In modern times they remain associated with apocalyptic thinking, especially in Israel and the Muslim world. Some contemporary Muslim historians and geographers regarded the Vikings as the emergence of Gog and Magog. They appear in the Quran in chapter Al-Kahf as Yajuj and Majuj ( Arabic: يَأْجُوجُ وَمَأْجُوجُ Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj), primitive and immoral tribes that were separated and barriered off by Dhul-Qarnayn (possessor of the Two Horns, traditionally regarded by some to be Alexander the Great) who is mentioned in the Quran as a great righteous ruler and conqueror. The conflation of Gog and Magog with the legend of Alexander and the Iron Gates was disseminated throughout the Near East in the early centuries of the Christian and Islamic era. They have also been depicted on Medieval cosmological maps, or mappae mundi, sometimes alongside Alexander's wall. Gog and Magog are said to engage in human cannibalism in the romances and derived literature. In one version, 'Goth and Magothy' are kings of the Unclean Nations, driven beyond a mountain pass by Alexander, and blocked from returning by his new wall. The legend of Gog and Magog and the gates were also interpolated into the Alexander romances. Throughout the Middle Ages, they were variously identified as the Vikings, Huns, Khazars, Mongols, Turanians or other nomads, or even the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. In the hands of Early Christian writers they became apocalyptic hordes. Romanized Jewish historian Josephus knew them as the nation descended from Magog the Japhetite, as in Genesis, and explained them to be the Scythians.

Christianity's interpretation is more starkly apocalyptic: making Gog and Magog, here indicating nations rather than individuals, allies of Satan against God at the end of the millennium, as described in the Book of Revelation.Ī legend was attached to Gog and Magog by the time of the Roman period, that the Gates of Alexander were erected by Alexander the Great to repel the tribe. Jewish eschatology viewed Gog and Magog as enemies to be defeated by the Messiah, which would usher in the age of the Messiah. The Gog prophecy is meant to be fulfilled at the approach of what is called the ' end of days ', but not necessarily the end of the world. In Ezekiel 38, Gog is an individual and Magog is his land in Genesis 10, Magog is a man and eponymous ancestor of a nation, but no Gog is mentioned and centuries later Jewish tradition changed Ezekiel's 'Gog from Magog' into 'Gog and Magog'. ˈ m ɑː ɡ oʊ ɡ/ Hebrew: גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג, Gōg ū-Māgōg) appear in the Hebrew Bible as individuals, tribes, or lands.

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