Gog and Magog

Richard Hess has made a case for the dispensational (or at least premillennial) interpretation of Ezekiel’s temple. Cf. “The Future Written in the Past: The Old Testament and the Millennium,” A Case for Historical Premillennialism, C. Blomberg and S. Chung, eds. (Baker 2009)), chap. 2.

Hess is a fine evangelical scholar. It’s always a pleasure to read his material. That said, there are some pretty basic problems with his argument.

i) He compares Ezekiel’s temple to descriptions of the tabernacle in Exod 24-40 as well as Solomon’s temple in 1 Kgs 6-8 & 2 Chron 2-7. Since these are literal, that creates a presumption in favor of taking Ezekiel’s description literally.

However, his analogy overlooks an obvious counter: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Ezekiel wanted to describe a symbolic temple. If that was his intention, wouldn’t we expect the architectural style of the symbolic temple to resemble Biblical paradigms in various respects? Would it not be natural for a symbolic temple to be literarily allusive of other, well-known sanctuaries? To be, in some measure, a literary composite of other well-known sanctuaries–like we find in Rev 21-22?

Put another way, if Ezekiel meant to depict a symbolic temple, would we expect him to start from scratch, with a structure that doesn’t bear any recognizable connection with other sanctuaries in Scripture? To the contrary, would we not expect a symbolic temple to have some precedent in the sanctioned examples given in Scripture? An imaginative construct that makes creative use of those hallowed examples? Arguably, isn’t that what we find in Rev 21-22?

ii) Hess has another argument from analogy:

Ezekiel 38 and 39 refer to the people of Gog, probably a Semitic word related to the roof of a house or, in this case, the roof of the world, that is, the high mountain range of Lebanon and especially Ararat, far to the north of Israel. From this region fierce hordes would come, as they had in the past, and threaten Israel. This could refer to the Assyrians and Babylonians as well as other historical groups named in this chapter. It could also refer to the Scythians and others emerging from central Asian and threatening God’s people. Certainly Israel did not see this as allegorical, and there is no X is Y” formula in these chapters, ibid. 31.

But an obvious problem with his analogy is how anachronistic it would be to literally project this description into the far future. For, as Hess himself summarizes the data, this has reference to the ancient enemies of Israel. Is God going to resurrect the armies of Assyria and Babylonia? Will Scythian archers come riding down from the north? Surely antique military technology is no match for modern Israel’s arsenal.

This goes to a basic tension in dispensational hermeneutics. As one scholar put it:

If a literal interpretation is demanded, it must be admitted that a literal fulfillment has become impossible. In Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog and his allies fight on horses with swords, shields, and helmets (Ezk 38:4-5,15,21; 39:20). In “literalist” interpretations of the Gog prophecy which anticipate a future invasion of Gog and Magog by a northern alliance, horses become horsepower, arrows become guided missiles or atomic weapons,

More recent end-time writes (such as Rosenberg, Epicenter) identify Gog and his allies with an alliance of Islamic nations who invade Israel, introducing a religious element that is entirely absent from Ezekiel’s prophecy.

One cannot have it both ways: either the fulfillment of Gog’s invasion is “literal” in the literal sense of Ezekiel’s description, complete with horses and swords and shields, or it is not intended to be taken literally. In this case, a fulfillment of the prophecy has to be sought in a historical period before the invention of gunpowder. Or, Ezekiel conveys a symbolic vision of God’s ultimate victory over the enemies of his people.

E. Schnabel, 40 Questions About the End Times (Kregel 2011), 223-24.