Ezekiel was a priest deported to Babylon in 597 BCE, eleven years before the Temple fell. His oracles run from roughly 593 to 571 BCE, and two chapters of his book, 38 and 39, contain its strangest vision. A coalition of nations led by “Gog, of the land of Magog” descends from the far north on a restored Israel. The victims are a people “dwelling securely, all of them living without walls, and having neither bars nor gates.” The invaders come on horses, a vast horde with swords, bucklers, shields and helmets. They never fight a battle worth the name. God intervenes with earthquake, plague, torrential rain and fire; the armies collapse on the mountains of Israel and turn their swords on one another. Israel then spends seven months burying the dead and seven years burning the abandoned weapons. The stated purpose is theological: “the nations shall know that I am the Lord.” That is the entire arc.

So who is who today? The identifications are old and, for most of the list, uncontroversial. Persia is Iran; the name barely needs interpreting. Cush and Put sit in Africa, roughly Sudan and Libya. Gomer and Beth-togarmah belong to ancient Anatolia, today’s Turkey. On these points the weightiest modern commentary on these chapters, written jointly by the Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom and the evangelical scholar Daniel Block, agrees with the popular prophecy charts.

Russia is another matter. The chain that reads “Rosh” as Russia, Meshech as Moscow and Tubal as Tobolsk collapsed under philological scrutiny decades ago: Meshech and Tubal are the Mushki and Tabal of Anatolia, and most modern translations render the phrase “chief prince of Meshech and Tubal,” with no Rosh at all. What survives is a direction. The invader comes from “the remotest parts of the north,” and the arrow drawn from Jerusalem passes through Turkey and, stretched far enough, evokes Russia. Evokes. The text never names it.

The war of 2026 has put all of this back on front pages. Since the American and Israeli strikes on Iran began in February, prophecy teachers have flooded the internet with claims that Ezekiel predicted this war, and the excitement is not only Christian. Rabbi Tovia Singer declared that the war with Iran is Ezekiel 38 unfolding in real time, and the identification of........

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