") would arrest the attention of passers-by. Their grave would be close to that of their ancient prototypes, Sodom and Gomorrah in the Dead Sea, both alike being signal instances of God's judgments.
13 I . . . glorified--in destroying the foe (
Ezek 28:22).
14 with the passengers--The men employed continually in the burying were to be helped by those happening to pass by; all were to combine.
after the end of seven months shall they search--to see if the work was complete [MUNSTER].
15 First "all the people of the land" engaged in the burying for seven months; then special men were employed, at the end of the seven months, to search for any still left unburied. The passers-by helped them by setting up a mark near any such bones, in order to keep others from being defiled by casually touching them, and that the buriers might come and remove them. Denoting the minute care to put away every relic of heathen pollution from the Holy Land.
16 A city in the neighborhood was to receive the name Hamonah, "multitude," to commemorate the overthrow of the multitudes of the foe [HENDERSON]. The multitude of the slain shall give a name to the city of Jerusalem after the land shall have been cleansed [GROTIUS]. Jerusalem shall be famed as the conqueror of multitudes.
17 (
Rev 19:17).
sacrifice--Anciently worshippers feasted on the sacrifices. The birds and beasts of prey are invited to the sacrificial feast provided by God (compare
Isa 18:6;
Isa 34:6;
Zeph 1:7;
Mark 9:49). Here this sacrifice holds only a subordinate place in the picture, and so is put last. Not only shall their bones lie long unburied, but they shall be stripped of the flesh by beasts and birds of prey.
18 rams . . . lambs . . . goats--By these various animal victims used in sacrifices are meant various ranks of men, princes, generals, and soldiers (compare
Isa 34:6).
fatlings of Bashan--ungodly men of might (
Ps 22:12). Bashan, beyond Jordan, was famed for its fat cattle. Fat implies prosperity which often makes men refractory towards God (
Deut 32:14-
Deut 32:15).
20 my table--the field of battle on the mountains of Israel (
Ezek 38:8,
Ezek 38:20).
chariots--that is, charioteers.
22 So the house of Israel shall know . . . Lord--by My interposition for them. So, too, the heathen shall be led to fear the name of the Lord (
Ps 102:15).
23 hid I my face-- (
Deut 31:17;
Isa 59:2).
25 bring again the captivity--restore from calamity to prosperity.
the whole house of Israel--so "all Israel" (
Rom 11:26). The restorations of Israel heretofore have been partial; there must be one yet future that is to be universal (
Hos 1:11).
26 After that they have borne their shame--the punishment of their sin: after they have become sensible of their guilt, and ashamed of it (
Ezek 20:43;
Ezek 36:31).
27 sanctified in them--vindicated as holy in My dealings with them.
28 The Jews, having no dominion, settled country, or fixed property to detain them, may return at any time without difficulty (compare
Hos 3:4-
Hos 3:5).
29 poured out my Spirit upon . . . Israel--the sure forerunner of their conversion (
Joel 2:28;
Zech 12:10). The pouring out of His Spirit is a pledge that He will hide His face no more (
2Cor 1:22;
Eph 1:14;
Phil 1:6).
The arrangements as to the land and the temple are, in many particulars, different from those subsisting before the captivity. There are things in it so improbable physically as to preclude a purely literal interpretation. The general truth seems to hold good that, as Israel served the nations for his rejection of Messiah, so shall they serve him in the person of Messiah, when he shall acknowledge Messiah (
Isa 60:12;
Zech 14:17-
Zech 14:19; compare
Ps 72:11). The ideal temple exhibits, under Old Testament forms (used as being those then familiar to the men whom Ezekiel, a priest himself, and one who delighted in sacrificial images, addresses), not the precise literal outline, but the essential character of the worship of Messiah as it shall be when He shall exercise sway in Jerusalem among His own people, the Jews, and thence to the ends of the earth. The very fact that the whole is a vision (
Ezek 40:2), not an oral face-to-face communication such as that granted to Moses (
Num 12:6-
Num 12:8), implies that the directions are not to be understood so precisely literally as those given to the Jewish lawgiver. The description involves things which, taken literally, almost involve natural impossibilities. The square of the temple, in
Ezek 42:20, is six times as large as the circuit of the wall enclosing the old temple, and larger than all the earthly Jerusalem. Ezekiel gives three and a half miles and one hundred forty yards to his temple square. The boundaries of the ancient city were about two and a half miles. Again, the city in Ezekiel has an area between three or four thousand square miles, including the holy ground set apart for the prince, priests, and Levites. This is nearly as large as the whole of Judea west of the Jordan. As Zion lay in the center of the ideal city, the one-half of the sacred portion extended to nearly thirty miles south of Jerusalem, that is, covered nearly the whole southern territory, which reached only to the Dead Sea (
Ezek 47:19), and yet five tribes were to have their inheritance on that side of Jerusalem, beyond the sacred portion (
Ezek 48:23-
Ezek 48:28). Where was land to be found for them there? A breadth of but four or five miles apiece would be left. As the boundaries of the land are given the same as under Moses, these incongruities cannot be explained away by supposing physical changes about to be effected in the land such as will meet the difficulties of the purely literal interpretation. The distribution of the land is in equal portions among the twelve tribes, without respect to their relative numbers, and the parallel sections running from east to west. There is a difficulty also in the supposed separate existence of the twelve tribes, such separate tribeships no longer existing, and it being hard to imagine how they could be restored as distinct tribes, mingled as they now are. So the stream that issued from the east threshold of the temple and flowed into the Dead Sea, in the rapidity of its increase and the quality of its waters, is unlike anything ever known in Judea or elsewhere in the world. Lastly, the catholicity of the Christian dispensation, and the spirituality of its worship, seem incompatible with a return to the local narrowness and "beggarly elements" of the Jewish ritual and carnal ordinances, disannulled "because of the unprofitableness thereof" [FAIRBAIRN], (
Gal 4:3,
Gal 4:9;
Gal 5:1;
Heb 9:10;
Heb 10:18). "A temple with sacrifices now would be a denial of the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. He who sacrificed before confessed the Messiah. He who should sacrifice now would solemnly deny Him" [DOUGLAS]. These difficulties, however, may be all seeming, not real. Faith accepts God's Word as it is, waits for the event, sure that it will clear up all such difficulties. Perhaps, as some think, the beau ideal of a sacred commonwealth is given according to the then existing pattern of temple services, which would be the imagery most familiar to the prophet and his hearers at the time. The minute particularizing of details is in accordance with Ezekiel's style, even in describing purely ideal scenes. The old temple embodied in visible forms and rites spiritual truths affecting the people even when absent from it. So this ideal temple is made in the absence of the outward temple to serve by description the same purpose of symbolical instruction as the old literal temple did by forms and acts. As in the beginning God promised to be a "sanctuary" (
Ezek 11:16) to the captives at the Chebar, so now at the close is promised a complete restoration and realization of the theocratic worship and polity under Messiah in its noblest ideal (compare
Jer 31:38-
Jer 31:40). In
Rev 21:22 "no temple" is seen, as in the perfection of the new dispensation the accidents of place and form are no longer needed to realize to Christians what Ezekiel imparts to Jewish minds by the imagery familiar to them. In Ezekiel's temple holiness stretches over the entire temple, so that in this there is no longer a distinction between the different parts, as in the old temple: parts left undeterminate in the latter obtain now a divine sanction, so that all arbitrariness is excluded. So that it is be a perfect manifestation of the love of God to His covenant-people (Eze. 40:1-43:12); and from it, as from a new center of religious life, there gushes forth the fulness of blessings to them, and so to all people (Eze. 47:1-23) [FAIRBAIRN and HAVERNICK]. The temple built at the return from Babylon can only very partially have realized the model here given. The law is seemingly opposed to the gospel (
Matt 5:21-
Matt 5:22,
Matt 5:27-
Matt 5:28,
Matt 5:33-
Matt 5:34). It is not really so (compare
Matt 5:17-
Matt 5:18;
Rom 3:31;
Gal 3:21-
Gal 3:22). It is true Christ's sacrifice superseded the law sacrifices (
Heb 10:12-
Heb 10:18). Israel's province may hereafter be to show the essential identity, even in the minute details of the temple sacrifices, between the law and gospel (
Rom 10:8). The ideal of the theocratic temple will then first be realized.
