hand. 4. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured. 5. Thou shalt

fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God. 6. And I will send a fire on Magog, and on those that dwell in the isles in confident security; and they shall know that I am the Lord

17. And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord God; Speak unto every feathered fowl*, and to every beast of the field; Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. 18. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, of all the fatlings of Bashan

22. And the house of Israel shall know, that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward. 23. And the nations shall know, that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword. 24. According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them. 25. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name; 26. And they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they trespassed against me, when they dwelt in their land in confident security, and none made them afraid. 27. When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered

* Speak unto every feathered fowl.] St. John has borrowed the imagery of this passage in his description of the overthrow of the Antichristian Roman confederacy (Rev. xix. 17-21.): but a mere adaptation will not prove the identity of the two confederacies against positive argument. This allegory of Ezekiel has called forth in a very singular manner the critical powers of an unbeliever. Voltaire quoted it to prove, that the Jews of old times eat the flesh of horses and even of men: and, "though cautioned that not Jews, nor men, but wild beasts and birds, were invited to this feast of slaughter, that is, to the consumption of the slain, yet insisted to the last on his strange accusation." Michaelis cited by Abp. Newcome in loc.

them out of the lands of their enemies, and have been sanctified in them in the sight of many nations; 28. Then shall they know, that I am the Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the nations = but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. 29. Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God..

COMMENTARY.

The principal difficulty in the exposition of this prophecy is to ascertain, what people, and what sovereign, Ezekiel means by Magog, and Gog: whether they be the same, or not the same, as the apocalyptic Gog and Magog; whether their expedition will be undertaken at the beginning, or at the end, of the Millennium.

Mr. Mede supposes, that they are not the same as the apocalyptic Gog and Magog, but only typical of them; that their expedition takes place at the beginning, not at the end, of the Millennium; and that the nation intended

them is that of the Turks. The reason, which he assigns for his opinion, is this: that Ezekiel's Gog and Magog come out of the north-parts, where the posterity of Magog was scattered; whereas St. John's Gog and Magog are said to be nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth: that Ezekiel's Gog and Magog are to be some terrible enemy, which should come against Is rael at the time of their return, and should be destroyed by the Lord with a dreadful slaughter; whereas St. John's Gog and Magog are not brought upon the stage till the close of the Millennium*.

Bp. Newton expresses himself much to the same purpose as Mr. Mede, though somewhat more guardedly and indecisively, as if it were possible that the Gog and Magog of Ezekiel might be the same as the Gog and Magog of St. John. "At the expiration of the thousand years," says he, "the restraint shall be taken off from wickedness. For a little season, as it was said before, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and make one ef

* Mede's Works, B. iii. C. 12. and B. iv. Epist. 41.

fort more to re-establish his kingdom. As he deceived our first parents in the paradisaical state, so he shall have the artifice to deceive the nations in this millennial kingdom, to shew that no state or condition upon earth is exempted and secured from sinning. The nations, whom he shall deceive, are described as living in the remotest parts of the world, in the four quarters of the earth; and they are distinguished by the name of Gog and Magog, and are said to be as numerous as the sand of the sea. Gog and Magog seem to have been formerly the general name of the northern nations of Europe and Asia, as the Scythians have been since, and the Tartars are at present. In Ezekiel there is a famous prophecy concerning Gog and Magog; and this prophecy alludes to that in many particulars. Both that of Ezekiel and this of St. John remain yet to be fulfilled; and therefore we cannot be absolutely certain that they may not both relate to the same event; but it appears more probable that they relate to different events. The one is expected to take effect before, but the other will not take place, till after the Millennium. Gog and Magog in Ezekiel are said expressly to come from the north-quarters and the northparts; but in St. John they come from the four quarters or corners of the earth. Gog and Magog in Ezekiel bend their forces against the Jews resettled in their own land; but in St. John they march up against the saints and church of God in general. Gog and Magog in Ezekiel are with very good reason supposed to be the Turks; but the Turks are the authors of the second woe; and the second woe is past before the third woe; and the third woe long precedes the times here treated of. It may therefore be concluded, that Gog and Magog, as well as Sodom and Egypt and Babylon, are mystic names in this book; and the last enemies of the Christian church are so denominated, because Gog and Magog appear to bę the last enemies of the Jewish nation*.”

To these opinions I can by no means subscribet. In the language of prophecy, a type is usually borrowed from

* Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xx.

Mr. Lowman and Abp. Newcome suppose, like myself, that the Gog and Magog of Ezekiel are the same as the Gog and Magog of St. John. But, as

some state either already destroyed or shortly about to be destroyed, and applied to a nation the destruction of which is remotely future. Thus Tyre, Sodom, Babylon, and Egypt, are all used as types of the spiritual empire of the Papacy and no confusion can arise from such a mode of speaking, because all these powers had either fallen when the predictions that literally concerned them were delivered, or fell shortly after. But, if we suppose Ezekiel's Gog and Magog to be typical of St. John's Gog and Magog, we must then admit, that a power, the destruction of which was most remotely future even in the days of the apostle, may be typical of another power the destruction of which is still more remotely future; and consequently we must advance through an infinite series of types and antitypes, till we are bewildered in a confusion of ideas from which it will be no easy matter to extricate ourselves. Viewing the matter then in this light, I can scarcely think it probable, that St. John would adopt a type so necessarily and so needlessly ambiguous. In the case of his using Babylon as a type, all is perfectly clear: but can an instance be produced in the whole Bible, except the present as it is explained by Mr. Mede and Bp. Newton, in which a nation, the very existence of which was future when St. John wrote (supposing with these commentators that Ezekiel's Gog and Magog are the Turks), is used to typify another nation, the rise of which is yet more remotely future?

On this argument however I do not wish to lay too great a stress; for what appears to myself a complete an

they do not bring forward any arguments to prove the point, what I am about to say upon it will not be altogether superfluous. See Lowman's Paraph. of the Revelation in loc. and Abp. Newcome's Ezek. xxxviii. 8, 22. His grace very justly refers the latter of these verses to Rev. xx. 8, 9: but I cannot think that the enemies, who assail the Jews at the close of the Millennium, will be a mixture of Pagans and Mohammedans; because the religion of Mohammed, or the little horn of the he-goat, will be destroyed previous to the commencement of the Millennium. It is worthy of observation, that the Rabbies themselves consider the war of Gog and Magog to be perfectly distinct from, and posterior to, the destruction of the fourth or Roman beast; but they conceive that it will take place soon after their restoration. In this particular, as it appears from the Apocalypse, they are mistaken. Indeed, from the data afforded them by Ezekiel, they had no right to draw such a conclusion. He simply places the war of Gog and Magog after the destruction of the mystic Edom, and after the restoration of the whole house of Israel; how long after, he no where determines. Mede's Works, B. iv. Epist. 24.

omally in the very principle of typical language, may not strike others with equal force: let us see then how far the assertion, that Ezekiel's Gog and Magog will invade Palestine at the era of the restoration of the Jews, and consequently previous to the commencement of the Millennium, is well founded. Now so far is this assertion from being at all warranted by any thing which the prophet says, that he leads us to conclude that the very reverse of it is the truth. He represents both the house of Judah and the house of Israel as having coalesced into one people; as having both been restored a considerable length of time, for they are said to have gotten cattle and goods, to have rebuilt their desolate cities, and to be dwelling in the land in all the carelessness of confident security that is to say, he represents them as being in that very state of confident security, with which God had promised to bless them when the rankling thorn of all their enemies should have been removed *. Such then is the condition, in which the united kingdom of Judah and Israel will be at the era of the great invasion of Gog and Magog. Now the whole of this certainly implies, that the invasion will take place after the Millennium has commenced: but, if it take place after the Millennium has commenced, we must necessarily fix it either to some indeterminate period in the course of the Millennium, or to the end of the Millennium. We learn however from St. John, that nothing of the kind will take place in the course of the Millennium: it follows therefore, that it must take place at the end of it. This matter will be yet more decidedly evident, if we consider that Ezekiel places the invasion of Gog and Magog after the return of the house of Israel, and its coalition with the house of Judah. Now we learn from Isaiah, that Judah will be first restored; that he will be attacked by a confederacy of God's enemies; that those enemies will be completely overthrown; that such as escape will be scattered into all countries; and that they will be an instrument of bringing about the subsequent restoration of Israelt. Since then Gog and Magog are to invade Palestine after the restoration, not

* Ezek. xxviii. 24, 25, 26.

Isaiah lxvi. 5---24.