Page 206 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

20o NOTES ON EZEKIEL.

nations, and they shall know that I am Jehovah.”
(Ver. 17—23.)
It is the notion of not a few authors that Gog
must be the great western antagonist of the Jews as in
Daniel, &c. But this is to mistake the scope of our
prophet who never enters on the system of the four
imperial powers that were to tread down Jerusalem till
the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Even Nebuchad­
nezzar is viewed as Jehovah’s servant for accomplishing
His work : as head of the image he does not appear.
Gog belongs to another character of enemy and perishes
afterwards when, blinded by the lust of territorial
aggrandisement, he sees not that he is assailing Je­
hovah in seeking to plunder and destroy Israel. Isaiah
speaks of him in chapter xxxiii. as the rest do in more
general terms. Here attention is drawn to the long­
standing predictions- of this final effort. (Yer. 17.)
But after all God alone governs, whatever the pride
or greed or will of Gog : Jehovah brought him against
Israel for his own destruction. Yet when he does come,
“ mv fury,” says the Lord Jehovah, “ shall come up in
my face” (literally, nose). No more fears for the land
of Israel, no need of fresh blows on the Gentiles, at
least till the muster of the nations a thousand years
afterwards to which this invasion lends its name, the
one at the beginning, the other at the end, of Messiah’s
reign.
That this is none other than the last destruction
of Israel’s foes before the millennium should be plain
enough from the words that follow, not to speak of the
chapter after this, and all the rest of the prophecy. To
take the words as merely symbols of political revolu­