Scripture Queries and Answers: Peoples Associated With Israel in Latter Days

Psalm 120:5  •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 12
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Q.-Psa. 120:55Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar! (Psalm 120:5). Have you any light on the peoples so remarkably associated with Israel in the latter day? The commentators seem perplexed by these names, and without anything of moment to suggest. W.
A.-It may be fairly asked if the construction of “sojourn” does not point to “with” Meshech, rather than “in” (as Psa. 5:55The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. (Psalm 5:5) (4); as also the preposition “with” is really meant, and not “in,” the tents of Kedar. Hence it is not dwelling among these enemies that is intended, but their hostile proximity to the sobs of Israel in their land. The difficulty supposed from the one belonging to the far north, the Muscovites once inhabiting the country near the Euxine, but afterward with others migrating to the land of Magog or Russia, and the other to the north-west of Arabia in the south, is exactly what gives point to the plaint. The Psalm refers to the last part of the latter day crisis, when Gog (as in Ezek. 38; 39) comes up to crush the restored people dwelling in their unwalled villages. Little does the great and last north-eastern chief of Rosh (the Russians), Meshech (the Muscovites), and Tubal (the Tobolskians), know that Jehovah-Jesus is their King, and that he with his vast hordes, not only of Gomer and Togarmah, &c., in the north, but down to Persia, Cush, and Phut, and as here Kedar in the south, only come up to be punished for their unbelieving greed and presumption, that Jehovah may make Himself known in the eyes of many nations, at the beginning of His glorious Kingdom for a thousand years. It is of interest, one may add, that the Assyrian inscriptions connect two of the three, Mushai and Tuplai; as Herodotus much later the Moschi with the Tibarini. In the Byzantine historians, οἱ Ῥὼς is used for the Russians, the very name by which the Septuagint long before rendered the Hebrew Rosh employed by Ezekiel.