"This was the final message in this series of six night oracles delivered by Ezekiel," notes Ralph Alexander. "A central concern throughout all these night messages had been the possession of the land of Israel." "This series of night oracles was given to encourage the exiles that ultimately God would remove these invaders and restore this land to Israel." A wonderful message indeed to which those who love Israel still look forward to today! ...
We have seen that Magog is a reference to the ancient Scythians, who gave rise to later descendants that settled along the eastern and northern areas of the Black Sea. "The descendants of ancient Magog- the Scythians- were the original inhabitants of the plateau of central Asia, and later some of the these people moved into the area north of the Black Sea. The homeland of ancient Scythians is inhabited today by the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and the Ukraine." But who is "the prince of Rosh" ? ...
Fifth, the most impressive evidence in favor of taking Rosh as a proper name is simply that this translation is the most accurate. G. A. Cooke, a Hebrew scholar, translates Ezekiel 38:2, "the chief of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal." He calls this "the most natural way of rendering the Hebrew." [1] Why is it the most natural way of rendering the Hebrew? Rosh appears in construct form in the Hebrew with Meshech and Tubal meaning that the grammar forms a list of three nouns...
As we have seen previously, the Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew took Rosh as a proper noun and identified them with the people of Southern Russian and the Ukraine. Such a translation indicates that the Greek-speaking Jews in North Africa believed that Rosh was a proper noun and referred to a known people. After providing an impressive amount of data to support the notion that the Rosh people refer to modern day Russians, ...
Now that the participants have been identified in verse 2, I now will look at what the Word of the Lord says about them. We have already seen in the first part of the verse that Ezekiel is told to set his face toward the direction of the coalition nations. Such a statement implies that they are a real, historical group of peoples. We learn at the end of verse 2 that Ezekiel is to "prophecy against him." The "him" refers back to Gog, the leader of the invasion.