1And it happened in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth of the month, that I was among the exiles by the Kebar Canal, and I saw divine visions. 2On the fifth of the month, which was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin, 3the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel son of Buzi the priest in the land of the Chaldeans, by the Kebar Canal, and the hand of the LORD was upon him there. 4And I saw, and, look, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud, and fire flashing, and radiance all round it, and from within it like the appearance of amber from within the fire. 5And from within it the likeness of four living creatures, and this was their look—the likeness of a human being they had. 6And each had four faces and four wings to each of them. 7And their legs were straight legs, and the soles of their feet like the soles of a calf’s foot, and they glittered like the look of burnished bronze. 8And there were human hands beneath their wings on their four sides. And the faces and the wings of the four of them 9were joined to each other. Their wings did not turn as they went; each went straight ahead. 10And the likeness of their faces—the face of a human and the face of a lion on the right of the four of them, and the face of a bull to the left of the four of them, and the face of an eagle to the four of them. 11And their faces and their wings were separated from above for each—two were joined for each and two covered their bodies. 12And each went straight ahead: wherever the spirit was to go, they would go; they did not turn as they went. 13And the likeness of the creatures, their look, was like burning coals of fire, like the look of torches going back and forth among the creatures, and the fire had a radiance, and from the fire lightning came forth. 14And the creatures were racing back and forth like the look of sparks. 15And I saw the creatures, and look, one wheel was on the ground by the creature on its four sides. 16The look of the wheels and their fashioning were like chrysolite, and a single likeness the faces of them had, and their look and their fashioning as when a wheel is within a wheel. 17On their four sides as they went they would go. They did not turn as they went. 18As for their rims, they were high and they were fearsome, and their rims were filled with eyes, all round the four of them. 19And when the creatures went, the wheels went with them, and when the creatures lifted up above the ground, the wheels lifted up. 20Wherever the spirit was there to go, there they went [there the spirit to go], and the wheels lifted up along with them, for the spirit of the creature was in the wheels. 21When they went, they would go. When they stood still, they would stand still, and when they lifted up above the ground, the wheels would lift up along with them, for the spirit of the creature was in the wheels. 22And there was a likeness over the heads of the beasts—a platform like the appearance of the fearsome ice stretched over their heads above. 23And beneath the platform their wings stood straight and toward each other, each had two covering them, covering their body. 24And I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the sound of Shaddai, as they went, like the sound of an uproar, like the sound of an armed camp. When they stood still, their wings grew slack. 25And there was a sound above the platform that was over their heads. When they stood still, their wings slackened. 26And above the platform that was over their heads, it was like the look of sapphire stone—the likeness of a throne, and above the likeness of the throne, like a human form upon it above. 27And I saw like the appearance of amber, like the look of fire within it all round—from the look of his loins above and from the look of his loins below I saw like the look of fire with radiance all round. 28Like the look of the rainbow that is in the clouds on a day of rain, this was the look of the radiance all round, the look of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And I saw and fell on my face and heard a voice speaking—
CHAPTER 1 NOTES
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1. in the thirtieth year. What this refers to has stumped scholars. One proposal is that it is the thirtieth year of Ezekiel’s life.
divine visions. Or, “visions of God.” But most of the vision here is devoted to the divine “chariot,” with the figure of God introduced only toward the end, so “divine” may be a more apt translation.
2. the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin. He was exiled with a substantial group of Judahites, by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C.E., when Judah was reduced by Babylonia to a vassal state. The clear implication is that Ezekiel was among those deported to Babylonia in 597. The beginning of his prophecy overlaps with the last decade of Jeremiah’s prophecy; he would have been a generation younger, Jeremiah having begun his mission in the 620s.
3. the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel. Since the book begins in the first person and then continues here in the first person, this third-person reference to the prophet may reflect an editorial intervention.
4. a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud, and fire flashing, and radiance all round it. These accoutrements of epiphany are traditional in the Bible: in many different texts, from Exodus to Psalms, God reveals himself in fire and lightning and cloud. Nevertheless, this prophecy is strikingly innovative in form. First, it combines the pyrotechnic paraphernalia of divine revelation with imagery evidently borrowed from sundry Mesopotamian sources—the wheeled throne, the four faces of the creatures like the four faces of the Babylonian god Marduk, the iconic animals. Isaiah in his dedication scene (Isaiah 6) glimpses the skirts of God’s robe filling the Temple and sees seraphim, but there is no direct description of God and no elaborate imagining of a celestial vehicle. One should also note that this elevated vision is cast in prose, but it is a visibly poetic prose marked by hypnotic cadences. The words do not scan as poetry, yet some of the diction is poetic. The reiterated term for “radiance,” nogah, for example, ordinarily appears only in poetic texts. Thus, Ezekiel has devised a prophetic prose-poetry that has scant precedents.
like the appearance. The preposition here could also mean “the color of.”
amber. This translation adopts one traditional equivalent for the Hebrew ḥashmal, but its precise identity is elusive. It would seem to be some sort of precious stone that is orange, yellow, or reddish in color.
5. likeness. This word, demut, and its complementary term, marʾeh, “look” or “appearance,” are insisted on again and again in this vision as well as in several visions that follow. The prophet wants to make clear that his report of what he has seen is of something that can be represented only by analogy: these are likenesses, appearances, analogs of things known to humankind, but not literally those things.
8–9. And the faces and the wings of the four of them were joined to each other. As the vision proceeds, it becomes progressively difficult to sort out visually what these creatures and the moving composite they make up look like. (Two and a half millennia of exegetes have labored in vain to work out all the details.) A certain bewilderment may well have been Ezekiel’s intention. There are abundant repetitions of phrases through the passage, some of them probably quite deliberate in order to create an incantatory effect, although at least a couple of them seem to be the product of scribal inadvertence.
10. lion . . . bull . . . eagle. These are all heraldic beasts associated with royalty or divinity. The fourth face is human.
11. two covered their bodies. Evidently, for modesty as with the wings of the seraphim in Isaiah 6.
14. sparks. The Hebrew bazak appears only here, but it clearly indicates some sort of flashing light. In rabbinic Hebrew, it serves as a synonym for “lightning.”
16. as when a wheel is within a wheel. The most likely reference is to concentric wheels.
18. they were high and they were fearsome. More literally, “they had height and they had fearsomeness.” The fearsome aspect of the wheels may be because they are then said to be studded, nightmarishly, with eyes. The meaning of the eyes remains mysterious. Some commentators claim they were a manifestation of all-seeing divine omniscience. Perhaps the primary effect is that they are disorienting and disturbing: these are wheels like none ever encountered by human gaze.
19. when the creatures went, the wheels went with them. The wheels are not physically attached to the creatures, but their movements are synchronized with them through a shared “spirit.”
20. [there the spirit to go]. This bracketed phrase, with its tenuous syntactic connection with the rest of the sentence, definitely looks like a mistaken scribal repetition.
21. when they lifted up above the ground, the wheels would lift up along with them. This four-sided moving structure, with wheels below and a kind of platform above, is what led tradition to call it a “chariot,” merkavah. To moderns, it may seem like a bizarrely composite hovering helicopter.
22. a platform. The Hebrew raqiʿa indicates a flat, pounded-out surface (it is derived from a verbal root that means to “pound” or “to stomp”). In Genesis 1, it is the word used for the vault of the heavens (more traditionally, “firmament”), so here it figures as a constructed equivalent of the sky. Structurally, the raqiʿa amounts to a beaten slab.
24. many waters. This phrase, recurring often in biblical literature, refers to the primordial sea or deep, with mythological overtones. Compare, for example, Psalm 93:4.
like the sound of an uproar, like the sound of an armed camp. All this emphasis on sound, after the exclusive focus on visual elements, sets the stage for God’s speech, which is introduced at the end of the chapter.
28. the look . . . of the glory of the LORD. Never before in biblical literature has God’s “glory,” kavod, been given such visual realization.