Hordes Prepare to Attack God’s Restored People (38:1-9) – While the people and places are historical names, their function in the narrative is more important than their identity. “Gog” is likely the king of Lydia in west Asia Minor in the early seventh century B.C., known to the Greeks as Gyges and the Assyrians as Gugu. “Magog” is a place name here but also appears as a personal name in the Bible (Gen 10:2; 1 Chr 1:5). Its location is unknown, but if associated with Gog, it would be Lydia-Cappadocia. Some have suggested these names are ciphers of cryptography relating to Eldad and Medad of Numbers 11:26. Some think it is a Hebrew way of adapting the Akkadian “the land of Gugi.” Historian Josephus identi ed Magog with the Scythians (Antiquities, 1.123). Along with Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal (see Ezek 27:13, 32:26), we get a picture of an alliance of Anatolian powers against against Israel listed from West to East. Collectively, the peoples of the distant north were shrouded in mystery. Reports of these people spoke of wild people, brutal and barbaric, perfect symbols of the archetypal enemy rising against God and His people. That ts with the sole mention of these people in the NT. When the imminent return of Jesus is bringing the “thousand years” of the present reign of Christians with Christ toward its glorious conclusion, Satan, who had been bound at Christ’s rst advent (Rev 20:2; see also Mt 12:29; Mk 3:27), will be given enough freedom “to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle” against God’s saints (Rev 20:8-9). But God shall rain down re and sulfur upon these enemies (Ezek 38:22; Rev 20:9), and at the return of Christ they, along with the devil who misled them, shall be cast into the lake of re for eternity (Rev 20:10, 15). In the NT too, then, rather than speci c human, national, or political gures, “Gog and Magog” primarily represent the demonic powers and principalities that wage war against God’s redeemed (Eph 6:12) but that have been defeated by Christ (Eph 4:8; Col 2:15), whose victory over them will be consummated at his second coming. Yahweh will use God for His purposes, much like Pharaoh was depicted as a crocodile in the Nile (29:4). Gog’s pretentious and exhaustive preparations to attack and…