Storm Clouds Rising, Part 3

Storm Clouds Rising

Setting the Stage for the Rise of Antichrist and the End of the Age

A new look at Ezekiel 38-39

Ancient Names, Modern Nations

One of the things we need to understand is that Ezekiel was prophesying about nations and peoples that were known 2500 years ago by names very different than the ones in use today. Many of the national and tribal names in use during the Old Testament period were taken directly from their ancestral origins, and those ancestral origins are outlined very clearly in Genesis 10. When Noah and his three sons emerged from the ark to inhabit their new world after the flood, they followed the admonition of the Lord to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. In the genealogies that detail the family expansion through Noah’s great-great-grandchildren, we see the emergence of the earliest nations. However, an examination of historical and archaeological sources will give us a modern interpretation of the ancient tribal names.

The first nation we should consider is the one that appears to be leading this great alliance against Israel in the latter years, the land of Magog. Magog was the second son of Japheth, and Josephus identifies the people named for him with the Scythians, an equestrian tribal culture of the steppe country north of the Black and Caspian Seas. These were Japhetic peoples, descendants of Noah’s oldest son Japheth. In general, Japheth is considered the ancestor of the Indo-European people groups, settling in the region between the Black and Caspian Seas following the division of the people at Babel, and his descendants spread out from there into most of Europe and Asia. Studying the unique burial mounds or kurgans of the Scythians, archaeologists have determined that the Scythians as an identifiable people emerged nearly 5000 years ago from the Sayan-Altay region of Southern Siberia where Russia and Mongolia meet. Such a time-frame places their origins in the same time period as the flood and the division of the tongues. By the time of Ezekiel, the Scythians were a minor world power in Asia, having displaced the Cimmerians to take up residence in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, an area known today as the Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Two of Magog’s younger brothers were Meshech and Tubal, often associated together in Biblical references. There have been some attempts to identify them with localities in Russia—such as Moscow and Tobolsk, prominent Russian cities—but most likely they refer again to tribes of people who lived in the areas around the Black and Caspian Seas, a group often referred to as the Caucasus Iberians. They are considered to be ancestors to the Georgians of Southern Russia, as well as those who settled in Italy, Spain and Portugal, but at the time of Ezekiel they were residing in Anatolia, which is modern Turkey.

Three of the nations joining Magog are identified by Ezekiel with names that resonate with the modern reader—Persia, Ethiopia and Libya. When Ezekiel prophesied, Persia was a growing empire to the northeast of Babylon which would come to world power under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, but its ancient roots again go back to the time after the flood when Elam the son of Shem founded the Elamite Civilization along the Tigris River. Though the Persian Empire fell to Alexander’s Greece in the 4th Century BC, Persia continues to exist as a nation to this day—except you know it by the name it took in 1935, Iran. Persia is the only Semitic nation included in the nations allied against Israel.

Ethiopia is an African nation, though it should not be confused with the country that uses that name today. Today’s Ethiopia, situated on the Horn of Africa, is actually part of the Biblical land of Sheba, from which the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon at the height of his reign. According to Ethiopian legend, which is generally given credence as historical, King Solomon of Israel and Queen Makeda of Sheba joined themselves in a political alliance as well as domestic union that resulted in the birth of their son, Sheba’s King Menelik I. Ethiopia was ruled by his descendants, a Solomonic Dynasty that lasted for 3000 years until the overthrow of Emperor Haile Salassie in 1974. The Ethiopia of Ezekiel 38 is actually the ancient lands of Cush.

Just as Japheth settled the northern lands and Shem settled the middle lands, Ham and his descendants took the southern lands. Ham’s youngest son was Canaan, father of the Canaanite peoples who settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Because they were an exceedingly immoral and idolatrous people, God commanded the Israelites to completely destroy the Canaanites. Cush was the oldest son of Ham, and was also the father of Nimrod—the first man who tried to be king of the world—and with his brothers Mizraim and Phut, Cush became the ancestor of the African peoples. Cush settled the region of the upper Nile, Mizraim the Nile Delta, and Phut the lands west of the Nile. Phut, then becomes Libya, Mizraim Egypt, and Cush Sudan and southern Africa.

Gomer was the oldest son of Japheth, and supposedly settled with his Japhetic brethren in the region north of the Black and Caspian Seas. Among Gomer’s children were the three sons listed in Genesis 10—Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah—and his descendants have been identified in Anatolia as the Galatians, but in Armenia as the Cimmerians. When their Scythian brethren rose to dominance on the Eurasian Steppes, the Cimmerians were pushed westward and there are strong traditions that identify them as the ancestral Germanic and Celtic peoples. The name of Gomer’s son Ashkenaz has long been applied to Germany and Central Europe, as evidenced by the designation of European Jews as the Ashkenazim.

Togarmah was the father of ten sons, all of which fathered tribes that settled in Anatolia and became the ancestors of the Turkic peoples who make up the populations of several modern Central Asian countries including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Turkic people groups have also been located in Russia, and as far away as Western Europe and China. However, at the time Ezekiel was writing the nations associated with Gomer and Togarmah were still located with the rest of the Japhetic people around the Black and Caspian Seas.

These eight ancient nations named and described by Ezekiel have two primary things in common in our 21st Century world. They are Japhetic, Hamitic and Semitic in origin, but they all have a deep-rooted and ancient hatred for the land and people of Israel, God’s Chosen Nation. And with the exception of atheistic Russia, they are all currently under the control of radical Islamic leaders. Even if we were to extend Ezekiel’s prophecy to all possible inclusions of these people groups and their nations today, we would be hard pressed to find one single predominantly Christian nation among them. Fifty years ago, the threat was Communism and many prophecy teachers set their sights on the Soviet Union as the fulfillment of the Gog-Magog alliance. But as the world stage evolves, we see that Communism has given way to Islamo-fascism, the commonality that unites the nations of Central Asia with those in North Africa and the Middle East against Israel.

Aside from the enemy nations of Israel, Ezekiel gives another grouping of nations that needs to be identified before we can examine the full scope of his prophecy. When the nations of Central and Southern Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East launch their surprise attack against Israel, there is a coalition of nations who stand up for Israel—or at least protest the assault. Ezekiel refers to them as Sheba and Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish, and all the young lions thereof.

There were two sets of brothers in the Old Testament who were given the names Sheba and Dedan. One set is found in Genesis 10, the sons of Raamah son of Cush. The other set is found in Genesis 25, the sons of Jokshan, Abraham’s son by his concubine Keturah. Since the rest of the nations of Ezekiel 38 are identifiable through Genesis 10, I think it safe to say Ezekiel’s prophecy about Sheba and Dedan applies to the former pair rather than the latter. But it should be noted that both sets of brothers were progenitors of tribes who dwelt in the area of the Red Sea—on one side was the ancient land of Sheba which we have already discussed and identified as modern Ethiopia; on the other lies Saudi Arabia.

Tarshish was the son of Javan, a son of Japheth and brother to Gomer, Magog, Tubal and Meshech. Javan and his sons were the ancestors of the seafaring coastal dwellers known variously as the Ionians and the Phoenicians. The former group was associated with the coastlands of Central Anatolia, from there settling the islands of the Mediterranean and the Attica peninsula on the Greek mainland, where Athens is located. The Phoenicians settled first at Sidon on the Canaanite coast, a city named for and likely founded by Sidon the son of Canaan. From there they settled Tyre, and eventually sailed throughout the Mediterranean establishing colonies on all the coastlands. Two of their more prominent settlements were at Carthage in Northern Africa and Tarshish—named for their ancestor—on the southern coast of Andalusia in Spain, where it is believed to be the same as ancient Tartessos. Incidentally, it was to Tarshish that the prophet Jonah tried to flee when called upon to preach judgment and repentance to the citizens of the Assyrian city of Ninevah. Around the time of Ezekiel, Tartessos suddenly disappeared. Destroyed by an army or by a natural disaster, it was refounded under obscure conditions and called by the name Carpia.

Though Japhetic in lineage and dwelling in a Canaanite city of Hamitic origins, the Phoenician descendants of Tarshish intermingled with the people of northern Israel belonging to the tribes of Asher, Naphtali and Dan. Thus the Israelites became involved in the Mediterranean sea trade. King Solomon had fleets of sea-going vessels called Ships of Tarshish—so named for their style and their ability to sail on the open sea, rather than for their port or destination—which sailed from the Mediterranean ports of Joppa, Tyre and Sidon, as well as from Ezion-Geber on the Red Sea. From Tarshish the seafarers ventured into the Atlantic Ocean, establishing trading colonies in the Tin Islands, later called Britannia or England. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that the Phoenicians were in the Americas 2500 years before Columbus, and there are some who have even suggested that the ancient land of Ophir, from whence King Solomon got much of his gold, was actually in South America.

Therefore, it would seem that Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the merchants of Tarshish and all their young lions, or villages, is a reference to the sea-going peoples who settled the coastal regions of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and may very well have explored and settled the Western Hemisphere as well. Certainly Spain and Great Britain were the leading colonizers of the west in recent centuries. From this point of view, it would seem that Ezekiel was prophesying that in the latter days a British-American coalition that included Saudi Arabia would stand up against a Russian-Islamic force bent on destroying Israel—not a far stretch from the global political scene today.