Ezekiel 38:8 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

After many days: some refer this to the time of the Maccabees; about two hundred years after their return, and finishing the repairs of the city wall; others say after the expiring of the thousand years spoken of Revelation 20:7. But certainly the full accomplished days are yet to come, when Gog and Magog shall be destroyed, and so these days are the latter days of the Messiah's kingdom among men. Be visited; be called to account, judged and punished for thy violence, and possibly convinced by thy overthrow; it may prove a visitation in mercy for conversion. The latter years: these must be contemporary with the many days already mentioned, so that where those are to be fixed, there these also are. Thou shalt come, Gog with all thy numbers, into the land; the land of the Jews, who were under this character in the Maccabees time, and will be under the same in these latter days, a people of God recovered from slavery and captivity, into which the sword of their enemy brought them, but God had now gathered out of the countries. Against the mountains of Israel: if it refer to Gog, it was against the mountains; but if it doth, as it may, refer to the people gathered, it should be to, not against the mountains. Which have been always waste; either designed to desolation by the rage and malice of enemies, or else because so long waste that it is beyond the memory of many living. It was four hundred years and upwards from this prophecy to Antiochus Epiphanes death, if he were Gog; but if the ten tribes, gathered to the two and made one kingdom, be this people, and the wasted mountains refer to them, they may well be called mountains always waste; for it is already two thousand four hundred years since the ten tribes were carried away by Shalmaneser. It is brought forth; the land of Canaan, i.e. the people of it, land being, as often before, put for people. Out of the nations, among whom they were scattered. Though we can give account of those nations to whom the two tribes were in captivity, we cannot so of them to whom the ten tribes are to this day servants; but if this prediction do as much concern them as some confidently believe, these dry bones shall revive and come together. They shall dwell safely: this began at least to be fulfilled, when, for some three hundred and eighty years after their return, they lived tolerably quiet; afterwards Antiochus vexed them, and did them much damage. What remains of longer and fuller quiet and prosperity after the slaying of Gog time will discover to the people of God, whose lot it will be to stand up in those days.