The Enemy

Every story has an enemy

This week we have met two Messiahs. The son of Yosef suffers, is hidden among the nations and is recognized the second time. The son of David comes as King, raises the fallen sukkah and rules the world in peace.

But every story of redemption has an enemy. Pharaoh stood against Moshe. Haman stood against Mordechai. Goliath stood against David. So people naturally ask: Who is the enemy at the end? Who is the antichrist? Is he alive today?

Today we will look at what the Torah, the Prophets, the sages and the Brit Hadashah say. We will meet three names: Gog, Armilus and antichrist. And we will see that behind all three stands one old enemy.

Seventy bulls for seventy nations

Sukkot is the one festival that is about the whole world. During the seven days of Sukkot, the Temple offered bulls: thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, and one fewer each day until seven on the last. Add them up and you get seventy. The Talmud explains:

“Rabbi Elazar said: These seventy bulls, to what do they correspond? To the seventy nations.” (Sukkah 55b)

Israel was praying for the nations of the world. Rabbi Yochanan added a sad line:

“Woe to the nations, for they lost and do not know what they lost. When the Temple stood, the altar atoned for them. Now who will atone for them?” (Sukkah 55b)

Here is something surprising. The sages noticed that the words Gog u-Magog, “Gog and Magog,” add up in gematria to 70 (Midrash Tanchuma, Korach 12). The seventy nations we pray for on Sukkot are the same seventy nations that gather against Jerusalem at the end. Sukkot holds both: the nations as friends we pray for, and the nations as enemies who come to fight.

Four beasts and a little horn

To understand the enemy, we start with Daniel. Daniel saw four great beasts come up out of the sea (Daniel 7:3). A lion with eagle’s wings, a bear, a leopard with four heads, and a fourth beast, “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth” (7:7).

Jewish tradition has always named these four as four empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The Midrash finds them even in the Torah’s list of unclean animals:

“The camel is Babylon, the rock badger is Media, the hare is Greece, and the pig is Edom.” (Vayikra Rabbah 13:5)

Edom is Esav’s nation, and the sages used it as a code name for Rome. The fourth kingdom, Rome, is the one that destroyed the Second Temple. Jewish tradition teaches that we are still living in that fourth kingdom, in the “exile of Edom.”

Then something else appears on the fourth beast:

“I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn… and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Daniel 7:8).

Daniel tells us what the little horn does: “He shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws” (7:25). He fights against God, he persecutes God’s people, and he tries to change God’s calendar and God’s Torah.

But the vision does not end with the little horn. It ends with this:

“One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven… And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom” (Daniel 7:13–14).

The enemy is real. But the last word belongs to the King.

The first antichrist: Antiochus

We do not have to guess what the little horn looks like, because it already happened once. About 170 years before Yeshua, the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to destroy the Torah. Daniel describes him:

“They shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate… And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods” (Daniel 11:31, 36).

Antiochus banned Shabbat, circumcision and Torah study. He set up an idol in the Temple. The book of Maccabees calls it “the abomination of desolation” (1 Maccabees 1:54). The Maccabees fought back, and that is why we light Chanukah candles.

Two hundred years later, Yeshua used Daniel’s words about the future: “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place… then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains” (Matthew 24:15–16). Yeshua was telling us that the pattern would happen again.

It did. The Roman emperor Caligula ordered his own statue placed in the Temple. He died before it happened. Titus destroyed the Temple in the year 70. Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. The pattern keeps coming back, each time with a new face.

Gog of the land of Magog

Now to the most famous enemy in the prophets. Ezekiel says:

“Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him” (Ezekiel 38:2).

When does he come? Not while Israel is in exile, but after Israel comes home:

“In the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel… and they shall dwell safely all of them” (Ezekiel 38:8).

Gog comes when Israel is back in its land and feels safe. He brings many nations with him (38:5–6).

Why does Hashem let him come? “I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes” (38:16). Hashem uses the attack to show the whole world who He is.

How does it end? With “great hailstones, fire, and brimstone” (38:22). Israel spends seven months burying the dead (39:12) and seven years burning the enemy’s weapons as firewood (39:9). “So will I make myself known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am Hashem” (38:23).

Who is Gog?

The Torah lists Magog as a son of Yefet (Genesis 10:2). The historian Josephus says Magog’s people are the Scythians, who lived north of the Black Sea, in the area of today’s Ukraine and southern Russia (Antiquities 1.6.1). Our teachers read him in different ways:

• Rabbi Efraim Palvanov follows Josephus and points to Russia. He adds a lovely detail. In Hebrew, Gog is גוג and David is דוד. Each letter of David is one letter higher than the letter in Gog. Gag means “roof,” and delet means “door.” Gog tries to put a roof over the world and close off redemption. David opens the door.

• Gog and Magog is “a global coalition of all nations committed to the destruction of Israel.” Perhaps the war of Gog and Armageddon (Revelation 16:16) are the same war, and Armageddon is just one of its battlefields.

• Rav Ariel Cohen Alloro uses the gematria of 70 to say that Gog and Magog is all the nations together, a kind of world government that wants to “arrive to the sky,” like the Tower of Babel.

These answers fit together. Gog may have a home address, but he does not come alone. He leads the nations.

Gog and Sukkot

The rabbis connected Gog to this very festival. The Talmud says that Ezekiel 38, “And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come,” is read as the haftarah on the Shabbat of Chol HaMoed Sukkot (Megillah 31a). This year, because the first day of Sukkot fell on Shabbat, there is no Shabbat of Chol HaMoed. The one year the Gog reading drops out is the year we study it together.

The Talmud tells a story about the end of days. The nations complain that they never had a chance to keep the Torah. So Hashem gives them an easy mitzvah: go build a sukkah.

“Each one goes and makes a sukkah on his roof. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, brings out the sun in full heat, and each one kicks his sukkah and leaves.” (Avodah Zarah 3a)

When things get uncomfortable, the nations walk away from Hashem. The Talmud continues that at the time of Gog and Magog, they will gather “against Hashem, and against his anointed” (Psalm 2:2; Avodah Zarah 3b).

The Midrash imagines Gog thinking he is smarter than all the enemies before him:

“Gog and Magog will say: Fools were the first ones, Pharaoh and the others, who made plans against Israel and did not know that Israel has a Protector in heaven. I will not do that. First I will fight against their Protector, and after that against them.” (Vayikra Rabbah 27:11)

Gog’s plan is to fight God Himself. That is the mark of every antichrist.

How long?

The Mishnah gives the war a limit: “The judgment of Gog and Magog in the future is twelve months” (Eduyot 2:10). Even the enemy’s time is measured by Hashem.

Armilus: the counterfeit Messiah

Gog is in the Bible. Armilus is not. He comes from later Jewish books about the end of days, like Sefer Zerubbabel and the Midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. His name probably comes from Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. So Armilus is Rome in the form of a man. In Hebrew his name is written ארמלס.

These books tell a dramatic story:

• Mashiach ben Yosef gathers Israel and wins back Jerusalem.

• Armilus rises and gathers the nations.

• Armilus claims to be God. The Midrash has him say to the nations: “I am your Messiah; I am your god.”

• Armilus kills Mashiach ben Yosef.

• Then Mashiach ben David comes and defeats Armilus.

How does he defeat him? The Aramaic Targum on Isaiah gives the answer, and it names Armilus outright:

“With the speech of his lips he shall slay Armilus the wicked.” (Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 11:4)

Isaiah’s Hebrew says, “with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” Now listen to Paul, writing about the “man of sin”:

“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

The Targum and Paul are reading the same verse from Isaiah, and they reach the same picture. The Messiah does not need an army. He defeats the enemy with a word.

Rabbi Palvanov gives us a helpful way to understand Gog and Armilus together. Gog is the political and military enemy. He is a king who leads the armies of the nations against Jerusalem, and he fights Mashiach ben David. Armilus is the spiritual enemy. Palvanov calls him “the offspring of Samael,” and he fights Mashiach ben Yosef.

Who is Samael? It is the name Jewish tradition gives to Satan. The Midrash calls him “Samael the wicked, the head of all the satans” (Devarim Rabbah 11:10). He is the accuser who stands before the Throne and argues against Israel, while the angel Michael defends us (Shemot Rabbah 18:5). He is the one who spoke through the serpent in the Garden. The Targum says that when Eve looked at the tree, “she saw Samael, the angel of death” (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 3:6). And according to the Zohar, he is the angel of Esav, the one who wrestled with Yaakov all night by the river.

That is why the Brit Hadashah calls him “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Revelation 12:9).

Samael is not a second god. He is a created angel, and he can only go as far as Hashem allows, just as the satan in the book of Job had to ask permission. The Talmud says, “Satan, the evil inclination, and the angel of death are one” (Bava Batra 16a). The enemy outside us and the enemy inside us are the same enemy.

So Armilus is more than a bad king. He is the serpent’s power in human form. Behind him stands Samael, just as behind the Messiah stands Hashem.

Gog and Armilus may not be two different people at all. Some of the old sources even call Armilus “Gog.” They may be one man with two faces: a king who leads the armies, and a false messiah who demands to be worshipped. Just as the son of Yosef and the son of David may be one Messiah in two roles, the enemy may be one man in two roles. In heaven, Michael fights the dragon (Revelation 12:7). On earth, the Messiah fights the one the dragon sends.

In Kol HaTor, from the school of the Vilna Gaon, the midrash calls Mashiach ben Yosef by the name Ephraim, אפרים. Its gematria is 331. The gematria of ארמלס, Armilus, is also 331. Palvanov explains that the two are matched on purpose, so that one can cancel out the other. He compares it to Mashiach (משיח) and nachash, the serpent (נחש), which are both 358. The Messiah is a perfect match for the enemy he comes to defeat.

Armilus pretends to be the Messiah, so the greatest danger is not an enemy who says “I hate God.” It is an enemy who says “I am your savior.”

The oldest enemy: Amalek

Behind Gog and Armilus stands an older enemy. When Israel left Egypt, the first nation to attack was Amalek. Amalek attacked from behind, “all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary” (Deuteronomy 25:18). After the battle Moshe said:

“Because Hashem hath sworn that Hashem will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16).

Rashi notices that in this verse, both God’s throne and God’s name are written in shortened form. He explains: “The Holy One, blessed be He, swore that His name is not complete and His throne is not complete until the name of Amalek is completely wiped out.” The war with Amalek is not just a war against Israel. It is a war against the kingship of God.

Haman, the enemy in the Purim story, was “the Agagite,” a descendant of Amalek’s king. And Amalek comes from Esav’s family (Genesis 36:12).

Here Rabbi Cohen Alloro makes an important distinction. Esav is our brother, and the Torah says “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother” (Deuteronomy 23:7). The Talmud even says Esav’s head was buried in the Cave of Machpelah with the patriarchs (Sotah 13a). Esav can return. Amalek is different. Amalek is the pure spirit of hating God and His people.

The Talmud tells how Amalek began. Amalek’s mother, Timna, came from a royal family and wanted to join Avraham’s family, but she was turned away. So she became the concubine of Esav’s son Eliphaz and gave birth to Amalek:

“She came to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and they did not accept her. She went and became a concubine to Eliphaz son of Esav. She said: Better to be a maidservant to this nation than a princess to another nation. From her came Amalek, who caused Israel so much pain.” (Sanhedrin 99b)

The worst enemy came from a soul that was pushed away. That is a lesson for us too.

“Many antichrists”

Now to the word “antichrist.” Many people are surprised to learn that it appears only in the letters of John. And John does not say “one man in the future.” He says:

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time” (1 John 2:18).

John also gives a definition:

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Yeshua is the Messiah? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).

“Every spirit that confesseth not that Yeshua the Messiah is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist… and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).

So antichrist is first a spirit, one that stands against the Father and against His Messiah. It can be in many people and many movements. Paul adds that at the end it will gather in one person, “that man of sin… who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God… so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4). Does that sound familiar? It is the little horn of Daniel. It is Antiochus. It is Armilus saying, “I am your god.”

Paul states that this “man of lawlessness” is a man without Torah. The antichrist is not a Jewish Messiah. He is the enemy of the Jews and of God’s commandments.

One enemy, many faces

Put it all together, and a pattern appears.

• Pharaoh drowned Israel’s sons.

• Amalek attacked the weak.

• Haman tried to kill every Jew in one day.

• Antiochus tried to erase the Torah.

• Rome burned the Temple.

• Hitler murdered six million.

Each one had a different face. Each one had the same spirit. At the Pesach Seder we say it out loud:

“In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.” (Passover Haggadah)

The prophets say that at the end, this spirit will gather into one last enemy: Gog, Armilus, the man of sin, the beast. The names are different, but the enemy is one, and so is his end.

So should we try to figure out who the antichrist is today? Some teachers name world leaders. Every generation has done that, and so far every generation has been wrong. FFOZ gives wise advice: “Our job is not so much to recognize the specific man as it is to recognize the pattern.”

How not to be fooled

Yeshua warned: “There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24).

The Torah gave us the test long ago. Even if a prophet does real miracles, if he says “Let us go after other gods… thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet” (Deuteronomy 13:2–3). The test is not how powerful someone is. The test is whether he leads you to Hashem and His commandments, or away from them.

Think of how bank tellers learn to spot counterfeit money. They do not spend their time studying fake bills. They handle real money every day, until they know it so well that a fake feels wrong in their hands. That is how we prepare for the antichrist. We do not chase rumors. We study the real Messiah, we keep the Torah, we pray, and we love one another. When the counterfeit comes, it will not fit.

The end of the enemy

The prophet Obadiah wrote about Edom, and he ends his book like this:

“And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be Hashem’s” (Obadiah 1:21).

Notice what he does not say. He does not say Esav disappears forever. Esav is judged, and then “the kingdom shall be Hashem’s.” When Yaakov and Esav met, Yaakov promised to come to him at Seir someday (Genesis 33:14). Rashi says that visit is still in the future. It will happen “in the days of the Messiah.”

And Zechariah tells us what happens to the nations who came against Jerusalem:

“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, Hashem of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zechariah 14:16).

The same nations who marched with Gog will one day come to Jerusalem to sit in a sukkah. The seventy nations who were enemies will become the seventy nations we prayed for with seventy bulls.

That is the real end of the enemy. Hashem does not only destroy evil. He turns enemies into guests. “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah 25:8).

Chag sameach.