Ezekiel 39:11 - Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible

Bible Comments

The Clearing Up Operation and the Cleansing Of The Land (Ezekiel 39:9-16).

Concentration on the detail here can obscure the significance of the whole. The main points being brought out are the massiveness of what has to be dealt with, and the importance of making the land totally ‘clean'. Attention is drawn to the vast amounts of armour, the huge number of bodies picked clean by the scavengers (Ezekiel 39:17-20), and the awful judgment that has come upon the nations because they trifled with God and His people. Note the emphasis on the number seven, the number of divine completeness (throughout the whole of the Near East) (Ezekiel 39:9; Ezekiel 39:12; Ezekiel 39:14). This brings out the idealistic nature of the passage. The prophet's aim is not to bring out how long it will take as a matter of record, but the divine completeness of the judgment.

Another major point is that what is left of the nations will be buried. Not here dry bones that will live after the battle (Ezekiel 37:1-14), but bones that will be buried forever in the valley of Hamon-Gog, ‘the valley of the hordes of Gog' (Ezekiel 39:11), which will ever bear witness to the fact that for these there will no resurrection to life. Note the emphasis on the fact that all will be buried (Ezekiel 39:13-15), not one will be left uninterred. Then all that will be left is God's people in a pure land (Ezekiel 39:16). All will have been done away.

This was Ezekiel's way of presenting the final triumph of the people of God and the judgment of the nations opposed to God. From now on for ever the people of God will rest in safety and purity. All tears will have ceased. The last enemy has been destroyed.

Ezekiel 39:9-16

9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves,d and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:

10 So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD.

11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they shall call it The valley of Hamongog.

12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.

13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.

14 And they shall sever out mene of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.

15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set upf a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamongog.

16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah.g Thus shall they cleanse the land.