Gog, Son of Death / Perdition, the Ancient Leader Revealed 

Chapter 14 of Corrupting the Image 3 : Gog, Son of Death / Perdition, the Ancient Leader Revealed 

The Bible has a GREAT deal to say about the coming end-times leader who will unite the world in battle against Jesus. In Corrupting the Image 2, we studied about the coming of the Beast who “was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition” (Rev 17:8), the one who is called “the son of perdition” (2 Thess 2:3–4). We determined that Satan and a man will fuse to become the god of death incarnate. We learned that Satan’s many names, such as BAD, Nergal, Pabilsag, and many others, were all related to death. This hybridized individual will lead the world in a war against God Himself.  

Ezekiel also prophesied about this individual known as Gog, who would come against Israel in the last days (Ezek 38:8) with his “great host” (Ezek 38:4), and “his hordes and the many peoples who are with him” whom God will destroy with “torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur” (Ezek 38:22). God declares that Gog’s presence will be overwhelming in Israel and, when he comes, God will be sanctified: 

“You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me, when I am sanctified in you, O Gog, before their eyes” (Ezek 38:16).  

According to Ezekiel, God was declaring for years through the prophets that He would bring Gog against Israel. 

“Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Are you he of whom I have spoken in former days by My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied for years in those days that I would bring you against them?’” (Ezek 38:17). 

But where in Scripture was God talking about Gog? By the name Gog we do not find any such occurrence. Gog¹⁹⁰ is used only in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and once in Revelation 20.¹⁹¹  

Modern lexicons, such as the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, the NASB Lexicon, Strong’s, and Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew English Lexicon all comment how the etymology of Gog is uncertain, which is to say, Gog from Ezekiel 38 and 39 is likely not of Hebrew origin. Consequently, scholars have looked for clues about Gog’s identity in other languages, civilizations and events that might qualify linguistically; but ultimately they have failed, assuming they happened before Ezekiel.¹⁹² Josephus suggested Gog as leaders of the Scythians,¹⁹³ a people (after Ezekiel) who lived on the fringe of the Roman Empire and invaded it from the northeast (ca. 3^rd century BC).¹⁹⁴ Yet his suggestion also fails (like the others) because God said Gog would invade Israel, not the Roman Empire! Furthermore, God said Gog would come in the latter years and last days to a people brought back from the sword, whom we will see are the Jews who returned from the Holocaust. 

Second Temple Literature on Gog 

Second Temple literature understood Gog to be the quintessential enemy of Israel, who would emerge in the last days, and then be destroyed by King Messiah. Interestingly, the Septuagint manuscripts seem to equate him with Og, king of [the] Bashan. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons of the Bible explains that Gog “is a cipher for the evil darkness of the north and personifies the powers hostile to the lord.”¹⁹⁵  

The Targum of Palestine (Neofiti) in Numbers 11:26 says: “At the end, the end of the days, will Gog and Magog and his host come up against Jerusalem; but by the hand of the King Meshiha [Messiah] they will fall.” The Babylonian Talmud Abuda Zara 3b (Idolatry) Chapter 1 echoes the Targum: 

“They will see the war of Gog and Magog, and will question them: ‘With whom do you want to fight?’ Whereto the answer will be: ‘With the Lord and his Messiah’ [as it reads [Psalm ii. 2]: ‘Against the Lord and his anointed’]” 

The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that Rabbi R. Eliezer: “Mentions the Gog and Magog war together with the Messianic woes and the Last Judgment as the three modes of divine chastisement preceding the millennium. The destruction of Gog and Magog’s army implies not … the extermination of the Gentile world at the close of the Messianic reign, but the annihilation of the heathen powers who oppose the kingdom of God and the establishing of the Messianic reign.”¹⁹⁶  

In other words, the battle of Gog and Magog is the final conflict; it is the battle of the Day of the Lord as spoken of by Isaiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, and many others. These considerations harmonize perfectly with Revelation, which says that the whole world will make war against Jesus. 

According to Syriac Apocalypse Baruch 11:1–2, Gog alone will survive the battle and will be brought “bound before the Messiah on Mount Zion and judged and slain.” According to II Esd. xiii. 9 et seq., “fire will issue forth from the mouth of the Messiah and consume the whole army.” ¹⁹⁷ 

Such language readily identifies Gog with the Beast in both Daniel and Revelation; and the Son of Perdition from Paul’s writings: 

• the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet … These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur (Rev 19:20). 
• … as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire (Dan 7:11).  
• the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming (2 Thess 2:8).  

Paul was likely drawing upon Isaiah 11 where the Messiah: “with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked [LXX ungodly one]” (Isa 11:4).  

The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Aboth, discusses how the Shekhina—the manifest presence of God—appears ten times throughout history. In the Garden of Eden, at the tower of Babel, at Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. Finally, “it will come down in the days of Gog and Magog, as it is written [Zech. xiv. 4]: “And his feet will stand on that day upon the Mount of Olives.”¹⁹⁸  

 The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Pesachim, chapter 10 pairs the battle of Gog and Magog with the time of Jacob’s trouble in Daniel 12:1 and Jeremiah 30:7: 

R. Johanan said that it refers to the time of the war of Gog and Magog (which will occur just before the coming of the Messiah and will be the worst period for the Israelites to pass through).¹⁹⁹ 

Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish commentator, writes in Guide for the Perplexed about how the Day of the Lord, spoken of in Joel 3:3–5, may be interpreted as “an account of the defeat of Gog and Magog near Jerusalem in the days of the Messiah.”²⁰⁰ 

In the sources we have just reviewed, Gog was clearly understood to be the definitive end-times enemy who will rise up against Israel in the final battle of the Day of the Lord, whom the Messiah would personally destroy with the breath of his mouth just before the establishment of the Messianic reign. Revelation calls this final battle, Armageddon. The names are slightly different, but the set and characters are all the same (which we will examine in more detail later). 

While those ancient sources considered Gog to be equivalent to the Beast of Daniel and Revelation, Gog’s name itself continues to shroud him in mystery. What is amazing is that Gog actually means death, enmity, and is yet another epithet for Satan.  

Gog is the Enemy (Sumerian Evidence)  

Just as we traced the great dragon, the Beast and the woman who rides it back to Shinar (some evidence being a review from Corrupting the Image 2), the solution to the Gog question is also resolved there as well. In 1914, A. Van Hoonacker suggested, “Gog” came from the Sumerian “gug” (‘black spot’, ‘cornelian,’ or ‘shining’) and is thus a metaphor for evil.²⁰¹ His suggestion is confirmed by the University of Pennsylvania Sumerian online lexicon, which lists variations of “gug,” though Hoonacker may have stopped prematurely since he did not mention entries “gug5 “enmity, hostility” and the related gug6 “stick; weapon” and gug6 “tooth; blade; beak; dog bite” (Akk. Nišik).²⁰² 

John A. Halloran, in his Sumerian Lexicon, points out that “gug5: hostility, war (might be reduplicated ug5,7,8, ‘to kill; to die’).”²⁰³ In linguistics, reduplication is the process in which a part of a word is repeated, sometimes with a slight change. Daniel A. Foxvog, in his Introduction to Sumerian Grammar explains the reduplication of a noun: “reduplication may signify either intensification of the adjectival idea or plurality of the modified noun. Thus, diĝir gal-gal might indicate ‘the very great god’ or more usually ‘the great gods.’²⁰⁴ 

In Corrupting the Image Vol 2, we discovered the Sumerian logogram (pictogram, cuneiform symbol) BAD (IDIM) ²⁰⁵ (Akkadian mūtu and ÚŠ / UG) is written on the Mt. Hermon inscription and is the logogram of Enlil, Dagan, Ug (death), Nergal (god of death and the underworld). When the logogram BAD.BAD reduplicated i.e. “ug_x(|BAD.BAD|)”²⁰⁶ it is written “GUG” and means “hostility, war,” otherwise known as enmity.  

This revelation is nothing short of mind-blowing. “Enmity” naturally draws our attention to Genesis 3:15, where Satan the dragon swindled Adam and Eve, and God declared war: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her Seed” (Gen 3:15). This is an accurate description of Satan and his kingdom. He is the enemy; we often refer to him as the adversary. Some of the other lexical entries for GUG reveal the notion of enmity and hostility. Satan, the enemy, has incited his followers to destroy us using weapons gug6 “stick; weapon” (Akk. Kakku) or by using “gug6 “tooth; blade,” and the like. Peter tells us, “Your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion” (1 Pet 5:8).  

Therefore, we have the attested linguistic evidence, which informs us that “gug” could become “gog,” in addition to the many already noted parallels. Gog comes from Sumerian GUG meaning death, enmity, hostility. What an incredible description of the one who brings the world together to fight against the King of Kings! It is none other than Enmity / Death himself. It is BATios, Satan, the god of death, who we saw in Corrupting the Image 2: “According to the command of the great bull-god (Batios) Satan, those swearing an oath in this place go forth.” Recall that the scribes likely called Satan, BATios because that one term described many conscious syncretisms such as Enlil, Dagan, Ninurta, and Baal.²⁰⁷ 

Hence, Satan, the god known by the logogram BAD (known locally as Enlil and his son Ninurta in Mesopotamia, and as Dagan and his son Ba’al in Syria) was sometimes represented by the reduplicated logogram ug.ug = BAD.BAD which when transliterated (spoken) was / is GUG. If the reduplication indicates intensification, then OG morphing to GOG tells us he is named the “Deadliest Death,” the “Darkest Darkness,” the most hateful hater-of-God and the #1 Enemy of man. Amazingly, there is yet another facet to this mystery!  

Gog is also Ninurta! 

In Corrupting the Image 2, we considered extensive evidence showing that Ninurta was Nimrod, the rebel. We also discovered that Nimrod was the avatar of Satan and held his power, throne, and great authority, as the Beast will do. We have seen that Satan and the Beast are going to fuse into his avatar in the future; and what is so amazing is that the name “Gog” identifies as both Satan and Nimrod! Let’s go back to Amos 5 where the prophet spoke of Nimrod and Satan: 

“You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves” (Amos 5:26 NASB).²⁰⁸ 

Amar Annus notes that some scholars identify the astral divinity Sikkuth (Sakkud= skwt) with BAD (Ninurta):  

“… skwt originates from SAG.KUD and the deity Sakkuth was worshipped in Samaria during Amos’ time (cf. 2 Kgs 17:30). What is curious in the biblical passage is the attribute “your king” (mlkkm) to skwt which fits Ninurta as the god of kingship. One might suggest that the Amos passage reflects peripheral Mesopotamian traditions diffused into Samaria. The second divine element, kywn, [Kiyyun] almost certainly corresponds to Akkadian kajjamanu (SAG.UŠ) “Saturn.”²⁰⁹ 

Chief Head = Rosh SAG.UŠ 

Saturn’s Sumerian name is SAG.UŠ. SAG means “chief, head” saĝ, which in Old Babylonian, means ”head; person; capital” and in Akkadian, qaqqadu; rēšu,²¹⁰ (similar to the Hebrew “rosh.”) UŠ means “death, dead, dying,” related to UG²¹¹ and to GUG and to BATios. Therefore, SAG.UŠ means the “head of death!” Amos reports that Israel was worshiping their “king” Sikkut / Sakkuth. 

The association of chief (head) of death fits very well with what God said to Ezekiel: “Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him” (Ezek 38:2).  

The question arises as to whether ‘Rosh’²¹² is a place name or a descriptive adjective modifying ‘prince.’ “Aquila, the Targum, and Jerome (Latin Vulgate) viewed rosh adjectively—‘chief prince,’²¹³ which corresponds perfectly with the god Sikkuth / SAG.UŠ or head (rosh) of death. When we recall that Gog is the latest in a long line of epithets for Satan, then it makes sense that he is the chief prince. After all, though lesser demons are doing his bidding, he is king of them all. He is the chief prince of Tyre (Melqart, see Corrupting the Image 2) and the king of Babylon. 

“Take up this proverb against the king of Babylon … (Isa 14:4) “Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming; it stirs up the [Rephaim] (the dead), for you, all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations (Isa 14:9). They all shall speak and say to you: ‘Have you also become as weak as we? Have you become like us?’” (Isa 14:10) … “How you are fallen from heaven, O Enlil [Heilel (הַלֵּל)], son of the morning! …” (Isa 14:12).  

This is showing that he is the chief above them all. Of course, we recall that Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2) and “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31), just as Michael is “one of the chief princes” (Dan 10:13) of the good guys. So too, Satan is the head prince of the bad guys. Further corroboration comes from the name, Pabilsag.  

Pabilsag comes from Old Babylonian and means a “relation.” In Akkadian, it is “abu,” which of course is related to the Hebrew אבAb (father), or Aramaic, Abba. The infix “bilga,” also Old Babylonian, means “male ancestor.” Lastly, SAĜ means “head; person; capital,” (Akkadian, qaqqadu; rēšu, like the Hebrew “rosh”).²¹⁴ 

Pabilsag, then, was the head / chief or “principal ancestor.” Pabilsag, as indicated by his name, was clearly someone the Mesopotamians believed to be of great importance, who was the chief of all their ancestors. He was considered a son of the god Enlil and was syncretized with Ningirsu / Ninurta. Pabilsag’s association with the netherworld could be due to his syncretism with the underworld deity, Nergal.²¹⁵ Thus, he is the principal ancestor and Ninurta / Nimrod, son of Enlil, who became a hybrid. When we compare Pabilsag’s bio with Revelation 9, a startling realization comes into focus: The god that the House of Israel was worshiping will return in the last days.  

Ninurta, Son of Enlil, is the Arrow 

The name Sukuth was, probably from Assyro-Babylonian Shukudu … the brightest star in the night sky”²¹⁶ (recall that gug means “[to be] bright”). Amar Annus notes that “the arrow (šukudu) … Ninurta’s star Sirius and … might be a metaphor for Ninurta himself…”²¹⁷ We learned how the theme of GUG “enmity” is also expressed as (gug6) “stick; weapon” (Akk. Kakku) and (gug6) “tooth; blade; beak; dog bite” (Akk. nišik kalbi; šinnu) which are tools of death, very much like how “Ninurta himself is an ‘arrow.’”  

The first century Jewish apocalyptists used similar language suggesting Belial and his hordes will come out of the underworld with arrows flying. The apocalyptists were seeing what Satan (Mesopotamian Enlil) had been projecting all along; that he, or his proxy, was the great, invincible dragon that you did not want to mess with.²¹⁸ 

 In other words, Ninurta is known as the Arrow, which in an astronomical setting is the star, Sirius. The imagery of gods as stars reminds us of the language of Revelation in which angels are frequently symbolized as stars. In John’s vision of Revelation, Jesus has seven stars in his right hand. Jesus reveals the mystery “… The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches… (Rev 1:20). Thus, there are seven stars or seven angels (messengers) to God’s redeemed people. It is interesting that another word for “arrow” (mulmullu, Sumerian mul.mul) is related to the Pleiades, which again reminds us of Nergal’s planet, Mars (Sal.bat.anu)²¹⁹. Amar Annus explains that:  

The Pleiades were thought to bring war and destruction – “the warlike gods, who carry bow and arrow, whose rising means war.” It is worth noting that the month of Ningirsu in Astrolabe B, Iyyar, is also referred to as “the month of the Pleiades, the Seven Great Gods” (KAV 218 A i 12f and 19).  

The star was a symbol of Ninurta, the arrow, and even known as “gabbar” (like the Hebrew “gibbor” hero). Annus comments that, “Marduk’s arrows (mulmullu) …and šukudu referred to the god’s arrow which killed his enemy.”²²⁰ 

From the previous evidence, we see that Sukkut refers to an arrow, as well as Ninurta. Kiyyun means “steady one.” However, both names also refer to planets or a constellation and both are appellations that involve a hero, a bow, and an arrow. Nimrod was the one who became a gibbor (“hero”); he was a gibbor hunter, and of course, we positively identified him as Ninurta in Corrupting the Image 2. It may be significant that God says He will knock the arrow out of Gog’s hand: 

“Then I will strike your bow from your left hand, and will make your arrows drop out of your right hand” (Ezek 39:3 ESV). 

Conclusion: Gog is the Fusion of Satan and the Beast  

Thus, Ninurta (biblical Nimrod “rebel”) son of Enlil (BAD / BAT (=IDIM) was also known as the star Sirius, Nergal’s Mars star which spreads plague, which was an arrow (šukudu, Sum. GAG); and Ninurta is a syncretism with Nergal, king of the dead. The Sumerian Gug “death, enmity, hostility” is a form of the logogram BAD. 

We have the linguistic evidence that the Sumerian “gug” could become “gog” and “gag” (arrow) could become “gog.” Amazingly, both terms fit perfectly from the evidence we have examined. And what a picture! God said there would be enmity between Satan and the woman, between his seed and her seed (Gen 3:15), and Peter tells us, “your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Pet 5:8)²²¹ 

In other words, GUG is the ancient enemy Satan (Enlil) and his son, Ninurta is GAG. We have determined Satan and a Nimrod / Ninurta antichrist-figure will merge into the Beast hybrid—the god of death and Sheol, the fallen star and king of the abyss. Who is also known as “destruction”: Abaddon, Apollyon, who manifests in the last days as the Beast who ascends out of the abyss in the time of Jacob’s trouble. Hence, together they become Gog (Enmity, Arrow) in the Bible. Thus Gug/Gag/Gog is yet another epithet for Satan / Enlil and or Ninurta / Nimrod, which answers the question: when did God speak by the prophets about Gog? Answer: all the time!  

Satan was the entity behind all those titles and the one of whom the prophets spoke, starting in Genesis 3, “I will cause enmity between you and the woman.” Then every time there was a reference to Satan’s many epithets such as: Heilel / Enlil / Ellil (King of Babylon) Isa 14:12, Melqart (King of Tyre) Ezek 28, Ninurta / Nergal / Pabilsag (2 Kings 17:30), Sikkut (Amos 5:26), Enlil (Satan)—the “father” of Ninurta, which the Bible deliberately transformed into “Nimrod” the Rebel. Enlil and Ninurta had many syncretisms such as Marduk / MARTU / Bel / Baal and many shared a common Sumerian logogram BAD/BAT/BE. Gog will simply be his final alias before being defeated by Jesus. In fact, in Revelation 13, John saw “a beast rising up” and “on his heads a blasphemous name” (Rev 13:1). Later in Revelation 17, John saw a “woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy” (Rev 17:3). The Beast has many names, which defy and slander the good name and character of the God of Israel.