Ezekiel 39:1–16

The Defeat of Gog

39The Sovereign Lord said, “Mortal man, denounce Gog, the chief ruler of the nations of Meshech and Tubal, and tell him that I am his enemy. ²I will turn him in a new direction and lead him out of the far north until he comes to the mountains of Israel. ³Then I will knock his bow out of his left hand and his arrows out of his right hand. ⁴Gog and his army and his allies will fall dead on the mountains of Israel, and I will let their bodies be food for all the birds and wild animals. ⁵They will fall dead in the open field. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. ⁶I will start a fire in the land of Magog and along all the coasts where people live undisturbed, and everyone will know that I am the Lord. ⁷I will make sure that my people Israel know my holy name, and I will not let my name be disgraced any more. Then the nations will know that I, the Lord, am the Holy God of Israel.”

⁸The Sovereign Lord said, “The day I spoke about is certain to come. ⁹The people who live in the cities of Israel will go out and collect the abandoned weapons for firewood. They will build fires with the shields, bows, arrows, spears, and clubs, and will have enough to last for seven years. ¹⁰They will not have to gather firewood in the fields or cut down trees in the forest, because they will have the abandoned weapons to burn. They will loot and plunder those who looted and plundered them.” The Sovereign Lord has spoken.

The Burial of Gog

¹¹The Lord said, “When all this happens, I will give Gog a burial ground there in Israel, in Travellers’ Valley, east of the Dead Sea.^m Gog and all his army will be buried there, and the valley will be called ‘The Valley of Gog’s Army’. ¹²It will take the Israelites seven months to bury all the corpses and make the land clean again. ¹³Everyone in the land will help to bury them, and they will be honoured for this on the day of my victory. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. ¹⁴After the seven months are over, men will be chosen to travel through the land in order to find and bury those bodiesⁿ remaining on the ground, so that they can make the land clean. ¹⁵As they go up and down the country, every time they find a human bone, they will put a marker beside it so that the grave diggers can come and bury it in the Valley of Gog’s Army. ¹⁶(There will be a town near by named after the army.) And so the land will be made clean again.”