1And you, man, prophesy concerning Gog and say, “Thus said the Master, the LORD: Here I am against you, Gog, supreme prince of Meshech and Tubal. 2I will lead you and take you along and bring you up from the far reaches of the north and bring you to the mountains of Israel. 3And I will strike your bow from your left hand and will make your arrows drop from your right hand. 4On the mountains of Israel you shall fall, and all your divisions and the people that are with you. I will make you food for carrion birds, every winged thing, and for beasts of the field. 5On the surface of the field you shall fall, for I have spoken, said the Master, the LORD. 6And I will send fire against Magog and against those who dwell secure in the coastlands, and they shall know that I am the LORD. 7And My holy name I will make known in the midst of My people Israel, and I will no longer let My holy name be profaned, and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel. 8Look, it has come and now it is, said the Master, the LORD, it is the day of which I spoke. 9And the dwellers of Israel’s towns shall go out and light fires with the weapons, the bucklers and shields, with the bows and with the arrows and with the clubs and with the spears, and they shall light fires with them for seven years. 10And they shall not carry off wood from the field nor cut down trees from the forests, for with weapons they shall light fires. And they shall plunder their plunderers and loot their looters, said the Master, the LORD. 11And it shall happen on that day that I will give Gog a burial place there in Israel, in the Valley of Those Who Pass Through, east of the sea, and it blocks those who pass through. And they shall bury Gog there with all his throng and call it the Valley of the Throng of Gog. 12And the house of Israel shall bury them so as to cleanse the land, for seven months. 13And all the people of the land shall do the burying, and the day I am granted glory shall be a famous thing for them, said the Master, the LORD. 14And perpetually appointed men shall separate those who pass through the land, burying those who pass through, the ones left on the surface of the land, to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they shall probe it. 15And those who pass through the land shall pass through, and should someone see a human bone, he shall build by it a marker till the buriers bury it in the Valley of the Throng of Gog. 16And the name of the town, too, is Throng. And they shall cleanse the land. 17And you, man, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Say to the birds, every winged thing, and to all the beasts of the field—Gather and come, assemble from all around for My sacrificial feast that I am about to sacrifice for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel. And you shall eat flesh and drink blood. 18The flesh of warriors you shall eat, and the blood of princes of the earth you shall drink, rams, lambs, and he-goats, bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. 19And you shall eat suet to satiety and drink blood to drunkenness, from My sacrificial feast that I have prepared for you. 20And you shall be sated at My table with horse and chariot, warrior and every man of war, said the Master, the LORD. 21And I will set out My glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see My judgment that I have done and My hand that I set against them. 22And all the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day onward. 23And the nations shall know that for their crime the house of Israel went into exile, because they betrayed Me and I hid My face from them and gave them into the hand of their foes, and they all fell by the sword. 24According to their defilement and according to their trespasses I dealt with them and hid My face from them. 25Therefore, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Now will I restore the fortunes of Jacob and show mercy to the house of Israel and be zealous for My holy name. 26And they shall forget their disgrace and all their betrayal that they committed against Me when they dwell secure upon their soil with none to make them tremble, 27when I lead them back from the peoples and gather them from the lands of their enemies. And I will be hallowed through them before the eyes of many nations. 28And they shall know that I am the LORD when having exiled them among the nations I gather them in upon their soil and do not leave any of them there anymore. 29And I will not hide My face from them anymore, as I have poured out My spirit upon the house of Israel,” said the Master, the LORD.
CHAPTER 39 NOTES
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2. I will lead you and take you along. This whole verse repeats the scenario of the previous chapter. However, the verb translated as “take you along” is unique to this text, so its meaning must be inferred from the context and from a possible Semitic cognate. The salient difference in this second account of Gog’s expedition to the land of Israel is that there is a much more detailed focus on his devastating defeat.
6. I will send fire against Magog. In this version, not only will Gog’s vast invading army be devastated on the mountains of Israel but also a second prong of divine destruction will be directed toward Gog’s distant homeland and toward its allies or colonies (“the coastlands”). It is worth noting that this entire vision of Israel’s triumph over its enemies is quite different from anything in the other Prophets. The characteristic Prophetic vision is of Israel restored to its land and dwelling in peace and prosperity after the bitter experience of defeat and exile. Only Ezekiel imagines that the people again ensconced in its land and living in tranquillity will be assaulted by a fearsome invading power which, however, will be utterly destroyed. Perhaps Ezekiel, himself an exile who had witnessed the dominant force of the Babylonian empire, and who also had in mind the earlier dominance of the Assyrians, could not easily conceive a simple peaceful national restoration. History was felt as a continuing cycle of violent imperial aggressions. In this prophetic version, an ultimate—virtually mythological—aggressor is drawn to the land of Israel where God will bring about his total destruction, at last making Israel genuinely secure. Through this scenario, all the nations of the earth finally “shall know that I am the LORD.”
9. they shall light fires with them for seven years. What is intended here is an extravagant hyperbole: the huge mass of arms left by the extinct army of Gog, mostly made of combustible materials (leather shields stretched on wooden frames, spears with wooden shafts, bows and arrows and clubs) is sufficient to provide firewood for seven years, obviating the need to bring wood from the forests.
11. the Valley of Those Who Pass Through. The meaning of the name is a little ambiguous. It would seem to refer to the searchers for corpses mentioned in verse 14 who pass through the land looking for dead enemy soldiers. But in verse 14 the same word is also attached to the invaders.
it blocks those who pass through. Perhaps the blockage is because of the vast quantity of corpses piled up in the valley.
12. so as to cleanse the land. Corpses are a source of ritual contamination.
14. perpetually appointed men. “Appointed” is merely implied.
At the end of seven months they shall probe it. That is, they shall check to make sure no corpses have been left unburied.
16. And the name of the town, too, is Throng. Evidently, there was a town in proximity to the valley.
17. sacrificial feast. This is a macabre idea—that the corpses to be consumed by scavengers and carrion birds are a grand sacrificial feast prepared for them by God. As the preceding reference to a discovered bone indicates, the bones picked clean by the scavengers would then still need to be buried.
18. rams, lambs, and he-goats. Since there would not be large flocks at hand, all these are metaphors for the sumptuous feast of corpses that the scavengers will enjoy.
20. horse and chariot. The chariot is obviously not edible but it goes along with “horse” as part of a fixed pair.
23. And the nations shall know that for their crime the house of Israel went into exile. This is an essential theological point for Ezekiel: Israel went into exile because of neither the sheer military power of its enemies nor any weakness in its God, but as a punishment—now come to an end—for betraying its God.
they all fell by the sword. As is often the case, Ezekiel’s language is not entirely precise. By no means all of the people were killed by the Babylonians: some stayed in Judah while many others were exiled rather than killed.
28. and do not leave any of them there. Ezekiel’s vision of a total return of the exiles to Zion was not fulfilled, as many of them chose to stay in Babylonia. From this point onward, the Jews would remain in part a diasporic people.