Gog, Esther, the “partial fulfillment” of Revelation 20 and Septuagint.

Dear in Christ,

There are non-futurists (including Preterists) who claim that Revelation 20 was “partially fulfilled” (an oxymoron‽) during the days of Esther, the queen of a Persian king Ahasuerus.

They say Haman the antagonist in the narrative of Esther was, in fact, Gog. They connect Haman to Gog through a convoluted exercise.

1. Since Esther 3:1 says that Haman was an Agagite, they say that he was a descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites, whom Samuel the prophet killed when Saul, the king of Israel, failed to do so. (1Sam 15:8-23). Haman, probably, was a descendant of Agag, though 1Sam 15:8 says that Saul killed all of Agag’s people.
2. they associate Gog to Agag using a mistranslation in the Septuagint. Though Septuagint renders the proper noun Agag correctly as “Αγαγ” in 1Sam 15:8, 9, 20, 32 and 33, it renders it as “Γωγ” (Gog) in Numbers 24:7, which talks about Agag.
   Numbers 24:7 is part of Balaam’s prophecy against Israel, which was coming up from Egypt. The verse says “He [Israel] shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.”
   Though many scholars claim that Agag is the title of the kings of the Amalekites, (like the Pharaohs of Egypt or the Tsars of Russia), and the talk is about another Agag, there’s not much to prove such claims. Numbers 24:7 could be (1) part of a corrupt text, (2) an anachronism, (3) or a prophecy about Saul and Agag. Septuagint uses the same “Γωγ” (gog) in Amos 7:1 to mean grasshoppers / locusts. The Hebrew word translated as grasshoppers / locusts here is “גּוֹב” (pronounced as gôb, H1462 in Strong’s). This word occurs one more time in the Old Testament, in Nahum 3:17, where Septuagint renders it as “ἀκρὶς” (pronounced as akrís), which, in fact, means locusts. My point is: you cannot build sound doctrine on the basis of a mistranslation.
3. Ezekiel was asked to “set thy face against Gog…and prophesy against him” (Eze 38:2). Did Haman exist at the time Ezekiel, the prophet, existed? Quite unlikely, as Haman was an official of Ahasuerus who reigned over Achaemenid Empire between 486 and 465 BC, whereas, Ezekiel lived between 622 and 570 BC (source for both the dates: Wikipedia). I don’t think Ezekiel was asked to set his face against void and prophecy against it. Gog or his descendants existed during the days of Ezekiel. (More of it later).
4. Gog and Magog, along with the nations were to surround “the beloved city” (Jerusalem) when Satan gathers them from the four quarters of the earth, after satan was freed from the prison when the (symbolic) thousand years are expired (came to an end), not some arbitrary point of time before that. The days of Esther and Haman had nothing to do with the thousand years.
5. Ezekiel 38 and 39 make it plain that the battle involving Gog, Magog and the other enemies of Israel would take place on the mountains of Israel (Eze 38:8, 21; 39:2, 4) in the land of Israel (Eze 38:9, 16, 18). Has the narrative in Esther anything to do with the land of Israel? (Even the book doesn’t mention Israel, even once). 
6. The proponents of this theory says that Gog had to attack Israel when the land remained unwalled, based on “thou (Gog) shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled VILLAGES; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates…(Eze 38:11). They claim that Nehemiah got the walls of Israel reconstructed. BUT, the book of Nehemiah talks about his getting the walls of Jerusalem reconstructed, not those of the VILLAGES. Is it absolutely necessary that the talk (of Eze 38:11) should be about physical, literal, walls? Their main issue is with “… seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.” (Eze 39:12) They say that this couldn’t have happened circa 70 AD as neither Josephus nor any of the other historians speak about such an event. So they associate the verse to: “But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but they laid not their hands on the prey,” (Est 9:16). Look at the contradiction, in Eze 39:12, Israelites were burying the bodies of their enemies and in Est 9:16, they didn’t even touch those dead bodies! My question is: do all the cataclysmic events mentioned in prophecies take place literally? (I know that such scholars have convoluted explanations for such contradictions). 

These are my primary observations about their theories. I have read only a few of their writings. In my view, by formulating such weak theories, these people aren't doing any great service to Fulfilled Eschatology, they are making futurists to laugh at it, instead.

In the next post we will talk about the identity of Gog...

In Christ,

Tomsan Kattackal