Is "Gog of Magog" Satan?

by leaving_quietly 14 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  jgnat

  For Blondie:

  
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  Leolaia

  There was no concept of Satan as a supernatural antagonist at the time Ezekiel wrote. This was a later post-exilic development, and then still later references to Satan were read back into the OT. The most celebrated example of this is reinterpretation of the serpent in the Eden narrative (an animal specially created by Yahweh who is ancestor of later serpents, see 2:19-20, 3:1, 14-15) as the Devil or Satan (alluded to in Wisdom 2:24, John 8:44, 1 John 3:12, Revelation 12:9, although the latter also draws on the Leviathan myth). It was also in subsequent reinterpretation that the eschatological opponent in the Gog narrative was identified with the Devil, just as the eschatological opponent in Daniel (originally a reference to Antiochus IV Epiphanes) was also identified with the Devil. Unfulfilled prophecies from recognized canonical authorities were not dismissed as false but merely deferred to the future indefinitely; virtually the whole stock of unfulfilled prophecies from the exilic period became a resource for later Christian ideas about salvation, christology, the Church, and a future judgment and renewal of the world. The book of Revelation takes the eschatological opponent in Daniel to be either Satan or the "Beast" (the emperor of Rome, specifically, Nero redivivus) who derives his power from the Devil. Revelation also utilizes the Gog narrative from Ezekiel to construct a scenario of a final confrontation between God's people and evil (ch. 20). Although it does not specifically identify Gog with Satan, it does depict "Gog and Magog" as being led by Satan (just as Gog was the leader in the original Ezekielian prophecy). The Society continues this trajectory of biblical interpretation, taking Gog specifically to have reference to the Devil. It is also noteworthy that the LXX inserts a reference to Gog as the leader of the locust army in Amos 7:1 via a misreading of gizzê "mowings" as Gog; the author of Revelation also draws on this prophecy in ch. 9 and portrays the locust army as led by Abaddon a.k.a. Apollyon, the "angel of the abyss" (v. 11).

  The question still remains: How did Ezekiel the prophet construe Gog of Magog? As the OP points out, he describes Gog quite clearly as a human being and his hordes as pagan nations. Ezekiel explicitly presents his prophecy as an updating of earlier prophecies by others about a foe from the north: " This is what the Yahweh Sabaoth says: You are the one I spoke of in former days by my servants the prophets of Israel. At that time they prophesied for years that I would bring you against them" (Ezekiel 38:17). Jeremiah originally prophesied during the reign of Josiah (prior to the collapse of Assyria) about an imminent threat to Judea from the north: "The North is where disaster is boiling over for all who live in this land, since I am now going to summon all the kingdoms of the North, it is Yahweh who speaks; they are going to come and each will set his throne in front of the gates of Jerusalem....I am bringing disaster from the North, an immense calamity. The lion is up from his thicket, the destroyer of nations is on his way, he has come from his home to reduce your land to a desert.....Save yourselves, men of Benjamin, from the heart of Jerusalem, sound the trumpet in Tekoa, set up a standard on Beth-hacherem, for disaster threatens from the North, an immense calamity....Now a people is coming from the land of the North, from the far ends of the earth a mighty nation stirs; they are armed with bow and spear, they are cruel and pitiless, their noise is like the roaring sea, they are riding horses, each man equipped for war" (1:14-15, 4:6-7, 6:1, 22-23). The reference here is to the "barbarian" peoples of the north that posed a threat to Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Levant, including the Scythians ("Ashkenaz" in the OT), Urartians ("Ararat" in the OT), and Cimmerians (Gomer in the OT). In the war between Assyria and Babylon and Media, which was being waged at the time Jeremiah began his ministry, the Medes enlisted Umman-manda (the Assyrian name for Medes, Scythians, and Cimmerians) to attack Assyrian cities. The fall of Ninevah established Babylon and Media as the two dominant nations in the region, and the expanding Median empire incorporated the Scythians as well as Lydia (the empire ruling Asia Minor) into their territory. It was only after Babylon replaced Assyria in controlling the Levant that Jeremiah shifted his attention from the foe of the north to Babylon. In fact, the "seventy years" prophecy in ch. 25 originally concerned the foe from the north; the older edition is preserved in the LXX (possibly reflecting an Egyptian vorlage of Jeremiah stemming from Jeremiah's exilic ministry in Egypt) while the MT displays redactions that inserted specific references to Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon (reflecting modifications to the text in the Babylonian golah):

  Jeremiah 25:9-12 LXX: "Behold I am sending for and I will take a clan from the North, and I will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all nations around it, and I will utterly devastate them and render them into an annihilation and into a hissing and into an everlasting disgrace....And the whole land shall become an annihilation, and they shall be slaves amongst the nations for seventy years. And when seventy years are completed, I will punish that nation, and I will make them an everlasting waste".

  Jeremiah 25:9-12 MT: " Behold, I will send and take all the clans of the North, and I will send Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations around it; and I will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations. ...And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it desolate forever".

  The oracles on the destruction of Babylon in ch. 50-51 foresaw the Medes and the Umman-manda attacking their former ally: "A nation from the North will attack her and lay waste her land. No one will live in it; both people and animals will flee away....For I will stir up and bring against Babylon an alliance of great nations from the land of the North. They will take up their positions against her, and from the North she will be captured. ...Yahweh has stirred up the kings of the Medes, because his purpose is to destroy Babylon. Yahweh will take vengeance, vengeance for his temple.... Prepare the nations for battle against her; summon against her these kingdoms: Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz. Appoint a commander against her; send up horses like a swarm of locusts. Prepare the nations for battle against her— the kings of the Medes, their governors and all their officials, and all the countries they rule" (50:3, 9, 51:11, 27-28). This was written after the death of Nebuchadnezzar when Babylon was politically weakened and the Median empire was the dominant power in the region. Jeremiah (or his redactors) did not foresee that Media would itself be conquered in 549 BC by another nation and that it would be the Persians who would conquer Babylon instead (and without the slaughter and mayhem that Jeremiah depicted). Ezekiel or pseudo-Ezekiel (if ch. 38-39 is an addition as some believe), writing in the Babylonian golah, reinterpreted Jeremiah's "foe of the north" oracles as pertaining instead to the future (an intra-canonical example of the deferral of prophetic fulfillment), with a restored Israel being threatened by the foe from the north. It seems to presuppose the situation after the Medo-Lydian war, which ended in 585 BC with the absorption of Lydia into the Median empire. The author names the foe as "Gog, from the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal" (38:1), who has with him "Gomer and all its troops and northernmost Beth-togarmah and all its troops" (v. 6). Meshach (Phrygia), Tubal (a region in Asia Minor north of the Taurus mountains), Gomer (the Cimmerians of central Asia Minor), and Beth-togarmah (a city in eastern Asia Minor) all correspond to peoples in Asia Minor, and Magog is thought to derive from an Assyrian term for Lydia. Prior to 585 BC, Meshach and Magog belonged to the Lydian empire and Tubal, Gomer, and Beth-togarmah belonged to the Median empire (with Cilicia obtained through the conquest of Assyria), and Gomer and Magog were longstanding enemies. Only in the Median empire were all these peoples brought together peacefully. The Table of the Nations in Genesis 10 also presupposes the situation in the Median empire where we find Gomer, Magog, Meshach and the Medes mentioned together as sons of Japheth, and with Ashkenez and Togarmah listed as sons of Gomer (v. 2-3). But is also possible that a Hebrew writer would have simply lumped all northern nations together regardless of political affiliation.

  Gog was the name of an earlier king of Lydia (Gyges in Greek and Gugu in Mesopotamian sources), who developed into a mythical figure; Plato related legends concerning Gyges' power being derived from a magical ring which made the ring-bearer invisible. It is possible that the author is thinking about a future Lydian ruler named Gyges or he views Gog as a Gyges redivivus. The historical Gyges and the Cimmerians were enemies but the troops of Gomer are commanded by Gog in Ezekiel 38:6. Michael Astour (JBL, 1976) has persuasively argued that the Gog narrative has a Bayblonian literary source: the Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin. Naram-Sin was the Akkadian ruler in the third millennium BC who extended the Akkadian empire to the Mediterranean (to the region of later Cilicia). The Babylonian legend however described Naram-Sin as beset by an advancing army of Umman-Manda who threatened his capital in Agade. The Umman-Manda are described as originating from the mountains of Asia Minor and they mount a campaign conquering the entire known world (including Dilmun, Magan, and Meluhha, i.e. Bahrein, Iran, and the Indus Valley civilization), and they threaten Akkad with Naram-Sin failing miserably in his military efforts against them. Then he receives an oracle that tells him the threat would be removed through divine intervention. The author of the Gog narrative may have then adapted this popular legend to construct a proto-apocalyptic scenario that fulfills older expectations re the Umman-manda in Jeremiah and depicts Yahweh's full protection of his people in the future (in contrast to the rest of Ezekiel, which construes Yahweh as withdrawing his support to Judah in the present). The narrative has a mythical dimension, both in its reference to a king with legendary dimensions in the distant future and its reference to Jerusalem as the "navel of the world" (38:12).
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  binadub

  Thanks for this information, Leolaia. Interesting.

  ~Binadub
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  King Solomon

  Blondie said:

  Remember that Blondie is only reporting, not supporting. I grew up during the gag you with Gog every book study period. All this is open to some new interpretation by the WTS and other religions. Opinions are like aXXholes, everyone has one.

  No worries, Blondie: that's why I specifically stated that "WT said" vs "Blondie said".... Thanks for supplying the WT position, in their own words....

  And if I could be so bold as to summarize Leo's awesome post down to just 1 word (after she did all the heavy-lifting by presenting all known historical scholarly evidence):

  No.

  Gog is NOT .

  Leo, do you have any interest in that ongoing discussion of the WT's co-opting of the parable prophecy of the faithful and wise slave? I'm kind of curious as to why JW's NWT is the only one to translate 'wise' as 'discreet' (as well as their interesting habit of "turning parables into prophecies")? There's a lengthy thread that needs your attention. :)
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  Larsinger58

  "Gog of Magog" represents Nazism/white supremacy. So white supremacists will take a lead in opposing Christ and the elect after the 1000 years ends.

  Gog of Magog attacks God's people, the Jews and desolates them during the "great tribulation" and thus the Holocaust. So "Gog of Magog" are white descendants of Japheth/Magog, in this case, Nazi Germany. Satan uses racism to divide people and will inspire that same hatred after the 1000 years ends.