Is There a City in HELL? | Ezekiel 38-39 Part IX

#ezekiel #prophecy #hell

Ezekiel 39:11 And I will make a vast graveyard for Gog and his hordes in the Valley of the Travelers, east of the Sea. It will block those who travel through, for Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it will be called Hordes of Gog Valley. V16 There will even be a city named Hamonah there.

Stephen L. Cook “The passage to the Beyond is now clogged with the crush of the living dead.”
The Travelers, according to Cook, “those traversing cosmic, ontological boundaries - make up Gog’s army. The force is ghoulish - Gog’s troops are denizens of the pit.”

The Hebrew word translated “travelers” is abarim. According to the DDD, this word “seems to have a special meaning in the context of the cult of the dead, denoting the spirits of the dead crossing the border between the land of the living and the world of the dead. It can be interpreted as a divine name in Ezek 39:11, 14, which may have also been preserved in the geographical name Abarim.” Numbers 21:10-11 “The Israelites set out and camped at Oboth. They set out from Oboth and camped at Iye-abarim in the wilderness that borders Moab on the east.” Heiser “Oboth is the Hebrew word for "spirits of the dead." The "Mistress of the Ob" is the title of the medium at Endor in 1 Samuel 28. Oboth is, therefore, naturally associated with necromancy, the spirits of the dead, the Rephaim dead in the underworld. There are a few of these references that link ʿōbĕrîm with Oboth. They're very close to each other. Again, these are gateways. These are considered to be places that lead to the netherworld, the underworld—the realm of the dead where the Rephaim are…This is the place that is referred to in Ezekiel 39. So you have Gog and his hordes winding up in the bad place—the netherworld, the realm of the dead where the Rephaim are.”
Marvin Pope argues that the valley of the travelers is the terminal depot for those passing on to the underworld, and that Hamonah is the corresponding city on the other side, an infernal underworld metropolis known as “crowd town” (which is a possible translation of the word Hamonah). In other words, he’s arguing this is a city in #hell. Some scholars argue this place where Gog and his hordes are buried is associated with the Valley of Hinnom, the place of human sacrifice in Judah. This area had been, as Cook says, “a ritual gate to the netherworld through which parents passed their children. Now, it morphs into a portal to the realm of death for…Gog.”

I had never heard of this suggest of there being a city in hell before I was prepping this series. But as I have been thinking about it, I remembered that some scholars suggest the gates in Psalm 24:7-10 are the gates to the underworld. They are commanded to open and Yahweh will enter. When Yahweh the mighty warrior entered through these gates into the underworld he conquered the realm of the dead. And Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against his church. Gates are defensive structures built to protect a city

Join us as we continue our study of the famous Gog and Magog prophecy!

Select sources:

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezekiel. Interpretation Commentary. John Knox, 1990

Cook, Stephen L.  Ezekiel 38-48: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary.  Anchor Yale Bible 22B.  Yale, 2018

Eichrodt, Walter. Ezekiel. OTL. Westminster, 1970

Heiser, Michael S. Ezekiel 38-39 Part 1, Episode 152. Naked Bible Podcast Transcript. April 1, 2017. https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NB-152-Transcript.pdf

Heiser, Michael S. Ezekiel 38-39 Part 2, Episode 153. Naked Bible Podcast Transcript. April 8, 2017. https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NB-153-Transcript.

Holy Bible. NLT. Filament Edition. Tyndale. 2022

Kaiser, Otto. Isaiah 1-39. 2 vols. OTL. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983, 1974

van der Toorn, Karel, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst eds. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Brill, 1995. 2nd ed, 1998

Zimmerli, Walther. Ezekiel 25–48. Hermeneia. Fortress, 1983

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