GOG AND MAGOG. – Symbol of the enemies of Israel (Ez. 38–39) and of the Church (Rev. 20:7–10). In cuneiform texts, G., the name of a deity (gaga, gugu: Enūma eliš, III, etc.), becomes the name of a region (māšā ga-ga-ia: J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln, I, Leipzig 1907, ll. 37–39) and then of a person (gūgu: Cylinder B. IV, 2 of Ashurbanipal, etc.). In 1 Chron. 5:4, G. is a descendant of Reuben; whereas M. in Gen. 10:2 is a northern people among the descendants of Japheth.
The pairing of G. and M. is characteristic of Ezekiel: M. is the kingdom of the symbolic G., who embodies the various leaders who, in a distant future (38:8, 16; cf. 39:11), will move against the theocracy restored after the exile, in a final attempt at annihilation (a prophecy fulfilled in Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his successors).
Therefore, any attempt to identify them with this or that king of the past (Gyges [Ass. gugu]: Frd. Delitzsch, E. Meyer; or Gägi, leader of the Scythians: Josephus, St. Jerome, the ancients, F. Lenormant, etc.) proves arbitrary and erroneous. It is only possible that the impression left by the Scythian invasion (632–622 BC), which brushed against Palestine (Herodotus, I, 104 ff.), may have influenced Ezekiel’s conception in certain details (38:9, 15; 39:3). St. John took the two names G. and M. from Ezekiel, but without any connection to history or geography; he made them the emblem of all the beastly forces in perpetual struggle against the kingdom of God in its earthly phase.