The Hook in the Jaw of History Text: Ezekiel 38:17-23
Introduction: God's Geopolitics
We live in an age of frantic speculation. Christians, who ought to be the most sober-minded people on earth, are often found chasing the headlines, trying to decode God's prophetic calendar with the latest news out of the Middle East. Every tinpot dictator who rises up is the Antichrist, every international squabble is the prelude to Armageddon. This is what happens when we abandon the Scriptures as our primary interpretive lens and instead try to interpret the Scriptures through the flimsy lens of the cable news cycle. It is a fool's errand, and it is beneath the dignity of the Church.
The prophet Ezekiel, in this formidable section concerning Gog of Magog, is not giving us a secret codebook to identify 21st-century superpowers. He is doing something far more foundational. He is revealing the engine that drives all of history. He is pulling back the curtain on the chancellories of men, the war rooms of generals, and the secret councils of kings, and showing us the hand of Almighty God directing the whole affair. The central lesson of this passage is not about who Gog is, but about who God is. All of history is His story. He writes the script, He casts the villains, He sets the stage, and He brings the curtain down in a final, cataclysmic act of judgment that serves one ultimate purpose: the magnification of His own holy name.
This passage is a direct assault on the modern secular assumption that history is a random, chaotic drift, a tale told by an idiot. It is also a sharp rebuke to the kind of panicky, dispensationalist eschatology that sees God as a frantic spectator, wringing His hands over a world spinning out of His control. The God of Ezekiel is not reacting; He is acting. He is not surprised; He is sovereign. He does not simply predict the future; He decrees it. And in this passage, He reveals His method. He will take the most arrogant, blasphemous, and powerful forces of rebellion that the world can muster, and He will personally drag them onto the stage of history for the express purpose of gloriously and publicly destroying them. This is not just about the end of the world; it is about how the world works.
The Text
‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days by the hand of My slaves the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them? And it will be in that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” declares Lord Yahweh, “that My wrath will mount up in My anger. In My zeal and in My blazing fury I have spoken that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. And the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will quake at My presence; the mountains also will be pulled down, the steep pathways will fall, and every wall will fall to the earth. And I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains,” declares Lord Yahweh. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops, and on the numerous peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire, and brimstone. And I will magnify Myself, I will manifest Myself as holy, and I will make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am Yahweh.”’
(Ezekiel 38:17-23 LSB)
The Villain of God's Own Choosing (v. 17)
We begin with God identifying His antagonist.
"‘Thus says Lord Yahweh, “Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days by the hand of My slaves the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them?" (Ezekiel 38:17 LSB)
God addresses this great enemy, Gog, with a rhetorical question that is dripping with divine irony. "Are you the one?" This is not a question of uncertainty, as though God is just now figuring it out. It is a statement of absolute, sovereign control. God is saying, "You are precisely the character I have been writing about for centuries. You think you are acting on your own initiative, but you are merely stepping into a role that I ordained for you long ago."
Notice the language: "I would bring you against them." God does not say, "I foresaw that you would come," but rather, "I prophesied that I would bring you." This is the doctrine of divine providence in its most robust and bracing form. God raises up His enemies. He did it with Pharaoh. He did it with Assyria, the rod of His anger. He did it with Babylon. And He does it here with Gog. Gog is not some rogue agent who has slipped God's leash. Gog is on God's leash. Earlier in the chapter, God says He will put hooks in Gog's jaws and bring him forth (Ezekiel 38:4). The pride, the ambition, the greed, and the hatred that motivate Gog are all real, and he is fully culpable for them. But God, in His sovereignty, harnesses that sinful rebellion and steers it toward His own appointed end.
This is a profound comfort. It means that no enemy of the church, no matter how powerful or menacing, is an independent operator. Every anti-Christian movement, every persecuting government, every blasphemous ideology is ultimately a tool in the hand of God. They are the Gog of their age, brought forth by God to be judged by God, for the glory of God. This demolishes all fear-based eschatology. We are not to look at the world's Gogs with panic, but with the settled confidence that they are fulfilling a script they did not write.
The Eruption of Divine Wrath (v. 18-20)
When God's chosen instrument of opposition makes his move, it triggers a predetermined and furious response from God Himself.
"And it will be in that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” declares Lord Yahweh, “that My wrath will mount up in My anger. In My zeal and in My blazing fury I have spoken that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. And the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will quake at My presence..." (Ezekiel 38:18-20 LSB)
The language here is volcanic. God's wrath mounts up in His anger. He speaks in "zeal" and "blazing fury." This is not the petty, sinful anger of men. This is the holy, righteous, and terrifying reaction of a perfectly just God against rebellion. It is the Creator's wrath against the creature who dares to defy Him. This is the kind of language that makes modern, sentimental Christians uncomfortable, but it is thoroughly biblical. A God who does not hate evil is not a good God. A God who is indifferent to the proud arrogance of a Gog is not a holy God. His fury is the necessary expression of His goodness.
And this fury is not just an internal emotion; it unleashes cosmic upheaval. There will be a "great earthquake." This is not merely a geological event. The entire created order is shaken by the manifest presence of God in judgment. The fish, the birds, the beasts, and all mankind "will quake at My presence." The mountains will be "pulled down," and "every wall will fall to the earth." This is the language of de-creation. God is showing that the very stability of the cosmos is dependent upon His good pleasure. When He rises in judgment, the foundations of the world are shaken.
This is a picture of the fear of the Lord. When God moves, all of creation pays attention. The arrogance of man, who builds his walls and trusts in the permanence of his mountains, is shown to be utter foolishness. His presence is so weighty, so terrible in its holiness, that the physical world itself cannot stand before it. This is what the ungodly have to look forward to. They spend their lives ignoring God, and one day, God will make it impossible for them to ignore Him any longer.
The Instruments of Divine Judgment (v. 21-22)
God then details the specific means by which He will dismantle Gog's vast army. Notice that He uses both natural and supernatural means, but He is the author of all of them.
"And I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains,” declares Lord Yahweh. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops... a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire, and brimstone." (Ezekiel 38:21-22 LSB)
First, God turns His enemies against themselves. "Every man's sword will be against his brother." This is a classic biblical method of divine judgment. God did this to the Midianites before Gideon (Judges 7:22) and to the enemies of Judah under Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20:23). It is the height of poetic justice. Armies that march together in unified rebellion against God are thrown into a state of paranoid confusion and begin to slaughter one another. Sin is inherently self-destructive, and God simply gives it a push. He removes the common grace that allows sinful men to cooperate, and their coalition of evil implodes.
Second, God employs what we might call natural disasters: pestilence, blood, torrential rain, and hailstones. But in the Bible, there are no purely "natural" disasters. All weather and all disease are under the sovereign command of God. He who holds the molecules together can just as easily let them fly apart. He who gives life can just as easily send plague. These are not random occurrences; they are targeted weapons from the arsenal of heaven.
Third, God uses explicitly supernatural means: "fire, and brimstone." This is a direct echo of the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24). It is a sign of total, irreversible, and divinely initiated destruction. There is no ambiguity here. This is not a lucky shot or a freak storm. This is the finger of God writing His verdict across the sky in letters of fire. God is making it clear that He is the one bringing about this destruction.
The Ultimate Purpose: God's Self-Glorification (v. 23)
Finally, we arrive at the ultimate purpose, the final "why" behind this entire dramatic event. It is the refrain that echoes throughout the book of Ezekiel and, indeed, throughout the entire Bible.
"And I will magnify Myself, I will manifest Myself as holy, and I will make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am Yahweh." (Ezekiel 38:23 LSB)
This is the point of everything. The central purpose of redemptive history is not the comfort of man, but the glory of God. God is the ultimate, supreme value in the universe, and all things are ordered to display His worth. He magnifies Himself. He shows Himself to be great, powerful, and utterly supreme. He manifests Himself as holy. He demonstrates His absolute moral purity, His separateness from all sin and rebellion. And He makes Himself known. He reveals His character and His power to a watching world.
The goal is that "they will know that I am Yahweh." This knowledge is not a mere intellectual assent. For the nations who witness this judgment, it is a knowledge of terror and awe. For the people of God who are delivered by it, it is a knowledge of comfort, assurance, and worship. God's name is vindicated. His reputation is broadcast to the world. All the proud boasts of Gog, all the strutting of the nations, all the blasphemies of men are silenced. In the end, there is only one reality that matters: Yahweh is God, and there is no other.
This is why we must not be terrified by the Gogs of our day. God is using them. He is setting the stage. The more arrogant the rebellion, the more blasphemous the opposition, the more glorious the eventual judgment will be. The dark velvet of their sin is being laid out so that the diamond of God's holy justice can be displayed upon it, and all the world will see it sparkle.
Conclusion: History in the Hands of a Holy God
So what does this mean for us? It means we must learn to read the world through the lens of divine sovereignty. The world is not a runaway train. It is a story being written by a masterful Author, and the central plotline is His own glory. The rise of wicked empires and godless ideologies is not a sign of God's absence, but a prelude to a demonstration of His power.
Gog is a type. He is the archetypal enemy of God's people. He has had many faces throughout history, from Pharaoh to Haman to Antiochus Epiphanes to Nero to the secularist tyrants of the last century. And in every generation, God puts His hook in the jaw of that rebellion and drags it into the light to be judged.
The ultimate fulfillment of this pattern, of course, is found at the cross of Christ. There, the ultimate Gog, the prince of this world, gathered all his forces. He marshaled the power of Rome and the religious hypocrisy of the Sanhedrin. He stirred up the hatred of the mob. And in his pride, he thought he had won. He thought he had killed the Son of God. But in that very act, God was turning his own sword against him. God was magnifying Himself and manifesting His holiness. Through the judgment of the cross, God was providing salvation and defeating His enemies in one glorious stroke.
The gospel is the announcement that God has already dealt a death blow to the ultimate Gog. And history since the resurrection is simply the mopping-up operation. We are to be a people of robust, confident, and optimistic faith. The Gogs will rise, but they will fall. Christ's kingdom is advancing, and nothing can stop it. And every time a Gog is thrown down, it serves the same ultimate purpose: that the nations will know that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.