Ezekiel 38

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, set your face against Gog and the land of Magog, the prince of the head (or Ros) of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy concerning him, and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince of the head (or Ros) of Meshech and Tubal, and I will turn you about, and I will put a bridle in your jaws, and I will lead out (or I will gather) both you and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with breastplates, a great multitude seizing spear and shield and sword (or bucklers and helmets and swords). Persians and Ethiopians and Libyans with them, all with shields and helmets; Gomer and all its troops, the house of Togarmah, the sides of the north (or from the farthest parts of the north) and all its strength, and many peoples (or nations) with you. Prepare and equip yourself and all your multitude that is heaped together to you, and be for them a command (or and you shall be to me for a guard). After many days you will be visited; in the last of the years you will come to the land which has turned back (or been perverted) from the sword and has been gathered out of many peoples to the mountain (or land) of Israel, which had been continually deserted: this one has been led out from the peoples, and all of them will dwell confidently. And going up you will come like a storm and like a cloud, to cover the land, you and all your troops and many peoples (or nations) with you. Thus says the Lord God: On that day words will go up according to your heart, and you will think a most wicked thought, and you will say: I will go up to the land (or upon the land) without a wall (or cast off), I will come to those who are at rest and dwell securely (or in peace); all of them dwell without a wall, they have no bars and gates; to seize spoils and fall upon plunder, and to lay your hand upon those who had been deserted and were afterwards restored, and upon the people which has been gathered out of the nations, which has begun to possess and to be the inhabitant of the navel of the earth. Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish (or the Carthaginians) and all its lions (or villages) will say to you: Is it to take spoils that you come? Behold, to seize plunder you have gathered your multitude, to carry off silver and gold, to take away household goods and property, and to seize boundless booty. Therefore prophesy, son of man, and you shall say to Gog: Thus says the Lord God: Will you not, on that day when the people Israel dwells confidently (or in peace), know (or rise up)? And you will come from your place from the sides (or from the farthest parts) of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riders of horses, a great company and a mighty army. And you will go up against my people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. In the last days you will be (or it will be), and I will bring you upon my land, so that all the nations may know me, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes, O Gog. Thus says the Lord God: You then are he of whom I spoke in ancient days, by the hand of my servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days and times (or years), that I would bring you upon them. And it shall be on that day, on the day of the coming of Gog upon the land of Israel, says the Lord God, that my indignation will go up in my fury. And in my zeal, in the fire of my wrath I have spoken, that on that day there shall be a great commotion upon the land of Israel, and the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field (or of the plain), and every creeping thing that moves upon the ground, and all the men who are upon the face of the earth shall be moved before my face; and the mountains shall be overturned (or split) and the enclosure walls shall fall (or the valleys), and every wall shall collapse to the ground. And I will call together against him on all my mountains a sword (or every terror of the sword), says the Lord God; the sword of each one (or of each man) shall be directed against his brother. And I will judge him with pestilence (or death) and blood and violent rain and immense stones (or of hail); fire and sulphur I will rain upon him, and upon his army (or upon all who are with him), and upon the many peoples who are with him, and I will be magnified and sanctified and I will be known in the sight of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord. First the foundations of the history must be laid, and it must be known that this is the last word of the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel; for after it we cannot in any way find anything similar, except what is written in the twenty-fifth year of the exile of Jeconiah: The hand of the Lord came upon me, and brought me there, that is, into the land of Israel, when the building of the temple is described and the order of its ceremonies is related.

The eleventh book of the explanations on Ezekiel will contain, in its last part, the prophecy against Gog and Magog, and it will come as far as the beginning of the city set on the mountain, Jerusalem, and of the temple situated in it. If, with the Lord helping and expounding his own mysteries, I am able to bring it all the way to the end, I shall have to hesitate long and much whether I ought to set my hands to the spiritual temple or openly confess my ignorance, especially since, both among the Jews and among us, there is a great silence over its interpretation: some judge that it is to be built in time to come; others, with a good intention indeed but an unskilled one, know that the things said are spiritual, and yet do not know how those spiritual things themselves ought to be expounded. And in the meantime, so that the care of the present work may hold us, know also, O virgin of Christ Eustochium, that you must pray for us. In a most difficult prophecy I will briefly point out this: that a man of our own age, by no means undistinguished, writing to the emperor, said concerning this nation: This Gog is the Goth; by what reasoning everything that is written in it can be fitted to him is not mine to expound, but theirs who think so.

Next it must be observed that the face of the prophet is set, or made firm, against Gog the land, or of the land, of Magog; for there is need of firmness and of much consideration of the countenance, so that we may be able to know the things that are said, according to that apostolic saying: But we all, contemplating the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are re-formed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. Accordingly the Jews and our own Judaizers think that Gog is the Scythian nations, savage and innumerable, which stretch beyond the Caucasus mountain and the Maeotic marsh and near the Caspian Sea as far as India — and that these are to be stirred up by the devil after the reign of a thousand years —, and that they are to come into the land of Israel to fight against the saints, with many nations gathered together with them: first Meshech, whom Josephus interprets as the Cappadocians; then Tubal, whom the same man supposes to be the Iberians or Spaniards, and the Hebrews the Italians, having with them in their army Persians, Ethiopians and Libyans; also Gomer and Togarmah, whom they interpret as the Galatians and Phrygians; also the Sabaeans and Dedan and the Carthaginians, or Tarshish; and that this is what John too sets down in his Revelation: And when the thousand years are finished, Satan will be loosed from his prison, and he will go out to seduce the nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for war: whose number is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them; and the devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ages of ages; not understanding that the whole volume of John, which is headed with the title of Revelation, is mystical, and that we need revelation so that we may be able to say with the prophet: Unveil my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law. Others, however, abandoning the earthly sense and the Jewish and old-wives' fables, which are harmful and drag down into the depths those who acquiesce in them, climb up too far to the heights and invent much worse trifles, so that they describe the wars of the devil and of all his army in the heavenly Jerusalem, and under the ἐτυμολογίαις [etymologies] of the individual nations interpret the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Leaving all these things to the reader's judgment, we shall try not so much to condemn the views of others as to affirm the Church's explanation. 'Gog' is called in the Greek tongue δῶμα, in the Latin 'roof'; 'Magog', moreover, means 'from the roof' — so all pride, and the knowledge falsely so called which raises itself against the knowledge of the truth, is shown by these names —; these are the roofs of which Isaiah too speaks in the vision against the valley of Zion: What has happened to you now, that you all go up onto the empty roofs?; and by 'roof' we shall interpret the princes of the heretics, and by 'from the roof' those who have taken up their doctrines; and fittingly, after the many mystical prophecies in this volume, the last prophecy is against Gog and Magog — for if It is the time of judgment, according to Peter, that it should begin from the house of God, and according to this same Ezekiel, who says: And begin from my saints, and: The last enemy, death, is destroyed, in Isaiah too the first word is directed against Judea, in which is the confession of the Lord, and the last against the four-footed beasts which are in the desert; rightly here too the last word is directed against Gog and Magog, who assail the city of God, which the rush of the river makes glad, and which says in Isaiah: I am a strong city which is besieged, and of which it is written in the Gospel: A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden, and more fully in the psalm: Jerusalem, which is built as a city whose sharing of it is in the selfsame. Mountains are round about it, and the Lord is round about his people —. Moreover, as to the fact that in the army of Gog or Magog, who according to the Seventy, Symmachus and Theodotion is prince of Ros, Meshech and Tubal, Aquila translates the first nation, 'Ros', as 'head', and we too have followed him — so that the sense is: The prince of the head of Meshech and Tubal; and in truth neither in Genesis, nor in any other place of Scripture, nor even in Josephus, who in the first book of the Antiquities sets out the names of all the Hebrew nations, have we been able to find this nation, from which it is clear that 'Ros' signifies not 'a nation' but 'head'; this too must be briefly noted, that in Ezekiel Gog is said to be the prince of the land of Magog, whereas Revelation records that both Gog and Magog are nations which go out from the four corners of the earth; and that just as from Jacob, who was afterwards called Israel, the whole people of the Hebrews received the name Israel, and from Aram Syria, from Mesraim Egypt, whose names are written in Genesis, so too from the prince Gog all who are subject to him are called Magog —; 'Mosoch', however, means 'madness', and 'Thubal' 'whole' or 'all things': so the 'prince' and 'head of proud madness and of all evils' — according to what is written: The world is set in the evil one — are called 'Gog' and 'Magog' — nations which, hostile and adverse to the saints, go out from the corners of the earth, abandoning the straight line and the arrangement of the camps of God which is related in Numbers, and not knowing that testimony: Many will come from the east and the west and the north and the south, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, and in another place: I will say to the north: Bring; and to the south-west wind: Do not hinder, bring my sons from a distant land and my daughters from the end of the earth, all who are called by my name; but not such are the corners of the earth from which Gog and Magog go out: beside such corners the harlot stands in Proverbs, who hastens to deceive the foolish young men passing by through the streets, that is, through the broad and spacious way which leads to death: the scribes and Pharisees too pray at the corners of the streets so as to be seen by men, who have received their reward —.

What, then, is the threat against Gog? 'I will turn you about (or I will convert), and I will put a bridle in your jaws: first I will make you waver from your opinion and be converted, and I will put a bridle in your jaws — of which it is written: With bridle and bit bind fast the jaws of those who do not draw near to you —, so that the untamed horse, wanton and rushing headlong over precipices, may be subjected to the bridle of the Lord' — to whom the prophet says: You will mount upon your horses, and your riding is salvation, and to Job it is said through clouds and whirlwind: Did you surround the horse with strength? Such were the horses and horsemen whose multitude John saw in heaven —. So he says to Gog: I will lead out (or I will gather) you and all the army (or strength) of yours; he who is led out and gathered from dispersion is drawn back to salvation — according to what is promised in the law: If your dispersion be from the height of heaven to its height, from there I will gather you —.

Of his horses too, and horsemen clothed with breastplates — who imitate the armor of the Apostle and boast that they have the breastplates of righteousness — there is an excessive multitude, and all of them seize shield and sword against the Church, and they are most savage nations, hostile to Israel: Persians, Ethiopians and Libyans — whose wars against the people of God are related in the holy Scriptures —; Gomer too and the house of Togarmah, who come from the sides of the 'north' — which is a most cold wind and is called by the name 'dexter' [right-hand] —, and all the strength of Magog and all the peoples that are subject to him, will come with him to battle.

To him it is said by way of εἰρωνείαν [irony]: 'Prepare and equip yourself, and heap together to yourself all your multitude, which obeys your commands; but know that after many days you will be visited' — according to what is written: I will visit their iniquities with the rod and their sins with stripes —.

'In the last', he says, 'of the years you will come'; whence John too says: My little children, it is the last hour, and the people of the Gentiles is hired at the eleventh hour to work in the vineyard; to whose land — that is, the land of the meek and the land of the saints, which brings forth fruit a hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold — Gog comes to storm it, the land which has turned back, or turned away, from the sword — for it knows that it is written: Scatter, O Lord, the nations that desire wars —, and abides in peace, and has been gathered from many peoples and nations so that, having despised the error of the nations, it might come to the mountains of Israel, that is, the patriarchs and prophets, who were once continually deserted, without the law and the precepts of God, to which it is afterwards said: More are the children of the deserted one than of her who has a husband; these are the deserted and waterless places in which the devil could find no place, because they had been called to salvation, and afterwards, taking with him seven other demons more wicked than himself, he returned to his house, that is, to the nation of Israel. This, he says, has been led out from the peoples, land being understood, or: This one has been led out from the nations, so that the people of believers may be understood, which has dwelt in peace; and it trusts in the Lord.

And Gog, going up with all his army, will come like a storm and like a cloud, to cover the land of the believers — for which of the heretics, whose prince is the devil, does not come like a storm against the Church, and hasten to overwhelm and cover with the cloud of his words all the simple among the believers? —; whence it is said to him: 'As far as lies in you, you will cover all things, you and all your troops and many peoples with you'; and fittingly Gog, going up, has no willing rain, no early and late shower to gladden the parched fields, but storm and darkness, so as to confound all things with gloom and error.

Therefore the Lord God speaks these things to him: At that time, that is, in the last days, words will go up upon your heart, and you will think a most wicked thought — as Scripture says: If the spirit of one who has power should wish to go up upon you, do not abandon your place; but on the contrary God goes up into the heart of the holy man, of whom it is written: He has set ascents in his heart —; and Gog says: I will go up to the land without a wall (or cast forth) — that is, the land which is destitute of the help of God and not fortified by the argumentation of the dialecticians, I will come to those who are at rest, dwelling securely (or in peace) — for our king is peaceable, and his place is in peace —; all of them, he says, dwell without a wall, they have no bars and gates.

This the devil, the prince of the heretics, says: that the Church has no fortifications, nor the worldly wisdom which is foolishness with God, so that he may seize the spoils and fall upon the plunder of the Church, and lay his hand upon those who had been deserted when they did not have the knowledge of God and afterwards, restored through Christ, come to the Father — he says in the Gospel: Father, I have revealed your name to men —; and so that we may know that the people which had been deserted and afterwards restored signifies the Christian people, there follows: And upon the people which has been gathered out of the nations, which people has begun to possess the inheritance of Christ and to be the inhabitant of the navel of the earth — of which it is written: He has worked salvation in the midst of the earth. Truth, indeed, has sprung from the earth; which says in the Gospel: I am the way and the truth and the life —.

While he thinks and says these things and hastens to snatch the possession of the Church, the nations which had been converted from their former error to salvation: Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish — of Carthage or of the sea — who amid the waves of this world seek merchandise by good works, and all their villages or lions — or lions' whelps, as is contained in the Hebrew —, will say to him what follows — that the Seventy and Theodotion, however, put 'villages' in place of 'lions' whelps', which in Hebrew are called 'chaphir', is an evident error: for if you write it with the letter 'chi', it is called 'lion's whelp', but if with 'ce', which in Hebrew is called 'coph', it is called 'field' and 'village'; whence Capharnaum too is called 'most beautiful field' —. So Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish will say, and all the saints who are called lions' whelps, or at any rate the villages and dwellings of the believers: 'O Gog, is it for this that you come: to snatch the spoils of the Church? and is it for this that you have gathered a multitude: that the possession of Christ may become your inheritance? or do you think that you will possess the silver and gold of the Church — which is understood of eloquence and meaning —, so as to take away its household goods and all its property, and seize the boundless booty gathered by Christ the victor?'

'Therefore, O prophet Ezekiel, who in the type of Christ are called son of man, speak to Gog and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: When, the error of the whole world having been taken away, my people Israel, which discerns God with the mind, dwells in the Church confidently or in peace, then you will know, or rise up and come from your place' — and what the place of heretical depravity is, the following word shows: From the sides of the north, which tries to chill all the warmth of the believers —.

And many peoples will come with him, all riders of horses — of whom it is written: The horse and the rider he has cast into the sea —, a great company and a mighty army; with whom: 'You will go up', he says, 'against my people Israel like a cloud and darkness, to cover my land — of which it was spoken above —. In the last days you will be, in the time of the preaching of the Gospel, and I will bring you upon my land — For there must also be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest, and by the will of God the devil, the ἀνταγωνιστής [adversary], and all the dogmas of perversity have been left —, so that all the nations may know (and understand) me, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes, O Gog, that is, when through your punishments they have understood me as judge'.

And he makes an apostrophe to Gog himself: 'Are you not he of whom I spoke in ancient days, by the hands of my servants the prophets of Israel?': that is, of Moses — who says in the book of Numbers, at least according to the Seventy: A man shall come forth from his seed and shall rule over very many nations, and Gog his kingdom shall be lifted up, and his kingdom shall increase, but according to the Hebrew I found it written thus: His king shall be taken away because of Agag, and his kingdom shall be removed, because the kingdom of Israel was destroyed in Saul on account of Agag king of Amalek; and in another place: He will cleanse the land of his people —; Joel too describes the peoples to be gathered in the valley of 'Iosaphat', that is, 'of the judgment of God'; and Isaiah, and all the prophets, in whose hands and good works the word of the Lord comes about.

'When therefore you come upon the land of Israel, my indignation will go up in my fury against you. And in my zeal for my people, in the fire of my wrath I have spoken, which is to consume all the timbers of your vices: At that', he says, 'time there will be a great commotion upon the land of Israel': for at the instigation of the devil frequent persecution will arise against the Church, and when it has been lulled to rest and overcome by the protection of God, then the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field, and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth, and all the men who are upon the face of the earth, will be moved before his face; which is clearly shown of the inhabitants of the Church, of whom some like the fish of the sea, some like the birds of the sky, some like the beasts of the field and all the creeping things that move upon the earth, others as retaining the dignity of man, dwell upon the face of the earth — and that diversity of conduct is signified by various names the Apostle also writes to the Corinthians, since he says that after the resurrection some bodies are heavenly, others earthly, one the body of a fish, another of a bird, another of beasts, another of creeping things, and another of men, who have kept their original name; in the Acts of the Apostles too, that sheet which is shown three times to the apostle Peter by its four corners signifies the variety of believers which was also contained in the ark of the flood —.

Then, from the face of the Lord and from the sight of his majesty, the mountains which raised themselves against the knowledge of God will be overturned, and the hedges or valleys will fall, which either have sunk to the depths through lowness of understanding or at any rate promise some fortification so as to imitate the Church of God — of whose hedges it is said: Whoever breaks down a hedge, a serpent will bite him —, and every wall will collapse to the ground: for when the strength of the Church's word appears, all the fortifications of the heretics will collapse.

'And I will call together against him, that is, against Gog, the prince of the heretics, a sword on all my mountains, so that the princes of his army may be destroyed by the sword for the Lord'; then heresy will fight against heresy, and their fighting among themselves is our victory.

And I will judge, he says, him with death (or pestilence) and blood and violent rain and immense stones (or of hail): and Gog is judged by his own death, and by the blood which he shed, and by violent rain, the words of a learned and perfect man, and by immense stones which overwhelm him with the testimonies of the Scriptures, or of hail, which make his heat grow cold — All, indeed, who commit adultery, their hearts are like an oven —. Fire, he says, and sulphur I will rain upon him, by which the punishment of eternal judgment is shown; and not only upon him who was the author of perversity, but also upon all his army and multitude and upon the many peoples who are with him — for the heretics have many companions, or rather the devil, their prince, is surrounded by an infinite multitude —.

And when all error has been taken away and the princes of the heretics have been punished and destroyed, the Lord is magnified, and sanctified in the believers, and becomes known in the eyes of the many nations which have believed in his faith, and both from their own blessedness and from the punishments of the adversaries they will know and recognize that he himself is the Lord. These things we have interpreted as we were able, obeying that precept: You shall turn aside neither to the right nor to the left, but: You shall walk on the royal road; but if anyone finds fault with what is ours, let him either bring forward better things for us to follow, or, if he wishes to say nothing, let him leave perfect knowledge to God, provided only that he knows that it is by no means our powers, but our intention, that is to be judged.