Thousand Years

 

Revelation 20:2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7:  “Thousand years.”

 

            This term may have been ribothayim alephey shin’an, the term used in Psalm 68:17 and translated by the RSV as “twice ten thousand.”  Alephey can mean ‘thousands (of).’  The term shin’an can mean ‘repetitions,’ or ‘twice-told,’ or ‘redoubled.’  It can also be taken as the Aramaic word for the Hebrew shanah, ‘years.’  It could be translated ‘thousand years,’ or ‘thousands redoubled’ or ‘thousands of thousands’ (BDB, p. 1116).

            A form of shena’ is the Aramaic term for “change of time” used by Daniel in 2:9, 21; 6:9, 16; 7:25; and used in Ezra 6:11, 12 as “to alter (the edict.)”

            Psalm 90:4: “For a thousand years (eleph shaniym) in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.”

            As a time-telling term it could refer to the aleph year.  The number 1,000 was sometimes written as the aleph (א) with a line over it.  If the term translated ‘thousand’ were indeed the aleph with the mark over it, it might also have been translated ‘aleph year’.  That is, not a “thousand years,” (plural), but a singular “aleph year”, the year of the pole star, which is the “aleph” star.  The “aleph year”, then would be the great year of the precession cycle, 25,920 solar years.  Just as there is a sun year, a moon year, a year of each of the planets, there is a year of the pole star.  Therefore, thousands of these aleph years would be practically equivalent to ‘forever.’  By giving such an indefinitely long time, the sense of the passage may be that Christ will reign and satan will be bound for so long that the mind can hardly imagine it, perhaps a little facetiously.[1]  This then would correspond to the many other Scriptures that show Christ’s reign as eternal.

Psalm 136:1: O give thanks unto the LORD; for [he is] good: for his mercy [endureth] forever.  Compare Deuteronomy 7:9.

 

Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he [is] God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generation. (Deut. 7:9)

 

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. (Isaiah 9:7).

 

            “A thousand generations” is practically equal to “forever.”  So in Revelation 20:6, the term “thousand years” means “forever.”

 

Revelation 11:15 RSV:  ’The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’

 

 

Gog and Magog

 

Revelation 20:7-10:  “And when the thousand years are expired, satan shall be loosed out of his prison, 8  And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom [is] as the sand of the sea. 9 And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. 10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet [are], and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.

 

            To find the identity of Gog and Magog in this passage, it is necessary to go to the referent for these terms in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.  In Ezekiel 38:1, he is commanded to set his face “toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.” (RSV).  We have here four words that were never translated from the original Hebrew, not even by the Septuagint Greek translators: Gog, Magog, Meshech, and Tubal.  We learn little of the definition of these words from Strong‘s Concordance:

            Gog, Hebrew #01463: “the name of an Israelite, also of some northern nation.”  Greek #1136, “of Hebrew origin, a symbolic name for some future Antichrist.”

            Magog, Hebrew #04031; “from #01463, a son of Japheth; also a barbarous northern region.” Greek #3098, of Hebrew origin, a foreign nation, i.e. (figuratively) an Antichristian party.”

            Meshech, Hebrew #04902, “a son of Japheth and the people descended from him.”

            Tubal, #08422, “a postdiluvian patriarch and his posterity.”

            From Ezekiel 38:1, however, we learn that Gog is “of the land of Magog.”  We see from this that “Magog” is a land, or territory of this world.  The meaning of the word may be clear if the prefix ma- is seen as having been reduplicated in the process of transmission, for the prefix ma- in Hebrew is often to be translated “of.”  Therefore the word Ma-gog should be translated “of Gog.”  We would then read: “Gog of the land of Gog.”

            We see from Revelation 20:8 that the nations “of Gog“, which is Ma-gog, are in “the four quarters of the earth,” that is, the whole earth.  These are the nations which have taken “Gog” as their prince.

            Going back to Ezekiel 38:2, we see that Gog is the “chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.”  To discover the meaning of the word meshech we find that there is an identical form, Strong‘s #4901, which means ‘a sowing, or a possession’.

            In search of the root meaning of the word tubal, we go to the Brown, Driver, Briggs Lexicon and find two closely related words.  One is from a root yabal which along with its derivatives bears the idea of a procession, stream of productivity.  The word tebel, meaning ‘world’ is from this group of words, which are also related to the word yebuwl, ‘produce.’

            We also find another word bearing the same root radicals tebel which means ‘confusion, violation of nature, or the divine order’.  This word is from the root balal, ‘mingle, mix, confuse, or confound.’

            To reconstruct the meaning upon the basis of these words, we might readily see that Gog is the “Prince of this world”, (tebel), and its productivity which is generated in a continuous procession or stream, (yabal).  But it is not the originally ordained productivity which God commanded in the creation, but is the confusion, or violation of nature and the divine order, (tebel). It is the accursed “fruit of the ground.” In short, Gog is the “god of this world” which is satan.  We see him here in his role as the commander of the rebellious forces of this world.

            The army which Ezekiel saw in chapters 38 and 39 were the hordes of armed forces of this world, that is, those fighting with carnal weapons of warfare.  We know that this is the same army which is seen in the book of Revelation 20:7-10.  Satan, or Gog, is loosed from his prison and gathers his carnal army with their weapons against “the beloved city” that is, the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, the Church.

 

Camp of the Saints

 

Revelation 20:9:  “And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

 

            It would not seem that “the camp of the saints and the beloved city” would be either the earthly Jerusalem, which at this point had fallen into the Babylon identity, or the heavenly Jerusalem, which was upon the highest mountain, the heavenly Zion.  It would seem to be the temporary dwelling place of the Church upon earth, the ‘camp’.

            As the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world, “He [Jesus] suffered without the camp” meaning that he was crucified outside the City of Jerusalem.  The earthly Jerusalem is called ‘the camp’, Hebrews 13:11-13 RSV:

For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp.  Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.  Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

            This passage in Hebrews refers to Exodus 29:14 and Leviticus 16:27.  In these Old Testament passages, ‘the camp’ was the camp of Israel during their wilderness journey toward the Promised Land.  It is in this sense of the Christian‘s earthly pilgrimage that the term “the camp of the saints” is used in Revelation 20:9.

            Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin by reference to the Law in Leviticus 24:14-16 as a blasphemer, Matthew 26:65-66, Mark 14:58, and John 19:7.  (He was brought before the Roman authorities, however, on the accusation of disloyalty to Caesar, Luke 23:2.)  Yet the Rabbis say: “All that are stoned are hanged also.”  In their writings they claim that our Saviour was not condemned for blasphemy, but because “…he used witchcraft, and deceived Israel, and seduced them into apostasy.”  Among those they reckon worthy of stoning is “…he that evilly persuades, and he that draws into apostasy, and a conjurer” (CNT, vol. 4, pp. 91-92)

            The Rabbis in discussing Leviticus 24:14 say:

’Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard [him] lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him’, that this means: ‘The place of stoning is without the Sanhedrin…the place of stoning is without three camps.’

 

The three camps are described as: “the court was the camp of the divine presence; the mountain of the temple, the camp of the Levites; and Jerusalem, the camp of Israel” (ibid., vol. 4, p. 90).  So it is in the sense of the earthly abode of the true Israel that the term ‘camp’ is used in Revelation 20:9.

 

 

 

 

Books Opened

 

Revelation 20:12:  “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

 

            The opening of the books before the Great White Throne was an indication that the age was passing away.  This is made clear in 2 Esdras 6:11-20.  Ezra has requested that the Lord show him the “end of thy signs which thou didst show me in part on a previous night.”  The voice of the Lord answered:

Behold the days are coming, and it shall be that when I draw near to visit the inhabitants of the earth (/land) and when I require from the doers of iniquity the penalty of their iniquity, and when the humiliation of Zion is complete, and when the seal is placed upon the age which is about to pass away, then I will show these signs: the books shall be opened before the firmament, and all shall see it together.