Gog in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

1. 1 Chronicles 5:4. 2. GOG AND MAGOG. Magog was second son of Japhet, connected with Gomer (the Cimmerians) and Madai (Medes). In Ezekiel 38; 39, these two appear in the N. country, their weapon the bow, their warriors horsemen and notorious for cruel rapacity; probably the Scythians, the dominant Japhetic race between the Caucasus (Ghogh and Moghef are names still applied to its heights) and Mesopotamia from 630 to 600 B.C., who invaded Israel and besieged Ascalon under Psammeticus. Gog is the ideal head of Magog the land and people; also prince of Rosh (Roxolani), Mesech (Moschi), and Tubal (Tibareni); Ezekiel 38:2, "the chief prince," rather "prince of Rosh" (the Scythian Tauri). Hengstenberg supports KJV. The names resemble Russia and Moscow, but Slavi and Wends were the ancient name of the Russians. In Revelation 20:8 Gog and Magog are both peoples. The Scythians were expelled 596 B.C., just before Ezekiel wrote, after making their name a terror to Asia. The prophet naturally uses their name taken from familiar history to represent the anti-Christian confederacy about, to assail the Jews in the Holy Land before the millennium; Revelation 20:7-9, to represent the confederacy headed by Satan, and about to assail the beloved city after the millennium. Antiochus Epiphanes, the Old Testament antichrist, the "little horn" of the third world empire, who defiled Jehovah's temple and altar with swine sacrifices and set up Jupiter's altar there, prefigures the "king of fierce countenance" who, "when the transgressors shall come to the full, shall destroy the holy people" (Daniel 8:10-26); "the king of the N." (compare Ezekiel 39:2), who "shall do according to his will, and exalt and magnify himself above every god, and speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall enter also into the glorious land and plant the tabernacles of his palaces between the seas in the glorious holy mountain, and shall come to his end," through Michael's interposition, after a "time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation" (Daniel 11:21-45; Daniel 12:1; Zechariah 13:9; Zechariah 14:2-3). Gog represents antichrist the beast; Magog the ten kingdoms leagued under him (Revelation 16-17). Haughty, blasphemous self confidence is his characteristic (2 Thessalonians 2). Sheba, Dedan, Tarshish, mercantile peoples, though not openly joining his invasion of Israel, yet from selfish love of gain, sympathize with it secretly (Ezekiel 38:13; Ezekiel 39:6, "the isles"); they shall therefore share antichrist's doom, the robber shall be robbed in righteous retribution, the spoiler spoiled, and the slayer slain. Where antichrist thought to find an inheritance he shall only find a grave, and that near his prototypes, the fire blasted cities of the Dead Sea. No weapon formed against God's people shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17); not a fragment shall be left to defile the Holy Land.