from
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
Gog
(1.) A Reubenite (1 Chr. 5:4), the father of Shimei.
(2.) The name of the leader of the hostile party described in
Ezek. 38,39, as coming from the "north country" and assailing
the people of Israel to their own destruction. This prophecy has
been regarded as fulfilled in the conflicts of the Maccabees
with Antiochus, the invasion and overthrow of the Chaldeans, and
the temporary successes and destined overthrow of the Turks. But
"all these interpretations are unsatisfactory and inadequate.
The vision respecting Gog and Magog in the Apocalypse (Rev.
20:8) is in substance a reannouncement of this prophecy of
Ezekiel. But while Ezekiel contemplates the great conflict in a
more general light as what was certainly to be connected with
the times of the Messiah, and should come then to its last
decisive issues, John, on the other hand, writing from the
commencement of the Messiah's times, describes there the last
struggles and victories of the cause of Christ. In both cases
alike the vision describes the final workings of the world's
evil and its results in connection with the kingdom of God, only
the starting-point is placed further in advance in the one case
than in the other."
It has been supposed to be the name of a district in the wild
north-east steppes of Central Asia, north of the Hindu-Kush, now
a part of Turkestan, a region about 2,000 miles north-east of
Nineveh.