Our Sages teach us that the Creator’s ways and attributes are all good and righteous. We realize this if we take a look around His Creation. God loves His Creation, and consequently He sustains it. They also teach that we come to know Him through what He doesn’t do or associates to. By His righteousness we infer that He is compassionate, and not indifferent to His Creation. We add to this principle that His Love permeates everything because we come from His Love. Hence we value and appreciate His Love from which we emanate and are sustained, therefore it is our Essence and identity.

Love is the image and likeness of God’s Love in the material world. This also means that, though He created darkness and evil for us to choose Light and Love, He does not associate with darkness and evil. By the fact that He asks us to choose goodness and life over evil and death, God is against the latter. Hence He is against Gog and Magog, the epitomes of evil and negativity we are destined to eradicate from our consciousness, and consequently from the face of the Earth.

“After many days you shall be mustered for service, in the latter years you shall come against the land that is brought back from the sword, that is gathered out of many peoples, against the mountains of Israel, which have been a continual waste; but it is brought forth out of the peoples, and they dwell safely all of them.” (38:8)

One of the Fundamentals of Judaism is that God controls and directs His Creation, evil and negativity included. This principle does not contradict the fact that He gave us free will to choose between good and evil, true and false, positive and negative, productive and useless, etc. Ultimately we are bound to cause and effect out of free will. This means that the choices we make have consequences. In this sense, when we read that God addresses Gog (the negative and destructive aspects and tendencies in human consciousness) to attack the land that has been delivered precisely from the traits represented by Gog and Magog, we must understand it as a final test for those — Israel — who were gathered from the nations to dwell safely back in their land.

If we are really redeemed from the negative aspects of consciousness, as this prophecy indicates, we have nothing to fear. If we don’t deal with evil anymore in what we discern, think, feel, speak and do, evil can’t hurt us. It’s God’s promise announced by these verses.

“(…) and you shall say: I will go up against the land of unwalled villages; I will come upon them that are at quiet, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates (…)” (38:11)

Our habitual negative approach to life, which is an attachment or addiction for many, is not going to give in to goodness as easy as we may think. Negativity comes against our innocence (“unwalled villages”), against the inner and outer peace we gain as we allow Love to lead all facets of life (“being at quiet”), against our assertiveness and determination to live by and for what is right (“dwelling safely”), against our true freedom (“dwelling without walls”) without fears, doubts, apprehensions or uncertainties (“neither bars nor gates”).

“And you shall come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you, and many peoples with you, all of them riding upon horses, a great company and a mighty army (…)” (38:15)

Most references that Hebrew Scriptures make regarding the “north” are related to negative traits personified by “peoples” and “nations” coming from that direction or attitude. In a deeper sense, they represent the same traits and qualities embodied by Gog, Magog and their allies. These are the armies riding on horses to inflict violence and oppression against the goodness represented by the gathering of the dispersed and exiled Tribes of Israel, referred in this particular passage.

“(…) it shall be in the end of days, and I will bring you [Gog] against My land, that the nations may know Me, when I shall be sanctified through you, O Gog, before their eyes.” (38:16)

As we have pointed out, the Torah and Jewish Prophecy anticipate the prevalence of goodness over evil, after a period in which we are destined to recognize, value and enthrone goodness as the true reason and purpose of life. Hence there is a time (“the end of days” or “the day of the Lord”) when consciousness is called by our Creator to end its negative choices, and embrace forever the Essence and true identity He gave us to enjoy and be rejoiced. By bringing for the last time the negative aspects and tendencies of consciousness to a final confrontation with the positive, God wants to manifest His will as His glory. Thus we assimilate that evil and darkness serve their purpose in God’s Creation. They also exist to fulfill His Plan for us. Before His Presence we will realize what evil and negativity have done to fulfill His will.

“And I will plead against him [Gog] with pestilence and with blood, and I will cause to rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many peoples that are with him, an overflowing shower, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” (38:21-22)

The Final Redemption revealed in these verses remind us the Exodus from Egypt, when God inflicted pestilence and blood over Pharaoh, his land and his people. Here these come with cleansing elements like rain, overflowing waters, hail, fire and brimstone. We can infer that the negative traits represented by Gog, Magog and their “many peoples” with them are going to be not only destroyed but also transmuted and transformed into positive qualities that will recognize the leading goodness of Israel destined to reveal God’s Presence in the material world.

“Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself, and I will make Myself known in the eyes of many nations; and they shall know that I am the Lord.” (38:23)

As we enthrone Love’s ways and attributes in every aspect and dimension of consciousness, God’s Love will be also fully revealed.

“And I will send a fire on Magog, and on them that dwell safely in the isles; and they shall know that I am the Lord. And My holy Name will I make known in the midst of My people Israel; neither will I suffer My holy Name to be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.” (39:6-7)

Our Sages say that the usual meaning of Magog is “what comes from Gog”, hence both names represent the same. This means that evil engenders evil. Also we infer that evil isolates us from the goodness that life is. We initiate this trend when we allow ego’s fantasies and illusions to control and direct our thoughts, feelings, emotions, passions and instincts. God’s Love is the Divine Fire that transform the isolating effects of egotism and its derivatives.

Only God’s Love can redeem our consciousness from the oppression and captivity of ego’s fantasies and illusions. In our liberation and freedom we recognize our Creator and His sacred Name in what we are destined to be, have and do, according to His Plan.

“Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them, and it shall be to them a renown; in the day that I shall be glorified, said the Lord God.” (39:13)

Indeed the Creator will be glorified by all of us when we bury once and for all evil from the face of Earth, and this includes our individual and collective consciousness. This is the core of all Jewish Prophecies.

“(…) gather yourselves on every side to My feast that I do prepare for you, even a great feast, upon the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood. The flesh of the mighty shall you eat, and the blood of the princes of the earth shall you drink; rams, lambs, and goats, bullocks, fattened animals from Bashan are they all of them. And you shall eat fat till you be full, and drink blood till you be drunken, of My feast which I have prepared for you.” (39:17-19)

We said twice above that evil ways will be either eliminated or transformed and transmuted into good ways by which we will be enabled to know our Creator when His Presence is revealed in the material world. In this context, these verses tell us that we will be strengthened by “eating” the flesh of the “mighty” and “drinking” their blood in a great feast upon the mountains of Israel. These mountains are the unshakable knowledge that God is our Creator, and all we are, have and do come from Him.

Those beliefs, ideas, attachments, addictions and obsessions, represented by the blood of princes and animal offerings elevated to their idols (lust, greed, envy, indifference, indolence, wrath, arrogance, etc.) will be devoured and transformed into the delights God’s Love prepares for us in the next phase of His Plan we call the Messianic Consciousness in the Final Redemption.

“And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, in that I caused them to go into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto their own land; and I will leave none of them any more there; neither will I hide My face any more from them; for I have poured out My Spirit upon the house of Israel, said the Lord God.” (39:28-29)

Haifa, Southern Galilee, Israel

Ariel Ben Avraham (f. Zapata) was born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1958. After studying Cultural Anthropology in Bogotá moved to Chicago in 1984 where he worked as a television writer, reporter and producer for 18 years. In the 1990’s he produced video documentaries related to art, music, history and culture such as “Latin American Trails: Guatemala” distributed by Facets.org. Most of his life he studied ancient spiritual traditions and mysticism of major religions, understanding the mystic experience as the individual means to connect with Divinity. Since 2004 he studies and writes about Jewish mysticism and spirituality mainly derived from the Chassidic tradition, and the practical philosophy of the teachings of Jewish mystic Sages. The book “God as Love” is the compilation of his last years studying and learning Jewish mysticism, and the messages of the book are part of the content, exercises and processes of a series of seminars