Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/6_200.lzh/6_204.TXT

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army, which they shall find lie by the dead, or upon
them; or which they that flee will cast away; these
they shall gather together, and lay on a heap, and
burn, as sometimes has been the practice of conquer-
ers; or rather they shall take them to their own
houses, and make fuel of them, and burn them,
instead of wood out of the fields and forests, as the
following verse shews: both the shields and the bucklers,
the bows and the arrows; which were the weapons that
Gog and his associates used; see ch. xxxviii. 4. and
xxxix. 3: and the handstaves, and the spears; the
handstaves were either half-pikes or truncheons, as some
think; or javelins, as others: and they shall burn' them
with fire seven years; which some take to be a certain
number for an uncertain, and others an hyperbolical ex-
pression; but when it is considered what a vast army
this of Gog's will be, and what prodigious numbers of
weapons of all sorts must be carried b.y them, and the
little use of fire in those hot countries: it may be
very well taken in a literal sense, and the meaning be,
that so great Will be the quantity of warlike weapons.
that will be found and gnthered, that they Wi11 serve
for fuel for the space of seven years.
Vet. I0. So that they shall take no wood out of the
field, &,'.] During that seven .years; or they shall
have no need to do so, as the Syriac version; having a
sufficiency of armour: neither cut down any out of the
forest: out of the forest of Lebanon, or any other,
wh,-re riley used to fetch wood for their necessary uses;
but so great a quantity of armour shall now be brought
home by them to their houses, that they should have
no need to be at the trouble and expense of fetching
wood from the forests: for they shall burn the weapons
with fire; the reason of which will be, because they
will have no occasion for them hereafter; for when
thiS battle is over, which seems to be the same with
that at Armageddon, there will be an entire destruc-
tion of all the enemies of Christ and his church; the
world will be cleared of them, and there will be war
no more, and so no more use of weapons; tiffs will be
the last baffle that w. ill be fought; see Isa. ii. 4. Mic.
iv. 3 and they shall spoil those that spoil them, and rob
those that robbed them, saith the Lord God: not only take
their weapons and burn them., but strip them of their
garments,. and take away the!r gold, and silver, and jew-
els, and every thing of va-lue they shall find about them.
Ver. 11. And it shall. come topassin that day, &c.] When
this destruction of the army of Gog shall be made:
that I will give unto Got a place there of graves in
Israel; or, a place there, a grave in Israel{b} ; he that
thought to have subdued the whole land, and taken
possession of it, shall have no more of it than just a
place for a grave, to be 'buried in; a place -fit for a
grave, as the Targum; and where that will be is next
observed : the valley of the passengers on the east of the
sea; a valley through which travellets used to pass
from Syria, Babylon, and other places, to Egypt and
Arabia Felix, which lay east of the sea; not the Medi-
terranean sea, which lies west of Judea; but either the
Dead sea, the sea of Sodom, a sulphurcons lake, to
which there may be an allusion, Rev. xix. 20. or the
sea of Cinnereth, or Genesareth. as the Targum, Jar-
chi, and Kimchi; the same with the sea or lake of
Tiberias and Galilee, mentioned in the New Testa-
ment; which sense is approved of by Gussetins {e};
where was a passage from the land of Canaan to the
east of the same sea. Calmet a thinks it stands for the
great road at the foot of Mount Carmel, to go from
Judea, Egypt, and the country of the Philistines, into
Phcenicia, which road was to the east of the Mediter-
ranean sea. and it shall stop the noses of the passen-
gers; or the passengers shall stop their noses, because
of the ill smell of the carcasses {*}; or their mouths, the
mouthsof blasphemers, who shall no more blaspheme
the God of Israel, when they shall observe this monu-
men:t of his power, in the destruction of his and his
people's enemies. It may be rendered, it shall stop
thepassengersf; from. passing that way, because of the
multitude of the carcasses that shall fall there, and
which is the reason of their being buried out of the
way; this sense Jarehi .takes notice of. The Targum
is, "and it is near to two mountains ;" as if this
clause described the situation of the valley. And there
shall they bury Got, and all his mult/tude; all his army,
such of it as the fowls and beasts had not devoured,
and the bones they had left; not his army only, but
himself also, the Sultan or Grand Seignior of the
Turks, the general of his mighty army: this was not
true of Antiochus; he died not, nor was he buried in
the land of Israel. And they shall call .it the valle!/ of
Hamon-got: Hamon signifies a multitude; and this
name will be imposed upon the place of Gog's sepul-
chre, because of the .multitude slain and buried here,
and to perpetuate the memory of it: there never was
yet a place of this name in the land of' Israel, which
shews that this event is yet future. Calmet takes it to
be the valley of Jezreei, in which he thinks the army
of Cambyses was defeated, after the death of that
prince; wrongly taking Cambyses and his army for
Got and Magog.
Ver. 1°-. And seven months shall the house of Israel
beburying of them, &c.]  So long time will the burial
of Gog's army take up, because of the multitude of it,
and by reason their bones will be scattered here
and there; which will require time to gather them
together, and bring them to one place: the reason of
the burial of them will be, partly out of humanity,
which the Christian religion, which will then be em-
braced by the Jews, teaches and encourages; and
partly because of the disagreeable sight and ill smell
of the carcasses of the slain, and to prevent the air
being infected therewith, which might cause noxious
diseases. Jarchi gives the reason of it, because Got
is of the seed of Japhet, who covered his father's naked-
ness, and therefore worthy of a funeral: but a better
reason follows, that they may cleanse the land: not
from ceremonial uncleanness, a place being unclean,
by the ceremonial law, where dead carcasses, or the
bones of dead men,. lay; for the ceremonial law, as it
is abrogated, will now be disused by the Jews them-

{b} \^rbq Mv Mwqm\^ locum ibi sepulchrum, Starckius; locum ubi sit
sepulchrum, Cocceius.
{c} Ebr. Comment. p. 585.
{d} Dictionary in the word Vale
{e} So R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 66.2.
{f} \^Myrbeh ta ayh tmoxw\^ et erit illa obturans transeuntes,
Starckius; et erit illa frenans transeuntes, Cocceius.