Ezekiel 38:1-3

New Catholic Bible

Footnotes

1. Ezekiel 38:1 It would be useless to try to identify persons and countries in this fanciful description. The poet uses apocalyptic ideas and mythology in order to teach us how to read the main guiding lines of the history of salvation as seen through the tragic experience of the exiles. Israel has been uprooted and mistreated by the pagans whom God has used in punishing his people; the forces of the world seem to have formed a coalition which serves God as a weapon against the rebellious nation. But this time of suffering leads to peace and prosperity, and then all of Israel’s enemies will be under its feet. These pictures with their vivid colors are made up of numerous fragments; they make use of elements—plague, earthquakes, floods, fire and brimstone—that gradually become characteristic of the way in which the Jewish tradition represents the critical moment, the final conflict between good and evil, God and sin. The name of Gog, with its reputation for savagery, stands for all the nations that have oppressed Israel and that always come from the north. The battle will take place in a distant future which cannot be specified and in which the unlikely is imagined as happening.