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Magic and SorceryAid to Bible Understanding
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superstition and fear. The apocryphal book of Tobit contains absurd passages of magic-working sorcery.—Tobit 6:5, 8, 9, 19; 8:2, 3; 11:8-15; 12:3; see APOCRYPHA (Tobit).
The nation of Israel was, therefore, unlike their contemporaries in this respect, and in order that they might remain so, Jehovah gave his people some very explicit laws concerning those who were intimate with the occult powers. “You must not preserve a sorceress alive.” (Ex. 22:18) “You must not practice magic.” “As for a man or woman in whom there proves to be a mediumistic spirit or spirit of prediction, they should be put to death without fail.” (Lev. 19:26; 20:27) “There should not be found in you . . . a practicer of magic or anyone who looks for omens or a sorcerer, or one who binds others with a spell or anyone who consults a spirit medium.”—Deut. 18:10-14.
Jehovah’s prophet also declared that God would cut off all those who indulged in sorceries. (Mic. 5:12) Certain individuals such as Saul, Jezebel and Manasseh, who forsook Jehovah and turned to sorceries of one kind or another, are examples of the past not to be copied.—1 Sam. 28:7; 2 Ki. 9:22; 2 Chron. 33:1, 2, 6.
The Christian Greek Scriptures also tell of the prevalence of sorcerers throughout the Roman Empire in the days of Jesus and the apostles. On the island of Cyprus there was such a one named Bar-Jesus, whom Paul denounced as “full of every sort of fraud and every sort of villainy, . . . son of the Devil.” (Acts 13:6-11) There were others, however, such as Simon of Samaria who gave up their magic-working practices and embraced Christianity. (Acts 8:5, 9-13) On one occasion in Ephesus, “quite a number of those who practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them up before everybody. And they calculated together the prices of them and found them worth fifty thousand pieces of silver [perhaps more than $8,000].” (Acts 19:18, 19) Writing to those in Galatia, the apostle Paul included spiritistic occultism among “the works of the flesh,” warning them “that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.” (Gal. 5:19-21) Outside that glorious kingdom will be all those who persist in these Babylonish practices. (Rev. 21:8; 22:15) Together with Babylon the Great, so notorious for misleading the nations by her sorceries, they will all be destroyed.—Rev. 18:23; see POWER, POWERFUL WORKS.
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MagistrateAid to Bible Understanding
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MAGISTRATE
Under the government of Babylon police magistrates were civil officers in the jurisdictional districts who were learned in the law and exercised limited judicial authority. They were among the officials gathered to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold.—Dan. 3:2, 3.
In Roman colonies, the administration of government was in the hands of civil magistrates, generally known in Latin as duumviri. There could be three, four, usually five, or even ten or twelve making up the magisterial board. These had the duties of keeping order, administering finances, trying and judging law violators and ordering the execution of punishment. Sometimes their names and titles appear on coins issued by a city. Constables, or lictors, were assigned to them to carry out their orders.—See CONSTABLE.
The civil magistrates in the Roman colony of Philippi (Acts 16:12), without a trial, had Paul and Silas put into stocks. The next day, hearing that they were Roman citizens, the magistrates sent constables to release them. But Paul, in order to give public and legal vindication to the good news that he preached, demanded that the magistrates personally release them. The magistrates, fearing trouble with Rome over flogging Roman citizens, entreated Paul and Silas and released them.—Acts 16:19-39.
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MagogAid to Bible Understanding
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MAGOG
(Maʹgog).
A son of Japheth and grandson of Noah. His name appears among the family heads from whom the initial national groups were dispersed about the earth following the Flood.—Gen. 10:1, 2, 5; 1 Chron. 1:5.
The name thereafter occurs in Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the stormlike attack by “Gog of the land of Magog” against Jehovah’s regathered people. It, therefore, appears to be used by the prophet to indicate a land or region in “the remotest parts of the north,” out of which Gog’s host comes forth, his plundering forces described as “riding on horses, a great congregation, even a numerous military force” employing sword and bow.—Ezek. 38:2-4, 8, 9, 13-16; 39:1-3, 6.
From the time of the Jewish historian Josephus the “land of Magog” has been suggested to relate to the fierce Scythian tribes found in NE Europe and Central Asia. Classical writers of Greek and Roman times described the Scythians as northern barbarians, rapacious and warlike, equipped with large cavalry forces, well armored, and skilled with the bow. While the name “Scythian” may originally derive from “Ashkenaz,” another descendant of Japheth (Gen. 10:2, 3), the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1959 ed., Vol. 20, p. 235) states that “throughout classical literature Scythia generally meant all regions to the north and northeast of the Black Sea, and a Scythian (Skuthes) any barbarian coming from those parts.” Other authorities likewise show that the term “Scythian” was used rather flexibly to embrace generally the nomadic tribes N of the Caucasus (the region between the Black and Caspian Seas), similar to the modern use of the term “Tartar.” Hence The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Vol. V, p. 14) comments: “The name ‘Scythians’ was among the ancients an elastic appellation, and so was the Hebrew ‘Magog.’”
SYMBOLIC USE
The fact that the definite location of the “land of Magog” is left uncertain and indeterminate to us in the Bible (as well as in secular history), along with the prophet’s reference to “the final part of the years” (Ezek. 38:8) and the fact that the described invasion is not known to have taken place literally upon Israel, provides the basis for viewing the prophecy as relating to a future time in the Biblical ‘time of the end.’ Thus many commentators see in it a forecast of the final attack of the world powers upon the kingdom of God, and the land of Magog as representing “the world as hostile to God’s people and kingdom.”—A New Standard Bible Dictionary by Jacobus, Lane and Zenos, p. 307.
As shown in the article on GOG (which see), the land of Magog manifestly has a symbolic significance. The fact that the term “Scythian,” with which Magog is usually associated, came to be used as a synonym for that which is brutal and degraded would logically seem to point to a fallen state or position of debasement, analogous to the position assigned to Satan and his angels following the war in heaven from which debased position he wrathfully wages “war with the remaining ones of [the woman’s] seed,” as described at Revelation 12:7-17.
The final appearance of the term “Magog” is at Revelation 20:8, and here the connection with God’s prime adversary, Satan the Devil, is plainly stated. However, the vision here differs in that it relates events to occur, not in the ‘time of the end,’ but at the close of the thousand-year reign of Christ Jesus and subsequent to the loosing of Satan from the abyss. Rather than a particular land or location, “Gog and Magog” here is used to describe those on earth who yield to the released Adversary’s influence and rebel against God’s rule as expressed through “the holy ones and the beloved city.”—Rev. 20:3, 7-10.
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