Ezekiel, the Psalms
With Reflections on Singapore’s Geopolitical Exposure
A Contextual Analysis | February 2026
I. Introduction: War at the Edge of Prophecy
The February 2026 military escalation between the United States and Iran — marked by two carrier strike groups converging on the Persian Gulf, B-2 bombers on elevated alert, and diplomatic channels narrowing by the hour — invites not only strategic analysis but theological interrogation. For readers of the Hebrew Bible, the geography of this conflict is not incidental: the plains of Persia (ancient Iran), the highlands of Israel, and the contested seas of the Eastern Mediterranean form the very landscape upon which the prophetic imagination of Ezekiel and the lament traditions of the Psalms were constructed.
This contextualization draws on canonical biblical texts — principally Ezekiel 38–39 (the Gog-Magog oracle) and selected Psalms of national lament and divine sovereignty — to illuminate structural resonances between ancient prophetic literature and contemporary geopolitical crisis. It does not argue for a literal fulfillment of prophecy, but rather demonstrates how biblical typologies, images of divine warfare, and the theology of international order remain hermeneutically productive for interpreting the present moment. A concluding section addresses Singapore’s distinctive vulnerability as a small, trade-dependent state caught within the tremors of great-power confrontation.
II. Ezekiel and the Theater of Eschatological Warfare
A. The Gog-Magog Oracle: Ezekiel 38–39
The most structurally resonant passage in Ezekiel for the present crisis is the oracle against Gog of the land of Magog (Ezekiel 38–39), widely regarded as one of the most elaborate prophetic texts in the Hebrew canon. Composed likely in the sixth century BCE during the Babylonian exile, the oracle envisions a coalition of northern and eastern powers descending upon a restored Israel:
Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshek and Tubal; prophesy against him and say: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, Gog… I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army. — Ezekiel 38:2–4 (NIV)
The coalition includes Persia (פָּרַס, Paras) — explicitly named in Ezekiel 38:5 — alongside Ethiopia (Cush) and Libya (Put), nations marshalled against a peaceable Israel living in unwalled villages. The theological architecture of the oracle is significant: God himself is described as the agent who draws Gog into the conflict, deploying the adversary as an instrument through which divine sovereignty over history will be made visible.
The parallel to 2026 is striking in its inversions as much as its congruences. In Ezekiel’s vision, Persia (Iran) is among the attacking forces; in the present crisis, it is Iran that faces imminent assault from a technologically superior coalition. Yet the theological pattern — a great power conflict centered on the land of Israel, with catastrophic military consequences and the involvement of a distant imperial hegemon — resonates powerfully across the centuries. The text’s insistence that such conflicts occur within a providential economy (‘I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws’) raises questions that secular geopolitical analysis is structurally unable to address.
B. Ezekiel’s Theology of National Accountability
Beyond the Gog-Magog oracle, Ezekiel’s broader prophetic corpus is animated by a rigorous theology of national accountability. In Ezekiel 25–32, the prophet delivers oracles against seven foreign nations — including Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt — each condemned for specific acts of pride, violence, or exploitation of Israel’s vulnerability. The structural logic of these oracles implies a moral order operating at the international level: nations are not exempt from divine judgment simply because they are powerful or distant.
This framework speaks directly to the ethical ambiguities of the 2026 escalation. The United States, having already struck Iran in June 2025 and declared its nuclear program ‘obliterated,’ now contemplates a second campaign with objectives that, as the Straits Times report notes, remain ‘less clear.’ Ezekiel’s prophetic ethics would scrutinize such ambiguity: the prophet consistently condemns violence conducted without adequate moral justification, and reserves particular censure for nations that exploit moments of weakness in others (cf. Ezekiel 25:3, where Ammon is condemned for rejoicing over Jerusalem’s fall).
Because you said Aha! over my sanctuary when it was desecrated, and over the land of Israel when it was laid waste… I will stretch out my hand against you. — Ezekiel 25:3 (NIV)
The theological point is not that Iran is blameless — Ezekiel would find Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for proxy violence no less troubling — but that Ezekiel’s moral universe admits no nation to a position of unconditional righteousness in the theater of international conflict.
III. The Psalms: Lament, Sovereignty, and the Nations
A. Psalms of National Lament
The Psalter’s tradition of national lament — concentrated in texts such as Psalms 44, 74, 79, and 83 — provides the emotional and theological grammar for communities caught within the machinery of great-power warfare. These psalms were composed in contexts of military defeat and national catastrophe, yet their vocabulary speaks with uncanny precision to the condition of smaller nations in 2026 watching two powers maneuver toward war.
“O God, why have you rejected us forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? Remember the nation you purchased long ago… your enemies roar in the place where you met with us.” — Psalm 74:1–4 (NIV)
Psalm 83 is particularly relevant to the present regional configuration. It envisions a coalition of nations surrounding Israel with the explicit intention of destruction: ‘Come, they say, let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more’ (Psalm 83:4). The nations named — including Assyria, Moab, Ammon, and the Ishmaelites — map loosely onto the present configuration of regional actors, and the psalm’s appeal to divine intervention against overwhelming odds captures the existential logic of Israeli strategic thinking in 2026.
“With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you — the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites…” — Psalm 83:5–6 (NIV)
B. Psalms of Divine Sovereignty Over the Nations
Over against the laments stand the enthronement psalms and the psalms of divine sovereignty — Psalms 46, 47, 96, 97, and 99 — which assert YHWH’s governance over international affairs with remarkable confidence. Psalm 46, which bears the superscription ‘A Song of Ascents’ and likely served a liturgical function during periods of military threat, offers one of the most theologically dense reflections on warfare in the entire canon:
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. — Psalm 46:9–10 (NIV)
The psalm’s famous call to stillness (‘Be still, and know that I am God’) is not quietism but theological confidence: the cessation of warfare is depicted as a divine act, not primarily a human political achievement. The image of broken bows, shattered spears, and burning shields — weapons of mass destruction in the ancient Near Eastern context — resonates with uncanny force when read alongside reports of B-2 bombers, F-35s, and THAAD missile defense systems converging on the Persian Gulf.
Psalm 2, one of the royal psalms and widely read in Christian tradition as messianic, offers a related but distinct perspective. Its opening verses depict the futility of international conspiracy against God’s purposes: ‘Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the LORD and against his anointed’ (Psalm 2:1–2). The psalm’s confidence is eschatological — the nations’ machinations are ultimately futile not because they fail politically in every instance, but because they operate within a sovereignty that encompasses and transcends them.
“The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath.” — Psalm 2:4–5 (NIV)
IV. Intertextual Resonances: Biblical Typology and 2026
Several specific correspondences between the biblical texts and the 2026 crisis merit scholarly attention, while acknowledging the methodological dangers of over-literalizing typological readings.
First, the Ezekielian motif of the ‘hook in the jaw’ (Ezekiel 38:4) — divine compulsion drawing reluctant actors into catastrophic conflict — finds structural resonance in the analysis offered by Iran scholar Vali Nasr, cited in the Straits Times report: ‘Diplomacy may give the US more time to get its military ready, but it also gives Iran more time to plan its retaliation. Ultimately, the President has to weigh the cost of attacking Iran. Ironically his approach has made those costs more likely.’ The ironic entrapment of actors within a dynamic they cannot fully control echoes the prophetic conviction that history contains an agency exceeding human calculation.
Second, the Ezekielian emphasis on unwalled villages (Ezekiel 38:11) — the vulnerability that invites attack — resonates with the condition of smaller states in the region, including those in the Gulf Cooperation Council, who have no meaningful military deterrent against either US or Iranian power and whose urban populations are clustered in precisely the kind of dense, exposed settlements that Ezekiel’s imagery evokes.
Third, the Psalter’s theology of divine restraint — the conviction that God can and does ‘make wars cease’ — provides a counter-narrative to the seemingly inexorable logic of military escalation. The report notes that Trump ‘has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed,’ a pause that, in the psalmic imagination, might represent the space in which other outcomes remain possible.
V. Singapore’s Exposure: A Small State in the Shadow of Great-Power War
A. Strategic Vulnerability
Singapore’s geopolitical exposure to the US–Iran crisis of 2026 is substantial and operates across multiple registers — economic, diplomatic, and existential. As a city-state whose entire developmental model depends on the free flow of global trade, Singapore is acutely sensitive to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil supply passes. Any sustained military conflict in the Persian Gulf would immediately affect shipping routes, energy prices, and the operational costs of Singapore’s port — the second-busiest in the world by cargo tonnage.
The Straits Times report, published in Singapore’s newspaper of record, reflects this anxiety through its careful enumeration of US military assets: two carrier strike groups, dozens of refuelling tankers, 50+ additional fighter jets, Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems. For Singapore’s policymakers, these are not abstract strategic facts — they are the preconditions for either a managed deterrence or an uncontrolled regional conflagration that would reshape the global economy overnight.
B. The ASEAN Diplomatic Tradition and Biblical Parallels
Singapore’s traditional response to great-power competition has been to cultivate what former Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam called ‘global city’ diplomacy: maintaining equidistant relationships with competing powers, championing multilateral institutions, and insisting on the rule of law in international affairs. This posture finds an unexpected parallel in certain psalmic traditions — the theology of the ‘righteous remnant’ or the small community that survives between great powers through wisdom, moral clarity, and trust in a sovereignty that transcends brute force.
Psalm 20, a psalm of national intercession before battle, captures something of this orientation: ‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm’ (Psalm 20:7–8). Singapore, which maintains a military capability disproportionate to its size but has never sought strategic primacy, embodies a version of this realist-yet-principled disposition.
“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” — Psalm 20:7 (NIV)
C. Economic and Social Consequences
A US–Iran military conflict of the scope described in the Straits Times — involving two carrier strike groups, B-2 bombers, and potential strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure and nuclear sites — would produce immediate consequences for Singapore across several domains. The oil price shock from a Hormuz disruption would feed directly into Singapore’s import-dependent economy, raising energy costs, transport costs, and inflationary pressures simultaneously. Singapore’s status as a major refining and petrochemical hub (Jurong Island) means it would face both upstream supply disruptions and downstream demand contractions.
The financial sector — a pillar of Singapore’s economy — would face acute stress from risk-off sentiment, flight to safe-haven assets, and the potential freezing of capital flows involving Iranian-adjacent parties. Singapore’s substantial Muslim minority population (approximately 15% of citizens) would face the social pressure of a conflict that is simultaneously geopolitical, civilizational, and theological in its resonances — a community asked to hold together national loyalty, regional solidarity, and religious identity under conditions of extraordinary stress.
The biblical tradition of lament — particularly the communal psalms of Asaph (Psalms 73–83), composed in contexts of national trauma and theological bewilderment — offers resources for communities navigating exactly this kind of multidimensional crisis. The lament psalms do not resolve the tension between faith and suffering; they hold it open, making space for honest grief alongside persistent hope. Singapore’s multicultural, multireligious character means that its communities will process such a crisis through diverse but partially overlapping traditions, of which the biblical tradition is one significant strand.
VI. Conclusion: Ancient Texts in a Burning Present
The convergence of US and Iranian forces in February 2026 is, at one level, a story about carrier strike groups, uranium enrichment thresholds, and the decision calculus of a president who ‘ran for office promising to keep the US out of wars.’ At another level — the level at which Ezekiel and the psalmists operated — it is a story about the moral order of nations, the entrapment of human actors within historical dynamics that exceed their control, and the recurring human failure to choose wisdom over force.
Ezekiel’s Gog-Magog oracle ends not with the triumph of any human coalition but with the earth itself conspiring in the overthrow of the aggressor: ‘I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Sovereign LORD. Every man’s sword will be against his brother’ (Ezekiel 38:21). The Psalms of sovereignty — Psalms 46, 96, 99 — resolve their dramatic tension not through political calculation but through the proclamation of a divine governance that neither Washington nor Tehran has the capacity to control.
For Singapore — small, exposed, dependent, and deeply invested in the international order that a US–Iran war would shatter — these ancient texts offer neither false comfort nor facile prophecy. What they offer is a vocabulary for navigating catastrophe with moral seriousness: the language of lament for what cannot be prevented, the language of accountability for those who choose war, and the language of sovereignty for those who must somehow continue to believe that history has a direction beyond the next air strike.
“The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice.” — Psalm 97:1 (NIV)
Select Bibliography
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