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They are also giants who appear in English folklore.
The Jewish tradition of Gog and Magog is quite distinct from the Bible and describes 70 national angels, some of which have fallen and others are still with God. The biblical prophecy says that Gog — who in the tradition is the angel of the nation called Magog — will be defeated after he leads an army to attack Israel from the four corners of the land. Ezekiel 38 and 39 continues to speak of Gog, and that Gog ( Lydia) together with Persia from the east, Phutphut has more than one meaning The historian Josephus's name for a country on the shore of the Mediterranean: see Poenit. The sound of a slight explosion, sometimes used as a spelling for such noises as the exhaust noise of a petrol or diesel engine with from the west, Kushites from the south, and others, like GomerGomer is the eldest son of Japheth, and father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. Genesis x. 2, 3; I Chronicles i. He is traditionally identified with the Cimmerians. The eponymous Gomer, "standing for and the house of Togarmah from the north, whose identities at this remove are even harder to identify. We are told that Gog dwelt north of Israel, but apart from this direction, there is little else to identify Gog in the passage. Gog and his allies are to be defeated in a mighty bloodbath; according to chapter 39, it will take seven months to bury all the dead.
Gog reappears in Revelation 20:7-8, which says:
Here Gog is identified as the land in the four corners of the earth and Gog's attack here is represented as an eschatologicalAlbrecht Durer Four horsemen of the Apocalypse Eschatology literally means the study of the eschaton the times of the end, 'last things', or 'end times. In Zoroastrianism, Christianity and in Norse heathen theology, eschatology is a theology concerning th event that will occur after the MillenniumA millennium is a period of time equal to one thousand years. There are two main viewpoints about naming millennia and there was a popular debate leading up to the celebrations of the year 2000 as to whether 2000 was the beginning of a new millennium., and that will be vanquished by divine intervention.
The term "Gog Magog" or "Gogmagog" is simply a clarification which may be understood as "Gog as in those from Gog" and despite apocalyptic attempts to devise scenarios whereby nations associated with Magog will one day attack Israel, Magog is not implied in the literal readings of the biblical texts occurring as nothing more than a reference for which Gog is being mentioned.
The origin of Gog's name remains mysterious. Many Bible scholars believe that GygesGyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 687 to 652 BC (according to H Gelzer. H Winckler makes it 690-657 BC). The chronology of the Lydian kings given by Herodotus has been shown by the Assyrian inscriptions ( GreekThe Greek language ( /Elini'k{/) is an Indo-European language which has existed from around the 14th century BC in the Cretan inscriptions called Linear B. Mycenaean Greek of this period is distinguished from later Classical or Ancient Greek of the 8th ce Γυγες), king of Lydia (687-652BC), is meant; in AssyriaThis article concerns the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom. For the modern-day peoples in northern Iraq and neighboring areas, see Assyrian. Assyria a country named after its original capital city, Asshur on the Tigris, was originally a colony of Babylonia, an letters, Gyges appears as Gu-gu; in which case Magog (literally "from Gog") might be his territory in Anatolia. Josephus identifies the Magog with Scythians, but this name was used generally in antiquity for any peoples north of the Black Sea.
Gog is identified as the original country of the Magog people. Magog actually means "from Gog" and although certain Celtic peoples consider themselves to be descendants of Magog (see below) ( Poseidonius , for example, mentions that the Cimmerians who are considered as the original ancestors of the Celts, derived from gug and guas), Gog itself is identified as "the country at the four corners of the world". Outside of the Bible, Gog is most commonly identified as Central Eurasia. Legends present in countries throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East mention that massive copper, iron, or brass gates were built on its southern borders with the Persian Empire; this would support the identification of these "four corners of the world" as Central Eurasia, the westernmost of these gates having been built at Derbent. (These gates are usually called the "Gates of Alexander" or "Alexander's Wall", after their supposed builder Alexander the Great.) However, Magog was supposed to have a grandchild called Heber, who spread throughout the mediterranean and Greeks called such Iberes mentioning that they were refugees from Atlantis who had come to settle the Caucasus. The result is that Gog — the land of the four corners of the world — has also been identified as lands somewhere in the oceans surrounding The Old World i.e. The New World .
According to a tradition of dispensationalist Biblical hermeneutics, Gog and Magog are supposed to represent Russia. The Scofield Reference Bible's notes to Ezekiel claim that "Meshech" is a Hebrew form of Moscow, and that "Tubal" represents the minor Russian city of Tobolsk. This identification of Gog with Russia, and Cold War tensions with the West and with Israel, led Hal Lindsey to claim that the former Soviet Union would play a major role in end times prophecies. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Russia from the role of a military superpower, other end times prophets have sought to cast Iraq or some other country in the role of Gog.