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Ezekiel 38

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1 The word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

2 Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him,

3 and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I am against you, Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal:

4 and I will turn you around, and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you forth, with all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them handling swords;

5 Persia, Cush, and Put with them, all of them with shield and helmet;

6 Gomer, and all his hordes; the house of Togarmah in the uttermost parts of the north, and all his hordes; even many peoples with you.

7 Be prepared, yes, prepare yourself, you, and all your companies who are assembled to you, and be a guard to them.

8 After many days you shall be visited: in the latter years you shall come into the land that is brought back from the sword, that is gathered out of many peoples, on the mountains of Israel, which have been a continual waste; but it is brought forth out of the peoples, and they shall dwell securely, all of them.

9 You shall ascend, you shall come like a storm, you shall be like a cloud to cover the land, you, and all your hordes, and many peoples with you.

10 Thus says the Lord Yahweh: It shall happen in that day, that things shall come into your mind, and you shall devise an evil device:

11 and you shall say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to those who are at rest, who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates;

12 to take the spoil and to take the prey; to turn your hand against the waste places that are [now] inhabited, and against the people who are gathered out of the nations, who have gotten livestock and goods, who dwell in the middle of the earth.

13 Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions of it, shall tell you, Have you come to take the spoil? have you assembled your company to take the prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to take great spoil?

14 Therefore, son of man, prophesy, and tell Gog, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: In that day when my people Israel dwells securely, shall you not know it?

15 You shall come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you, and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army;

16 and you shall come up against my people Israel, as a cloud to cover the land: it shall happen in the latter days, that I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me, when I shall be sanctified in you, Gog, before their eyes.

17 Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Are you he of whom I spoke in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for [many] years that I would bring you against them?

18 It shall happen in that day, when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, says the Lord Yahweh, that my wrath shall come up into my nostrils.

19 For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;

20 so that the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and the animals of the field, and all creeping things who creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the surface of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

21 I will call for a sword against him to all my mountains, says the Lord Yahweh: every man's sword shall be against his brother.

22 With pestilence and with blood will I enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him, and on his hordes, and on the many peoples who are with him, an overflowing shower, and great hailstones, fire, and sulfur.

23 I will magnify myself, and sanctify myself, and I will make myself known in the eyes of many nations; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.

   

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Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture # 15

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15. To show that the prophetic portion of the Word in the Old Testament is in many places not understood apart from the spiritual sense, I would like to cite only some of those places. As for example the following in Isaiah:

Then Jehovah...will stir up a scourge (against Asshur), like the smiting of Midian at the rock of Oreb, and as His rod upon the sea which He wielded on the road from Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day that his burden will fall from upon your shoulder, and his yoke from upon your neck.... He will come against Aiath, He will pass over into Migron. Against Michmash he will command his weaponry; they will pass through Mebara. Gibeah will be our lodging place. Ramah will tremble; Saul’s Gibeah will flee. Wail loudly, daughter of Gallim! Hearken, Laish! Take pity, Anathoth! Madmenah will be a wanderer, the inhabitants of Gebim will huddle together. Is there yet time in Nob to make a stand? The mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem, will shake her fist. ...Jehovah...will cut away the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon will fall by His majesty. (Isaiah 10:24-34)

Here we find merely names, nothing of which can be comprehended without the aid of the spiritual sense, in which names occurring in the Word all symbolize things having to do with heaven and the church. One puts together from this sense that the words symbolically mean that the entire church has been ruined by empirical knowledge used to pervert every truth and confirm falsity.

[2] Elsewhere in Isaiah:

(In that day) the envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the enemies of Judah be cut off; Ephraim shall not vie with Judah, and Judah shall not trouble Ephraim. But they shall fly upon the shoulder of the Philistines toward the west; together they shall plunder the people of the east; they shall lay their hand on Edom and Moab.... Jehovah will utter a curse against the tongue of the Egyptian sea; He will shake His fist over the river with the force of His spirit, and strike it into seven streams, so as to enable people to cross over dry-shod. Then there will be a highway for the remnant of its people which will be left from Assyria.... (Isaiah 11:13-16)

Here, too, no one is going to see anything Divine without knowing what each of the names in this passage means, even though the subject is the Lord’s advent and what will take place then, as is clearly apparent from verses 1-10 in that same chapter.

Without the aid of the spiritual sense, who then is going to see that the predictions in succession symbolically mean that people who are caught up in falsities out of ignorance, and have not permitted themselves to be led astray by evils, will turn to the Lord; that the church will understand the Word then; and that falsities will then no longer do them harm?

[3] The case is the same in places without names. As for example in Ezekiel:...thus said the Lord Jehovih, “(Son of man, ) speak to every sort of bird and to every beast of the field: ‘Assemble yourselves and come, gather together from all around to My sacrificial meal which I am sacrificing for you, a great sacrificial meal upon the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth.... You shall eat fat till you are full, and drink blood till you are drunk, at My sacrificial meal which I am sacrificing for you. You shall be filled at My table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war....’ ” Thus will I set My glory among the nations. (Ezekiel 39:17-21)

Whoever does not know from the spiritual sense the symbolic meanings of a sacrificial meal, of flesh and blood, of horses, chariots, mighty men and men of war, will know no other than that people are to eat and drink such things. But the spiritual sense tells us that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the sacrificial meal which the Lord Jehovih will provide on the mountains of Israel means, symbolically, an assimilation into oneself of Divine goodness and Divine truth from the Word. For the subject there is a summoning of all people to the Lord’s kingdom, and in particular the Lord’s establishing the church among gentiles.

Who cannot see that flesh there does not mean flesh, and that blood there does not mean blood? As though people should drink blood till they are drunk, and be filled with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war.

The case is the same in a thousand other places in the Prophets.

  
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Thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.