Sermon Tone Analysis

Not Russia

We are jumping ahead quite a bit to correct a false narrative that is common in Christianity, and very common today we will be in Ezekiel 38 & Ezekiel 9 today

Summary

these chapters are among the most familiar in the entire book of Ezekiel.

This first of two episodes on these chapters focuses on the terminology: Gog, Magog, Meshech, Tubal, and Togarmah.

It also addresses the fallacies of translating Hebrew nesiʾ roʾsh as “prince of Rosh” and interpreting the phrase as modern-day Russia, and the difficulties ancient translators had with the term.

An alternative understanding of Gog is offered, one that is consistent with the supernaturalistic worldview of the “foe from the north” motif in Old Testament thought

We are skipping a lot but these are geographical terms for the most part and

This is the same geographical location.

You can just look it up on a map.

By the way, the Hittite empire was focused in Anatolia—Asia Minor, the same place.

It's all very consistent.

You're probably getting a little bored with this now, but there's a point to all this.

The point is that this ain't a mystery.

These terms are not mysterious.

These terms have nothing to do with Russia as we know it.

But Rosh?

Some are likely to wonder at this point, "What about Rosh?

My translation has 'Gog the prince of Rosh.'

You skipped Rosh in all that list countries and lands.

What about Rosh?

You're cheating."

Actually, no I'm not.

Gog is not the prince of Rosh.

That is a mistranslation and we'll comment on it in a few minutes.

There are a number of reasons that it's a mistranslation.

Among them is the fact that there is no such place name in any ancient text.

There is no place name Roshknown in the ancient world.

Period.

It's not a place name.

Rosh is not a place.

As Michael Astour has noted, the closest geographical correlation that could be argued is Ra'shi or Ara'shi in Neo-Assyrian records—a district on the border of Babylonia and Elam.

But as Astour comments, this has nothing in common with Meschech and Tubal.

He's correct—it doesn't.

It's in a different geographical region to the southeast.

It doesn't point to Russia—that would be far north, north of the Black Sea.

Again, the point being made is that nobody in the ancient world knew of a place named Rosh.

It is not a Rosh.

That's contrary, I know, to what a lot of listeners may have heard.

Listeners may have heard that Gog is the prince of Rosh and the Rosh is Russia.

A great article is by Paul Tanner.

He talks about the invader from the north.

The subtitle of his article is, "Do We Owe Russia An Apology?"

And it's like, yeah—we do.

But that article is kind of nice because it takes you through how the Russia idea was popularized by evangelical dispensational interpreters.

He points out some of the problems with it.

He doesn't point out all of them.

Other scholarly sources will beat that dead horse, despite the fact that it's dead.

No Merit

You should know as a listener that the idea that Ezekiel 38 and 39 is about Russia or a Russian invasion has literally no merit in terms of exegesis and it has no precedent in terms of a place name in the entire ancient world.

It's a fabrication.

It's a Cold War hermeneutic.

The Russia idea became popular in the 70's.

I remember reading it in prophecy books as a teenager, a new Christian.

The bad guys for the end of the world in the Cold War era... they were Russians.

And the "prophecy experts," the prophecy pundits of the 70's and 80's that wanted the end-times to be imminent (right around the corner)... Well, who's the enemy?

Who's the logical enemy?

Well, it's the Russians.

"Ah, Russia... Rosh!

There we go."

That's about all the thought that went into it.

It is not a view that is based in primary source material or even coherent.

Let's say a little bit more about it, though.

Despite the fact that you've heard that there's no ancient place named Rosh, there are other problems.

Yamauchi, who actually has a good book for this subject matter... His book is entitled Foes from the Northern Frontier: Invading Hordes from the Russian Steppes.

His book isn't about Ezekiel 38 and 39, it's about just what it says: ancient peoples of the northern frontier.

Yamauchi is a historian.

I think he's still teaching.

He's an evangelical and he does a lot of work on Persia in the Bible and Africa in the Bible.

Here he's doing these northern countries (Asia Minor and further north).

In this book, he does tackle the Russia interpretation and basically slays it because it's not very hard to do.

Again, he's a historian at the University of Miami at Ohio.

It might be a familiar name to you because he's been around for quite a while.

But Yamauchi points out in his study of the geography that the place name Rosh would have had no meaning to an ancient Hebrew audience since "The name Rus was first brought to the region of the Kiev [that's right around the Black Sea there] by the Vikings in the Middle Ages."

In other words, you don't even find Rus earlier than the Vikings.

So for an ancient person of the biblical period, talking about a place name Ros or Rosh would have been utterly meaningless to them.

Going even further, Yamauchi notes that Rus and the longer Russia are Indo-European words, while Hebrew is from the Semitic language family.

Consequently, a Rosh/Russia equation is a linguistic fallacy.

It's a false etymology.

Additionally, aside from Genesis 10's placement of Meschech and Tubal in Anatolia, Ezekiel's own description of these same places in Ezekiel 27:12-15 have them located among the nations adjacent to Anatolia.

The place names are thus not the Russian cities but ancient ethnic groups firmly situated in the ancient Near Eastern geographical reality of the Hebrew Bible.

Common Fallacy

I want to talk about this fallacy a little bit.

This shouldn't be earth-shaking, but I know a lot of people are exposed to well-meaning but really poor Bible teaching in this section, and just teaching about biblical languages in general that's really poor.

The same set of sounds in one language that form a word do not equate to either the same word in another language or a word that sounds the same that has the same meaning as the first word.

That's a little convoluted, so let me illustrate the point.

Chin and chin in English and Chinese, respectively, don't mean the same thing.

Even though they sound the same, they don't mean the same thing.

So Rosh and Russia (even though they sound the same, or very similar) don't mean the same thing.

Chin in English, of course, is (according to Webster) "the lower portion of the face underneath the lower lip and including the prominence of the lower jaw.

In Chinese, chin means gold or metal or money— something bright.

Completely different because they're different languages.

The human mouth and tongue and lips and palate...

You can only make so many sounds.

Linguists will tell you there's thirty or so that you can make.

Since every human being speaks, they have their own language and they're going to use the same set of sounds.

But what they mean by the sounds that they articulate is not transferrable from one language to the next.

You think, "Mike, who in the world would think that?" Trust me.

Trust me.

A lot of "Bible teachers" are making arguments like that in this passage.