The following combines the Bible’s own words in Ezekiel 38 and 39 with commentary supplied almost word-for-word from John Trapp, Adam Clarke, Robert Jamieson, Andrew Robert Fausset, and David Brown.

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Preface: After Israel’s captivity, they will be restored to God and dwell securely in the land.  They will have the Spirit poured out on them (Ez. 38:7; 39:29).  Then…

  • Gog,
    • The name “Gog” is the root of Magog.  Therefore, it is a symbolic name that he will come from and be over Magog; not a literal name.
    • Ver. 2. Set thy face against Gog,] i.e., Against those last enemies of the Church, before Shiloh come; the kings of the lesser Asia and Syria before his first coming (see the books of Maccabees), the Antichrist before his second coming. See Revelation 20:8. (John Trapp)
  • of the land of Magog, -Syria, specifically Hierapolis, chief city of Syria (see Pliny)
  • the prince of Rosh -Russia?, Meshech -Cappadocia, and Tubal -Spain
  • God will lead you on Antiochus was led (to his ruin) to leave Egypt for an expedition against Palestine, so shall the last great enemy of God be.
  • Their great army:
    • horses, 
    • splendidly clothed horsemen
    • had bucklers
    • had shields
    • all of them handled swords
  • Persia tributary to Antiochus, see 1 Maccabees 3:31, Ethiopia, Libya joined them That these were auxiliaries of Antiochus is evident from Daniel 11:43 (see also Appian)
    • all with shield
    • all with helmet
  • All the troops from Gomer Celtic Cimmerians of Crim-Tartary and the house of Togarmah joined Armenians of the Caucasus, south of Iberia.
    • Togarmah is from the far north 
  • In the latter years you will begin your battle Antiochus struck Jews 300-400 years later…
  • You will come into Israel
    • from your place out of the far north king of Syria is king of North (Dan. 11:6),
    • all of your people riding on horses
      • many others with you
    • to a people gathered on mountains
      • brought out of captivity
      • dwelling safely/ unwalled villages/ peaceful people
      • who have acquired livestock and goods
    • you will ascend upon Israel
    • On that day, you will make an evil plan in your mind Antiochus purposed to invade and destroy Egypt, as well as Judea; see Daniel 11:31, Daniel 11:32, Daniel 11:36:
      • “I will go against Israel,
      • “to take plunder and booty When Antiochus took Jerusalem he gave the pillage of it to his soldiers, and spoiled the temple of its riches, which were immense. See Josephus War, B. 1. C. 1.
    • Sheba, Dedan, Tarshish merchants, and others will ask you if you came to rob Israel The Arabians, anciently great plunderers; and Tarshish, the inhabitants of the famous isle of Tartessus, the most noted merchants of the time.

These mercantile peoples, though not taking an active part against the cause of God, are well pleased to see others do it. Worldliness makes them ready to deal in the ill-gotten spoil of the invaders of God‘s people. Gain is before godliness with them (1 Maccabees 3:41).

  • On that day, there will be a great earthquake in Israel an earthquake: physical agitations after accompanying social and moral revolutions. Foretold also in Joel 3:16; (compare Haggai 2:6, Haggai 2:7; Matthew 24:7, Matthew 24:29; Revelation 16:18).
    • men and animals will shake at My presence And wriggle into their holes, as worms do in time of thunder.
    • mountains will be thrown down Hyperbolical threats, to set forth the dreadfulness of God’s fierce wrath, which burns as low as hell itself.
    • steep places will fall  literally, “stairs” (Song of Solomon 2:14); steep terraces for vines on the sides of hills, to prevent the earth being washed down by the rains.
    • every wall will fall
  • God will defeat Gog
    • God will call for a sword against Gog throughout Israel Against Antiochus by the Maccabees
    • God will bring sickness Antiochus died by “pestilence” (2 Maccabees 9:5) and bloodshed on Gog; God will bring flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone The imagery is taken from the destruction of Sodom and the plagues of Egypt (compare Psalm 11:6) As once at the general deluge, destruction of Sodom, discomfiture of the kings of Canaan in Joshua’s days. [Joshua 10:11]  
    • God will knock the bow out of his left hand, and the arrows out of your right hand he Persians whom Antiochus had in his army, Ezekiel 38:5, were famous as archers, and they may be intended here. The bow is held by the left hand; the arrow is pulled and discharged by the right.

in which the Scythians were most expert.

  • You and your troops will fall in Israel Thither thou shalt come indeed, as Antiochus did into the temple, antichrist into the Church of God, [2 Thessalonians 2:4] but there thou shalt take thy end…  This defeat of Gog is to be in Israel: and it was there according to this prophecy, that the immense army of Antiochus was so completely defeated.
    • God will not allow His name to be polluted any more See on 1 Maccabees 1:11, etc., how Antiochus had profaned the temple, insulted Jehovah and his worship, etc. God permitted that as a scourge to his disobedient people; but now the scourger shall be scourged, and he shall pollute the sanctuary no more…by their sins bringing down judgments which made the heathen think that I was unable or unwilling to save My people.
    • Birds and beasts will devour your corpses
    • Israelites will set fire and burn the weapons The Israelites shall make bonfires and fuel of the weapons, tents, etc., which the defeated Syrians shall leave behind them, as expressive of the joy which they shall feel for the destruction of their enemies; and to keep up, in their culinary consumption, the memory of this great event.
      • shields and bucklers; bows and arrows; javelins and spears
      • they will make fires with them for seven years The burning of the foe‘s weapons implies that nothing belonging to them should be left to pollute the land. The seven years (seven being the sacred number) spent on this work, implies the completeness of the cleansing, and the people‘s zeal for purity. How different from the ancient Israelites, who left not merely the arms, but the heathen themselves, to remain among them [Fairbairn], (Judges 1:27, Judges 1:28;Judges 2:2, Judges 2:3; Psalm 106:34-36). The desolation by Antiochus began in the one hundred and forty-first year of the Seleucidae. From this date to 148, a period of six years and four months (“2300 days,” Daniel 8:14), when the temple-worship was restored (1 Maccabees 4:52), God vouchsafed many triumphs to His people;from this time to the death of Antiochus, early in 149, a period of seven months, the Jews had rest from Antiochus, and purified their land, and on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month celebrated the Encaenia, or feast of dedication (John 10:22) and purification of the temple. The whole period, in round numbers, was seven years. Mattathias was the patriotic Jewish leader, and his third son, Judas, the military commander under whom the Syrian generals were defeated. He retook Jerusalem and purified the temple. Simon and Jonathan, his brothers, succeeded him: the independence of the Jews was secured, and the crown vested in the Asmonean family, in which it continued till Herod the Great…

These may be figurative expressions, after the manner of the Asiatics, whose language abounds with such descriptions. They occur every where in the prophets. As to the number seven it is only a certain for an indeterminate number. But as the slaughter was great, and the bows, arrows, quivers, shields, bucklers, handstaves, and spears were in vast multitudes, it must have taken a long time to gather them up in the different parts of the fields of battle, and the roads in which the Syrians had retreated, throwing away their arms as they proceeded; so there might have been a long time employed in collecting and burning them. And as all seem to have been doomed to the fire, there might have been some found at different intervals and burned, during the seven years here mentioned. 

  • they won’t need other wood to make fire Mariana, in his History of Spain, lib. xi., c. 24, says, that after the Spaniards had given that signal overthrow to the Saracens, a.d. 1212 they found such a vast quantity of lances, javelins, and such like, that they served them for four years for fuel. And probably these instruments obtained by the Israelites were used in general for culinary firewood, and might literally have served them for seven years; so that during that time they should take no wood out of the fields, nor out of the forests for the purpose of fuel,
  • They will be buried in the valley of those who pass by east of the sea Dead Sea (also called the “Sea of Sodom”)…The valley near this lake or sea is called the Valley of the Passengers, because it was a great road by which the merchants and traders from Syria and other eastern countries went into Egypt…Some read, “There shall they bury Gog, that is, all his multitude.” Not Gog, or Antiochus himself, for he was not in this battle; but his generals, captains, and soldiers, by whom he was represented…Gog found only a grave where he had expected the spoils of conquest.
    • they will call The Valley of the Multitude of Gog  As to Hamon-gog, we know no valley of this name but here. But we may understand the words thus: the place where this great slaughter was, and where the multitudes of the slain were buried, might be better called Hamon-gog, the valley of the multitude of God, than the valley of passengers; for so great was the carnage there, that the way of the passengers shall be stopped by it. 
    • Israelites will bury them for seven months It shall require a long time to bury the dead. This is another figurative expression; which, however, may admit of a good deal of literal meaning. Many of the Syrian soldiers had secreted themselves in different places during the pursuit after the battle, where they died of their wounds, of hunger, and of fatigue; so that they were not all found and buried till seven months after the defeat of the Syrian army. This slow process of burying is distinctly related in the three following verses, and extended even to a bone, Ezekiel 39:15; which, when it was found by a passenger, the place was marked, that the buriers might see and inter it. Seven months was little time enough for all this work; and in that country putrescency does not easily take place: the scorching winds serving to desiccate the flesh, and preserve it from decomposition.
      • all the people in the land will be burying
        • they will gain renown for it A monument or trophy of their triumph. When the Switzers, A.D. 1443, had vanquished the Thuricenses in battle, they banqueted in the place where they won the victory, using the dead bodies of their adversaries instead of stools and tables.
      • at the end of 7 months, they will mark unburied bones
        • then they will bury those bones Denoting the minute care to put away every relic of heathen pollution from the Holy Land.
  • The name of the city will also be Hamonah A city in the neighborhood was to receive the name Hamonah, “multitude,” to commemorate the overthrow of the multitudes of the foe [Henderson]. The multitude of the slain shall give a name to the city of Jerusalem after the land shall have been cleansed [Grotius]. Jerusalem shall be famed as the conqueror of multitudes.
  • God will send fire on Magog, the fire of judgment and wrath…On Syria. I will destroy the Syrian troops.
    • Those who live in security in the coastlands The auxiliary troops that came to Antiochus from the borders of the Euxine Sea. – Martin.
  • God spoke of you in former days by various prophets of Israel who prophesied for years
  • All the nations shall see God’s judgment and hand Antiochus did so, and Maximinus the emperor, and other tyrants, when seized upon by such judgments of God as they could neither avoid nor abide.
    • Gentiles will know that Israel’s captivity came from unfaithfulness Both Israel and the heathen shall know that it was for their iniquity that I gave them into the hands of their enemies: and now I will redeem them from those hands in such a way as to prove that I am a merciful God, as well as a just God.
  • Israel will know that God is God from that day forward Their experience shall breed confidence.