The Arrogance of the Godless Text: Ezekiel 38:10-13
Introduction: The Heart of the Matter
When we come to a passage like this one in Ezekiel, the modern evangelical mind, particularly the kind that has been marinated in dispensationalism, immediately starts looking for maps, news headlines, and geopolitical charts. Who is Gog? Is Magog Russia? Are the merchants of Tarshish the British? And while there is a place for careful historical inquiry, we must be diligent not to miss the forest for the trees. The primary point of a passage like this is not to give us a detailed itinerary for the Antichrist's summer vacation. The primary point is to reveal the heart of unregenerate man and the sovereign power of a covenant-keeping God.
Prophecy in Scripture is not given to satisfy our idle curiosity about the future. It is given to equip us for faithfulness in the present. It is given to show us the character of God and the character of His enemies. And what we see in this text is a perfect anatomy of godless ambition. We see the internal monologue of a man, a chieftain named Gog, who represents the perennial hostility of the world toward the people of God. This is not just about some future battle; this is about the battle that is always raging in history, in different forms and with different players, but with the same spiritual dynamics at work.
The Lord, speaking through Ezekiel, pulls back the curtain on Gog's thought process. He shows us the seed of a wicked idea, how it germinates in the soil of a proud heart, and how it blossoms into a full-blown military campaign. This is a spiritual MRI of rebellion. And it is a necessary lesson for us, because the Gogs of this world are still with us. They sit in corporate boardrooms, they legislate in halls of power, and they scheme in the secret councils of nations. Their fundamental motivation is always the same: envy, greed, and a lust for plunder. And their ultimate target is always the same: the people of God, who, by their very existence, are a rebuke to the world's rebellion.
So as we unpack these verses, let us not get lost in the weeds of speculative eschatology. Let us instead pay close attention to what God is revealing about the nature of sin, the motivations of the wicked, and the secure position of those who trust in Him, even when they appear to be defenseless in the eyes of the world.
The Text
‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “It will be in that day, that thoughts will come into your heart, and you will devise an evil plan, and you will say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who dwell quietly, that live securely, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates, to capture spoil and to seize plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places, which are now inhabited, and against the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and property, who live at the center of the world.’ Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish with all its young lions will say to you, ‘Have you come to capture spoil? Have you assembled your assembly to seize plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to capture great spoil?’ ” ’
(Ezekiel 38:10-13 LSB)
The Genesis of an Evil Plan (v. 10)
God begins by tracing the evil back to its source, the human heart.
"‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “It will be in that day, that thoughts will come into your heart, and you will devise an evil plan," (Ezekiel 38:10)
Notice the origin of this great conflagration. It doesn't begin with a treaty, or a border dispute, or a formal declaration of war. It begins with "thoughts." It begins in the heart. This is precisely what the Lord Jesus taught: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matthew 15:19). All the great cataclysms of history, all the wars and genocides, were first incubated as thoughts in the corrupt heart of a man.
But we must be careful here. While the thought originates in Gog's heart, God is still sovereign over the whole affair. Just a few verses earlier, God said, "I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out" (Ezekiel 38:4). This is the great mystery of divine providence and human responsibility. Gog is not a robot. He is making his own choices, devising his own "evil plan" according to the lusts of his own heart. And yet, God is orchestrating the entire event for His own glory. God does not tempt any man to sin, but He can and does use the sinful inclinations of men to accomplish His own righteous purposes. He is the grandmaster on the chessboard of history, and He moves both the white pieces and the black pieces to achieve His desired end. Gog thinks he is the master of his fate; in reality, he is a pawn in the hand of the God he defies.
This is a profound comfort. It means that even the most wicked schemes of men are not outside of God's control. The Hitlers and Stalins and Maos of this world may rage, but they rage within the boundaries that God has set for them. Their evil plans ultimately serve to set the stage for their own destruction and the vindication of God's name.
The Arrogant Calculation (v. 11)
Next, Gog's internal monologue is revealed. We hear the reasoning of the predator as he sizes up his prey.
"and you will say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who dwell quietly, that live securely, all of them living without walls and having no bars or gates," (Ezekiel 38:11)
Gog's assessment is entirely carnal. He looks at the people of God, here depicted as a restored Israel, and he sees weakness. He sees an easy target. They are a "land of unwalled villages." They "dwell quietly." They live "securely." In the ancient world, walls, bars, and gates were the very definition of security. A city without walls was a city asking to be conquered. So, from a purely military and materialistic perspective, Gog's plan makes perfect sense. He sees a peaceful, prosperous people with no visible means of defense. He sees a ripe plum, ready for the picking.
This is always how the world views the church. The world measures strength in terms of armies, and budgets, and political power. The church, by contrast, is called to live in quiet dependence upon God. Our trust is not in horses and chariots, but in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). This looks like foolishness and vulnerability to the world. A people who prioritize worship over warfare, who turn the other cheek, who love their enemies, who find their security in an invisible God rather than in iron gates, such a people are, in the world's calculus, contemptible and weak.
But Gog makes a fatal miscalculation. He sees the absence of walls, but he does not see the presence of God. He fails to understand that the people of God have a wall that is invisible to the carnal eye. As Zechariah would later prophesy concerning the restored Jerusalem, "For I,’ says Yahweh, ‘will be a wall of fire all around her, and I will be the glory in her midst’" (Zechariah 2:5). The quiet security of God's people is not complacency; it is a radical trust in the God who is a consuming fire to His enemies and a protective fire for His people.
The Naked Greed (v. 12)
The true motive behind the plan is now laid bare. It is not ideology, or religion, or national honor. It is simple, brutish greed.
"to capture spoil and to seize plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places, which are now inhabited, and against the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and property, who live at the center of the world.’" (Ezekiel 38:12)
The repetition here is emphatic: "to capture spoil and to seize plunder." This is the engine driving the whole enterprise. The people of God had been gathered from the nations, brought back to the "waste places" that were now inhabited and fruitful. They had acquired "cattle and property." In other words, God had blessed them. And the blessing of God upon His people is something that the world cannot stand. It provokes a venomous envy.
The world operates on a zero-sum assumption. If you are blessed, it must have been at my expense. The ungodly see the prosperity of the righteous not as a testimony to God's faithfulness, but as an opportunity for plunder. This is the spirit of Cain, who murdered his brother Abel because Abel's offering was accepted by God. It is the spirit of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son, who resented the father's grace toward the younger son.
Notice also the description of the people as those who "live at the center of the world." The Hebrew is literally "the navel of the earth." This is not a statement about geography, as though Jerusalem were the physical midpoint of the continents. It is a statement about theology. The people of God are the center of God's purposes in history. The entire story of the world revolves around what God is doing with His covenant people, the Church. The world, in its arrogance, thinks it is the center of the story. But God says otherwise. The world powers are mere stagehands in the great drama of redemption. The Church is the bride, the center of the hero's attention. And this centrality, this chosenness, is an intolerable offense to the Gogs of the world, who believe they ought to be the center of everything.
The Cheering Section (v. 13)
Finally, we see that Gog does not operate in a vacuum. The world is full of opportunistic spectators who are more than happy to see the people of God plundered, so long as they get a piece of the action.
"Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish with all its young lions will say to you, ‘Have you come to capture spoil? Have you assembled your assembly to seize plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to capture great spoil?’ ” ’" (Ezekiel 38:13)
Sheba and Dedan were trading nations in Arabia. Tarshish was likely a distant port, perhaps in modern-day Spain, representing the far-flung centers of global commerce. These are not Gog's military allies; they are the world's capitalists, the merchants, the traders. Their response to Gog's impending invasion is not moral outrage. It is not a defense of the innocent. It is the excited chatter of businessmen who smell a profit.
Their questions are rhetorical. "Have you come to capture spoil?" Of course you have! That's the only reason anyone does anything, in their worldview. They are not condemning Gog; they are cheering him on, hoping to get in on the deal. The "young lions" are the ambitious, aggressive up-and-comers, eager to feast on the kill. This is a picture of the world's economic system, which is fundamentally predatory. When the wolves go after the sheep, the jackals and vultures gather on the sidelines, not to help the sheep, but to pick at the carcass.
This should be a sobering reminder to the Church. We must not be naive about the nature of the world's systems. The world does not love us. When we are faithful, when we are blessed, the world will not applaud us. It will either persecute us directly, like Gog, or it will view us as a commodity to be exploited, like the merchants of Tarshish. We are not to put our trust in princes, or in parliaments, or in the stock market. Our trust is in the Lord alone. The world's applause is fickle, and its motives are always suspect. The only approval we should seek is the "Well done, good and faithful servant" from our Master.
Conclusion: The Unseen Variable
Gog's plan is, from a human perspective, logical. His motives are, from a fallen perspective, understandable. His supporters are, from a worldly perspective, predictable. The entire scheme is a perfect representation of how this fallen world thinks and operates. There is just one variable that Gog has left out of his equation, and it is the only one that truly matters: God.
Gog sees unwalled villages, but he does not see the wall of fire. He sees quiet sheep, but he does not see the Shepherd. He sees plunder to be taken, but he does not see the judgment that is about to fall. He hears the cheers of the merchants, but he does not hear the laughter of the One who sits in the heavens (Psalm 2:4).
This is the central lesson for us. We live in a world that is full of Gogs. We are surrounded by a culture that despises our King and envies the blessings He gives us. It may look at times as though we are defenseless, as though the enemy's plan is foolproof. But we must learn to see with the eyes of faith. We must remember that the Lord has put hooks in the jaws of our enemies. Their evil plans are simply the means by which God is drawing them to the place of their own destruction.
Therefore, we are not to be anxious. We are not to fear. We are to live as a people of unwalled villages, dwelling in quiet security, not because we are naive about the dangers of the world, but because we are confident in the power of our God. Our job is to be faithful, to acquire the "cattle and goods" of spiritual fruitfulness, and to live as the people who are at the center of God's world. And when the Gogs of our age devise their evil plans against us, we can stand firm, knowing that the battle is not ours, but the Lord's. And He has never lost a battle yet.