Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The Result of this Judgment, and the Concluding Promise Eze 39:21. Then will I display my glory among the nations, and all nations shall see my judgment which I shall execute, and my hand which I shall lay upon them. Eze 39:22. And the house of Israel shall know that I am Jehovah their God from this day and forward. Eze 39:23. And the nations shall know that because of their wickedness the house of Israel went into captivity; because they have been unfaithful toward me, I hid my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their oppressors, so that they all fell by the sword. Eze 39:24. According to their uncleanness, and according to their transgressions, I dealt with them, and hid my face from them. Eze 39:25. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob, and have pity upon all the house of Israel, and be jealous for my holy name. Eze 39:26. Then will they bear their reproach and all their faithlessness which they have committed toward me when they dwell in their land in security, and no one alarms them; Eze 39:27. When I bring them back out of the nations, and gather them out of the lands of their enemies, and sanctify myself upon them before the eyes of the many nations. Eze 39:28. And they will know that I, Jehovah, am their God, when I have driven them out to the nations, and then bring them together again into their land, and leave none of them there any more. Eze 39:29. And I will not hide my face from them any more, because I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - The terrible judgment upon Gog will have this twofold effect as a revelation of the glory of God - first, Israel will know that the Lord is, and will always continue to be, its God (Eze 39:22); secondly, the heathen will know that He gave Israel into their power, and thrust it out of its own land, not from weakness, but to punish it for its faithless apostasy (Eze 39:23 and Eze 39:24; compare Eze 36:17.). עשׂה אתם (Eze 39:24), as in Eze 7:27, etc. But because this was the purpose of the Lord with His judgments, He will now bring back the captives of Israel, and have compassion upon all His people. This turn of the prophecy in Eze 39:25 serves to introduce the promise to Israel with which the prophecy concerning Gog and the whole series of prophecies, contained in Eze 35:1 onwards, are brought to a close (Eze 39:25-29). This promise reverts in 'עתּה אשׁיב וגו to the prophet's own time, to which Ezekiel had already gone back by mentioning the carrying away of Israel in Eze 39:23 and Eze 39:24. The restoration of the captives of Jacob commences with the liberation of Israel from the Babylonian exile, but is not to be restricted to this. It embraces all the deliverances which Israel will experience from the termination of the Babylonian exile till its final gathering out of the nations on the conversion of the remnant which is still hardened and scattered. לכן, therefore, sc. because God will prove Himself to be holy in the sight of the heathen nations by means of the judgment, and will make known to them that He has punished Israel solely on account of its sins, and therefore will He restore His people and renew it by His Spirit (Eze 39:29). - In what the jealousy of God for His holy name consists is evident from v.7, and still more plainly from Eze 36:22-23, namely, in the fact that by means of the judgment He manifests Himself as the holy God. ונשׂוּ is not to be altered into ונשׁוּ, "they will forget," as Dathe and Hitzig propose, but is a defective spelling for ונשׂאוּ (like מלוּ for מלאוּ in Eze 28:16): they will bear their reproach. The thought is the same as in Eze 16:54 and Eze 16:61, where the bearing of reproach is explained as signifying their being ashamed of their sins and their consequences, and feeling disgust thereat. They will feel this shame when the Lord grants them lasting peace in their own land. Raschi has correctly explained it thus: "When I shall have done them good, and not rewarded them as their iniquity deserved, they will be filled with shame, so that they will not dare to lift up their face." - Eze 39:27 is only a further expansion of Eze 39:26. For the fact itself, compare Eze 36:23-24; Eze 20:41, etc. And not only will Israel then be ashamed of its sins, but (Eze 39:28, Eze 39:29) it will also know that Jehovah is its God from henceforth and for ever, as was affirmed in Eze 39:22, when He shall fully restore to their own land the people that was thrust into exile, and withdraw His favour from it no more, because He has poured out His Spirit upon it, and thereby perfectly sanctified it as His own people (cf. Eze 36:27). The promise with which the prophecy concerning the destruction of Gog is brought to a close, namely, that in this judgment all nations shall see the glory of God, and all Israel shall know that henceforth Jehovah will be their God, and will no more hide His face from them, serves to confirm the substance of the threat of punishment; inasmuch as it also teaches that, in the destruction of Gog and his gathering of peoples, the last attack of the heathen world-power upon the kingdom of God will be judged and overthrown, so that from that time forth the people of God will no more have to fear a foe who can disturb its peace and its blessedness in the everlasting possession of the inheritance given to it by the Lord. Gog is not only depicted as the last foe, whom the Lord Himself entices for the purpose of destroying him by miracles of His almighty power (Eze 38:3-4, Eze 38:19-22), by the fact that his appearance is assigned to the end of the times, when all Israel is gathered out of the nations and brought back out of the lands, and dwells in secure repose in the open and unfortified towns of its own land (Eze 38:8, Eze 38:11-12); but this may also be inferred from the fact that the gathering of peoples led by Gog against Israel belongs to the heathen nations living on the borders of the known world,since this points to a time when not only will the ancient foes of the kingdom of God, whose destruction was predicted in Ezekiel 25-32, have departed from the stage of history and perished, but the boundaries of Israel will also stretch far beyond the limits of Palestine, to the vicinity of these hordes of peoples at the remotest extremities on the north, the east, and the south of the globe. - So much may be gathered from the contents of our prophecy in relation to its historical fulfilment. But in order to determine with greater precision what is the heathen power thus rising up in Gog of Magog against the kingdom of God, we mut take into consideration the passage in the Apocalypse (Rev 20:8 and Rev 20:9), where our prophecy is resumed. Into this, however, we will not further enter till after the exposition of Ezekiel 40-48, when we shall take up the question as to the historical realization of the new temple and kingdom of God which Ezekiel saw.