Ezekiel 38:16

Cf. Ezekiel 38:9.

shall be sanctified Or, get me sanctifying, i.e. recognition as "holy" "holy" having the meaning of all that which God alone is. The rendering "shew myself holy" is less natural, though the meaning is virtually the same. Jehovah shews his great deeds in the sight of the nations, and thus they recognise his Godhead, cf. Ezekiel 38:23. He gets him sanctifying "in" or through Gog, as the object on whom his great operations of power are manifested.

In these verses Jehovah is represented on the one hand as bringing up Gog in order that he may be sanctified in him in the sight of the nations; and on the other hand Gog is represented as coming up of his own will, prompted by evil purposes, by the hope of an easy conquest and by lust of spoil. The first representation must not be pressed as if this case of Gog were something special, as if Jehovah for no object but to shew his power brought up against his people a leader and nation from the ends of the earth, who otherwise would have remained in peace in their distant abodes. Because such a view of the episode of Gog forgets in the first place the other side of the representation, viz. that Gog comes up of his own will, and with evil intent. It is the hope of an easy conquest and lust of spoil that animates him as well as the merchant peoples who follow in his train. This spirit of irreligious traffic on the part of these peoples is reprobated by the prophet and represented as antagonistic to the religion of Jehovah, just as it is in the case of Tyre (26 28). And secondly the view forgets the general teaching of the prophet, to the effect that Jehovah is in truth the author of all the great movements in the world, and that his operations have one great end in view, to reveal himself as that which he is to the nations of the world. His raising up Gog with this view is not a special thing, but one among many other similar things. To signalize it as something distinct and lift it out of the general current of the prophet's conceptions creates an untrue impression of his teaching.