The Spoil Becomes Fuel, and the Land Is Cleansed

The chapter opens by repeating 38:2–3 almost word for word. The Gog oracle is built as two panels, each beginning with the same summons and each ending with the nations knowing the LORD. The second panel tells the defeat again, but stays on the ground to deal with what is left.

Four verbs in one verse have the LORD as their subject: turn back, lead, bring up, bring upon. Isaiah 14:25 had spoken of breaking the Assyrian “in my land, and upon my mountains”. The mountains of Israel, judged in chapter 6, become the place where the invader is broken.

An archer holds the bow in the left hand and draws arrows with the right. The horsemen of the northern steppe, Cimmerians and Scythians, were famous mounted archers. A single blow disables the whole technique: one hand loses the bow, the other the arrows.

“Ravenous birds” is ‘ayit, birds of prey, the word of Genesis 15:11, where birds of prey came down on Abram’s sacrifice “and Abram drove them away”. Here no one drives them off. The army that came for spoil is itself the spoil.

“The open field” is literally the face of the field: unburied ground. Yet verses 11 to 16 describe months of burial. The two belong to different moments: first the fall and exposure, then the cleansing work that clears the bodies away.

“Dwell carelessly” is the word Ezekiel used for Israel dwelling “safely” in 38:8, 11 and 14. Gog attacked a people who felt secure; now fire falls on his own secure homelands and on the “isles”, the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean world.

Isaiah calls God “the Holy One of Israel” some twenty-five times. Ezekiel’s form, “the Holy One in Israel”, is found only here. The name polluted by Israel’s conduct (36:20) will not be polluted “any more”.

“Behold, it is come, and it is done” repeats 21:7 almost exactly, where the same words were spoken over the news of Jerusalem’s fall. The prophet speaks of a future event in the past tense, as already accomplished in the LORD’s word.

Ancient shields were largely wicker, wood and leather, bows were wood and horn, and spears and arrows were mounted on wooden shafts, so the arms of a vast army really would burn. The number seven returns: seven years of burning here, seven months of burial in verse 12.

When Israel left Egypt, “they spoiled the Egyptians” (Exodus 12:36). The same reversal is spelled out here in paired verbs. Isaiah 33:1 had put the principle as a woe: “when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled.”

“The valley of the passengers” may be a play on Abarim, the range east of the Dead Sea (Numbers 27:12), since “passengers” and Abarim share a root. “Stop the noses” renders chasam, the verb for muzzling an ox in Deuteronomy 25:4: the valley is blocked, perhaps by the stench. Hamon-gog means “the multitude of Gog”.

Deuteronomy 21:23 forbade leaving a hanged body overnight, “that thy land be not defiled”. The logic here is the same: corpses on the ground pollute the land in which the LORD dwells. Seven months is the time it takes the whole house of Israel to finish the task.

“Renown” is shem, a name. Israel gains a reputation not for the victory, which was the LORD’s, but for the burying. “Glorified” is the verb of 28:22, where the LORD says of Sidon, “I will be glorified in the midst of thee”.

“Men of continual employment” is anshei tamid, men set apart permanently, a standing commission. Tamid is the word for the continual daily burnt offering (Numbers 28:3). After the seven months of public effort, a professional search begins for whatever was missed.

Numbers 19:16 makes anyone who touches “a bone of a man, or a grave” unclean for seven days. The marker, tsiyyun, is the word Josiah uses in 2 Kings 23:17 for a tomb marker: “What title is that that I see?” Later Jewish practice whitewashed graves before the pilgrim feasts for the same reason.

Hamonah means “multitude”. The word hamon was the refrain of chapters 31 and 32, used again and again for Pharaoh “and all his multitude”. No city of this name is known, and some take the clause as a later note explaining the valley’s name.

“Every feathered fowl” is literally “bird of every wing”. The sacrifice, zevach, was a meal in which the worshippers ate the meat. Zephaniah 1:7 used the same picture: “the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests.” Here the guests are scavengers, and they alone may drink the blood.

Bashan, the plateau east of the Sea of Galilee, was famous for its cattle; Amos 4:1 mocks the “kine of Bashan” and Psalm 22:12 has its “strong bulls”. The rams, lambs, goats and bullocks stand for the ranks of the fallen army, as the he goats stood for leaders in 34:17.

Leviticus 3:17 made it “a perpetual statute... that ye eat neither fat nor blood”; both belonged to God at the altar. The two things Israel may never eat are served here in excess, “till ye be full” and “till ye be drunken”, to guests outside the law.

“At my table” makes the LORD the host. “Chariots” may be read “riders” with a change of vowels, which suits horses better as a meal, and Revelation 19:18 has “the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them”. Mighty men and men of war close the menu.

The glory that left Jerusalem in chapters 10 and 11 is here set “among the heathen” in judgment. Four chapters later it will return to the house (43:2). “My hand” has been on Ezekiel throughout the book; here it is laid on the nations.

“From that day and forward” is an open-ended date, marking a knowledge that does not lapse. The defeat of Gog is presented as settling, once and for all, the question of whose God Israel’s God is.

“I hid my face” is the language of Deuteronomy 31:17–18, where Moses foresees the LORD hiding his face and Israel being devoured. The phrase appears in Ezekiel only in this chapter, three times, twice about the past and once, in verse 29, to say it will not happen again.

“Uncleanness” and “transgressions” join the language of purity with the language of rebellion, tum’ah with pesha‘. The verse repeats verse 23 in compressed form, so that the nations and Israel alike hear twice that the exile was a sentence, not a defeat.

“Bring again the captivity” is shuv shevut, often better rendered “restore the fortunes”; Job 42:10 uses it of Job, who was never a captive. “Jacob” is a rare name for the people in Ezekiel. The jealousy that burned against the nations in 36:5 now burns for the holy name.

The Hebrew consonants read “they shall forget their shame”, and many modern versions translate it so; the King James reads “borne”, the verb nasa’. The difference is one letter. Either way the shame is placed in the past, from within a land where “none made them afraid”, the words of 34:28.

“Sanctified in them in the sight of many nations” is almost word for word 20:41 and 28:25. “Their enemies’ lands” is plural: by this time Judeans were scattered not only in Babylon but in Egypt (Jeremiah 43 and 44) and across the neighbouring countries.

“Caused them to be led into captivity” uses galah, from which comes golah, “the captivity”, Ezekiel’s own name for his audience (3:11; 11:25). The exile community is told it will be the last of its kind: “none of them any more there”.

Throughout the book the LORD has “poured out” his fury: 7:8, 9:8, 20:33, 36:18 and more. The same verb, shafakh, now pours out his spirit, as in Joel 2:28. The book reserves this use of the verb for its last sentence before the temple vision begins.