The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 2 — Section 276

Ver. 1.-The word of the Lord came unto oomo into contact with these Soythie.n tribes, me. Although this oracle is unaccompanied either e.s part of Nobuchadnezze.r's e.rm101 by any note of time, it wa.s obviously delivered by a journey on his part into the rog1on1 before the twenty-fifth year of the Captivity north of Ararat" ('Ezekiel: an Ideal Bio- (eh. xl. 1), and most likely in immediate graphy,' Exposit-Or, vol. viii. p. 291, second ~accession to the preceding prophecy, with series). Yet, could both or these hypotheses which e.lso it has a close relation in respect be established, it would not follow that of purport, being designed to show that Ezekiel was thinking merely, as Knobel against restored and united Israel, i.e. an~ Gesenius suppose, of a future struggle against the Church of God of the future, the which Israel should have to me.in lain against strongest combinations of hostile force would these gentea Scythicas immanes et innumer• not prevail, but would fall back defeated abileil, as Jerome in his day described them. and self-destroyed. In addition to being named from his land, Ver. 2.-Set thy faoe against (or, tcward) Gog is further distinguished by the peoples God. Although occurring in 1 Chron. v. 4 ever whom he rnles, Ezekiel styling him as the name ofa Reubenite, Gog was probably the ohief prinoe of llleaheoh and Tube.l- a title formed by Ezekiel himself from the a translation adhered to by Hengstenberg, word Magog, the syllable ma being treated Ewe.Id, and Smend; or, according to the as equivalent to " land." A similar freedom LXX., which most expositors and the appears to have been exercised by the author Revised Version follow, the prince of Rosh, of the Apocalypse, who out of Magog, here Meshech, and Tubal. The former rendering a territorial designation, mak81! a military is obtained by interpreting ~K, tt'\!') after power co-ordinate with Gog (Rev. xx. 8). the analogy of ;i.lKi JO:.,J, "chief priest," That Gog was not an actual person-though or "minister," in 1 Chron. xxvii. 5 ; and is the name reminds one of that of the Lydian supported hy a similar use of the word rosh king Gyges, as it appears on the monuments, on coins under the government of the Gu-gu, Gu-ug-gu, and of that of one Sa-gi, Persian satre.ps; yet the second rendering or Sa-agi, the ruler of another Ee.stern terri- is not devoid of considerations that may be tory not yet identified (see Schrader, • Die urged in its favour. Besides being gram- Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,' matically possible, it yielde a sense which p. 427 ; and comp. ' Records of the Past,' is not improbable. Byzantine and Are.binn first series, vol ix. 46)-but an ideal writers of the tenth century were acquainted character, must be held e.s proved by the with a people called ol 'P&r, who were composite structure of his army, which was Scythie.n mountaineers, dwelling north of drawn from the four comers of the globe, as the Taurus, on the shores of the Black Sea well as by the highly imaginative texture and on the banks of the Volga. The Knre.n of the whole prophecy, which, e.s Hengsten- speaks of A. land of Ras not far from the berg properly remarks, has a thoroughly Araxes. Whether either of these can be "utopian [perhaps better, 'ideal'] character," connected with present-day Russians, as showing that it moves " in the region of Gesenius suggests-an hypothesis which holy fancy." The words, the land of Magog, Hengstenberg protests dee.ls hardly with the are not, with Havernick, Ewe.Id, and Smend, poor Russians-must be left undecided. to be interpreted as the local or geographical So must the question whether the people terminus of the prediction, as if the word inquired after can be identified, as Delitzsch of God had said, " Set thy face toward Gog, suggests, with the inhabitants of the land of toward the land of Magog; " but, with the Rasch (mat Ra-a-si) of the Inscriptions, majority of expositors, as a territorial desig- which was situated on the confines of Elam nation signifying that Gog was in or of the on the Tigris (see Schrader, ' Die Keilin- lo.nd of Magog, which is here marked with schriften und das Alte Testnment,' p. 427: the article, probably to identify it with the and comp. ' Records of the Pa8t,' vol. ix. well-known Magog mentioned in Gen, x. 2, p. 84, II. 122, 124). At the same time, along with Tuba! and Mcsech e.s among the J erome's objection will scarcely hold good descendants of Japheth. From the circum- against understanding Rosh as the nr1me ol stance that in the table of nations Magog a people, viz. that the Bible elsewhere has stands between Gomer (the Cimmcrians) and no knowledge of any such people, sinco, as Ma<lai (the Medians), and that Gomer Hivemick observes, "one cannot know appears in Gog's army, it has been not un- beforehand whether to Ezckiol, in his then reru-.011ably concluded that to 1!:zekiel Magog place of abode, the knowledge of such & represented a fierce Northcm tribe, most people was not lilcely sooner to como thr1n likely, as Josephus (' Ant.,' i 6. 1) asserts, to any Old Testament writer," and it is the Scythians, whose territories lay upon certnin that the Book of Ezekiel is not the borders of the see. of Azov and in the wanling in nomes that occur only once, as Caucasus. Plumptre even thinks that, e.g. Chilmncl (eh. xxvii. 23) and Ohub (eh. "placed OJI Ezekiel was, he may well have xxx. 5). Hitzig points out that in Gen. x .• oa. xxxvm. 1-23.J THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. 285