Ezek. xxxviii. 2, 3, &c. xxxix. 1, 2, &c. Rev. xx. 7. Gen. x. 2.GOG and MAGOG. We do not separate these two names, because the Scripture generally joins them. Moses speaks of Magog the son of Japheth, but says nothing of Gog. Gog was Prince of Magog, according to Ezekiel. Magog signifies the country, or 1 Chr. i. 5.people; and Gog the King of this country. We have shewn upon Genesis, that the generality of the Ancients made Magog the father of the Scythians or Tartars, and the several Interpreters discovered many footsteps of their name in the Provinces of Great Tartary; as in the Provinces of Lug and Mungug, of Cangigu and Gingui, in the cities of Gingui and Cugui, of Corgangui and Caigui.
Others have been of opinion, that the Persians were descendants of Magog. Suidas and Cedrenus say, that they are still called Magog in their own country. We find people there called Magusians, and philosophers called Magoi.
Vide Ambrof. de fide ad Gratian. l. 2. c.4. ad finem.Some have imagined, that the Goths were descended from Gog and Magog, and that the wars described by Ezekiel, and undertaken by Gog against the Saints, are no other than those, which the Goths carried on in the fifth age against the Roman Empire.
Bochart has placed Gog in the neighbourhood of Caucasus. He derives the name of this celebrated Mountain from the Hebrew, Gog-chasan, the fortress of Gog. He shews, that Prometheus, said to be chained to Caucasus by Jupiter, is Gog, and no other. There is a Province in Iberia, to the south of Caucasus, called the Gogarene.
Lastly, the generality believe with great reason, that Gog and Magog, mentioned in Ezekiel and the Revelations, are to be taken in an allegorical sense for such Princes as were enemies to the Church and Saints. Thus many by Gog in Ezekiel understand Antiochus Epiphanes, the persecutor of those Jews who were firm to their Religion; and by the person of the same name in the Revelations, they suppose Antichrist to be meant, the great enemy of the Church and Faithful. We have endeavoured in a Dissertation printed before the prophecies of Ezekiel, to demonstrate that Gog and Cambyses King of Persia, were one and the same person; and in our Comment on the Revelations we have asserted, that Gog and Magog denote all the Enemies of the Church, who should be the persecutors of it to the consummation of Ages.
The Arabians call the descendants of Gog and Magog, Jagiouge and Magiouge, D’Herbelot Bibl. Orient. p. 470. Jagiouge & Magiouge.and believe that they inhabit the most northern parts of Asia, beyond the countries belonging to the Tartars, and Sclaves, or Sclavonians, by the Ancients called Chalybes. It is probable that Gog and Magog, according to the idea of the Arabians, inhabited formerly the Mountains of the Hyperboreans, and that they were known to the Ancients by this name: for they relate, that one Salam, who was sent thither by Vasek, ninth Caliph of Corasan, of the race of the Abastidæ, was in the year of Jesus Christ 842, two years in performing this journey; and that returning after this time, he reported, that at six and thirty days journey from the Caspian sea, northward, he at last found the Cities of the Hyperboreans, which were nothing but ruins without inhabitants; and at seven and twenty days journey from thence, he saw the town of Hasna, so called by the Arabians, because of its almost inaccessible situation. Near this fort were to be seen the remains of a famous rampart built formerly by Alexander the Great, to prevent the barbarous northern nations from making irruptions into the heart of Asia. Salam procured himself to be carried to this place, for there was no approaching it by riding, or any sort of carriages; and he had the satisfaction to find there, all that the old accounts relate of it.
The ancient people of Gog and Magog dwelt, they say, in these Mountains, whither there was no going without difficulties impossible almost to be surmounted. There was a necessity for spending seventeen days in ascending and descending through countries extremely uneven, before they came thither. Whatever was carried thither, was conveyed upon men’s backs, or upon goats, which are very large in this part of the world. The people who dwelt there, were so unsociable, that there was no getting the least knowledge out of any of them relating to this nation, or country. This is what we read in Arabian Authors, concerning the Country of Gog and Magog. This nation is certainly very famous in Antiquity, but we are not acquainted with the place where they anciently abode. We do not at all doubt, but that they were some of the Scythians, and confounded among the Great and Little Tartars, and perhaps among the Muscovites, and other northern people. But as these people have no old Historians, we are absolutely unacquainted with their History.