This will be our fourth Prophetic View lecture having left off with a brief stint of Ezekiel’s “Meshech” or “Meskhi” name. Both “Meshech” and “Tubal” are found in Ezekiel 38:2 as the province-cities by which their “Chief” (or “Rosh1”) prince2 named Gog to be found amongst the Colchian tribes of the Caucasus between the Euxine (Black) and Caspian Sea.
What we know of Tubal is quite a bit. Tubal is reckoned with Javan and Mesheck among the sons of Japeth (Genesis 10:2; I Chronicles 1:5). Tubal and Meshech are both associated with bringing wealth from their merchandising with Tyre. Javan, Tubal and Meshech brought slaves and copper vessels to the Phoenician markets
(Ezekiel 27:13). Tubal and Meshech are nations of the North (Ezekiel 37:15; 39:2). The great historian Josephus is his Antiquities i, 6, 1 identifies the descendants of Tubal with the Iberians (not Spaniards) which is a very ancient race located in a tract of land between the Caspian and Euxine (modern “Black Sea”) seas, which correspond to modern Georgia. Tubal and Meshech are called “Colchian” tribes.
In Greek mythology, Colchis was the name of a region in the far southeast corner of the Black Sea which is modern day Georgian (XLK) in which Georgia retains its etymological root. In Greek mythology (which carried much history), Colchis was the homeland of Medea and associated with Jason and the quest for the Golden Fleece.
1 “top”; “head”; “leader”; “peak”;
2 Nasi-’rising mist’; ‘cloud’; ‘vapour’ { *as ruler-chief-tribal chief* }.
Many scholars hold that these Iberians were the genetic group from which the eastern and western Iberian group to have been a branch of. This Iberian group was from the Turanian family.
These two Colchian tribes (Mesh. and Tub.) are mentioned together in Herodotus: first, as forming part of the nineteenth Satrapy of the Persian empire (Herodotus iii, 94) and in Xerxes’s army under Ariomardus, the son of Darius (vii, 78).
The Hebrews called the Tibareni, the Tubal. These Colchian tribes (Mesh. and Tubal) have an exhaustive amount of history that I do not have the time or energy to display here, nonetheless, we have more than ample evidence that Meshech and Tubal are sister cities that did cohabitate in the Georgian region for which we can still see their names echoed from a distant past as the modern Tbilisi (Tubal) and Meskheti (Meshech).
We are left with two more major identities in this prophecy series: Gog and Magog. We will address them next time.
