Most people think Gog will come from Turkey or Russia.  We're told in Ezekiel 38:6 that Gog will come from

• "the North Quarters" (King James)
• "the uttermost parts of the North" (JPS)
• "the recession of Zaphon" (New American Bible)
• "the remote parts of the North" (NASB)
• "the far North" (NIV)
• "the sides of the North" (YLT)

Why can't translators agree on how to word this?  The Hebrew phrase is "ירכתי צפון".  Let me break these two words down.

• "ירכתי" means rear part of something.  Of course, to define "rear", one must define a direction one is facing.
• "צפון" is ambiguous without vowels. 
• "Zaphon"/"Zaphan" means "North"
• "Zaphoon"/"Zaphune" means "hidden"

The translators of the New American Bible probably realized that there was some ambiguity here as to whether this meant that Gog would come from the North or from some hidden place, so they simply left it transliterated as "Zaphon", leaving the English reader to wonder where "Zaphon" is.

So will Gog come from the "rear part of the North" or "The rear part of a hidden location?"  It really is not clear which.

And what does "rear part" mean when attached to this.  Some people have concluded that it means the farthest point North possible.  Or if we go with the "hidden" interpretation, the most hidden part of that.  But that is not necessarily the case.  In Psalm 48:3, Tzion / Zion is described as located in "ירכתי צפון" / "the rear part of the North/Hidden Place".

One thing I can say for sure is that the King James blew it here.  "Northern Quarters" would simply mean anywhere in the northward direction.  the 4 "quarters" are East, North, West and South, so "Northern Quarters" is simply "Northern", and if that is what the text was saying, it could have left the word "ירכתי" completely out of the text. 

Is it possible that Gog will come from the South, and most of our English translations, including the King James, (but excluding the New American Bible), simply misunderstood the text?  Yes, it is possible.  That is part of the problem with reading the Bible in English and why we'd all benefit from learning Hebrew and trying to bring our understanding to where the Bible is instead of trying to bring the Bible to where our understanding is.

Shalom,

Joe