Ezekiel 38:8

After many days thou shalt be visited. — This clause has been variously interpreted. The expression “after many days” is the common one to indicate that what is predicted is yet far in the future, and corresponds to the “latter years” of the next clause. The words “thou shalt be visited” are the usual form of expressing a coming judgment. Various ingenious attempts have been made, with no great success, to give the words a different sense here. The supposed difficulty arises from not observing that the whole course of Gog is here viewed together as a single transaction. It is not merely his ultimate destruction, but the steps which led to it, his hostile attacks upon the Church, which are represented as brought about under God’s providence and forming a part of the visitation upon him. It is as if one spoke now of a man’s whole career of sin as a Divine visitation upon the sinner in consequence of his neglect of proffered grace, instead of speaking only of his ultimate punishment.

The land. — Rather, a land. Judæa had been long desolated, but was now restored. The word people here, as in Ezekiel 38:6, is in the plural and marks the gathering back, not from one, but from many quarters.

Always waste. — Literally, continually waste. The mountains of Israel had been by no means always waste, but during the period of the captivity had been so constantly. Yet the word is commonly used for a relatively long period, for which the time of the captivity seems too short. It may therefore, with the dispersion among “many peoples” of the previous clause, indicate the time of the later and longer continued dispersion of the Jews. In the last clause “shall dwell” is not to be taken as a future, but as a description of the existing condition of the people.