What happens if you intake pure magnesium?
Because like a lot of material we need the ion not the pure form. Pure sodium is explosive metal and pure chlorine is horribly toxic gas but change them into their ionic form and they are essential nutrients, sodium chloride, table salt. 

In the case of magnesium however the problems one of reactivity and absorption. If you swallowed a solid lump of magnesium, not much will happen, the molarity of stomach acid is fairly low, it reacts too slowly to get significant amount of magnesium (or hydrogen) out of it before it passes. Your body just is not equipped to break down solid magnesium since it does not occur naturally often. We can only absorb it in it's ionized state.

More importantly we take in some ion combinations better than others, this is called bio-availability and is influenced by a number of factors. Magnesium oxide for instance has very low absorption rates and basically just passes through without doing much, while magnesium glycinate has a fantastic absorption rate, some combinations can actually be mildly toxic like magnesium sulfate. This is a reoccurring issue with dietary supplements many do not contain bioavailable forms of the mineral they list, which is how people can end up with deficiencies even while taking supplements for that mineral.