1And I saw and, look, on the platform that was upon the heads of the cherubim—like the sapphire stone, like the look of the likeness of a throne was seen upon them. 2And He said to the man dressed in linen, and said, “Come between the wheels beneath the cherubim and fill your hands with fiery coals from between the cherubs and cast them over the city.” And he came in before my eyes. 3And the cherubim were standing at the right side of the house as a man enters, and the cloud filled the inner court. 4And the glory of the LORD rose up over the cherub on the threshold of the house and filled the house, and the house was filled with the radiance of the glory of the LORD. 5And the sound of the cherubim’s wings could be heard as far as the outer court, like the sound of El Shaddai when He speaks. 6And it happened when He charged the man dressed in linen, saying, “Take fire from within the wheelwork from among the cherubim,” he came and stood by the wheel. 7And the cherub reached out his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between the cherubim and carried it and gave it into the hands of the man dressed in linen, and he took it and went out. 8And there appeared on the cherubim the form of a human hand beneath their wings. 9And I saw, and, look, there were four wheels by the cherubim, a single wheel by each cherub, and the look of the wheels was like the color of chrysolite. 10And their look, a single likeness for the four of them, as a wheel is within a wheel. 11When they go, to their four sides they do go, they do not turn as they go, but to the place where the head turns, toward it they go, they do not turn as they go. 12And all their flesh and their backs and their hands and their wings and the wheels were filled with eyes all round the four of them, their wheels. 13As to the wheels, in my hearing they were called wheelwork. 14And each one had four faces. The face of one was a cherub’s face, and the face of the second was a human face, and of the third, a lion’s face, and of the fourth, an eagle’s face. 15And the cherubim rose up—these were the creatures that I had seen by the Kebar Canal. 16And when the cherubim went, the wheels went along with them, and when the cherubim lifted their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not turn either from alongside them. 17When they stood still, they, too, stood still, and when they rose, they, too, rose, for the spirit of the creatures was in them. 18And the glory of the LORD went forth from the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim. 19And the cherubim lifted their wings and rose from the ground before my eyes as they went forth, and the wheels were opposite them. And they stood still at the entrance of the eastern gate of the LORD’s house. And the glory of the God of Israel was upon them from above. 20These were the creatures that I had seen beneath the God of Israel at the Kebar Canal, and I knew that they were cherubim. 21Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings, and a likeness of human hands was beneath the wings. 22And the likeness of their faces—these were the faces that I had seen by the Kebar Canal, the same look. Each straight ahead they did go.
CHAPTER 10 NOTES
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1. like the look of the likeness of a throne. Ezekiel’s proclivity for interposing words negating the literalness of the nouns attached to the divine apparition is especially pronounced here.
2. cast them over the city. Throwing the fiery coals over the city is obviously either a symbolic prefiguration or the actual implementation of the fiery destruction that will engulf Jerusalem.
5. El Shaddai. This is an archaic—and hence usually poetic—designation of God that emphasizes His terrific power, though the etymology of the second word is disputed.
6. he came and stood by the wheel. Since in the next verse it is one of the cherubim who gives him the fiery coals, the man dressed in linen stops short of carrying out the command. David Kimchi plausibly suggests that he was afraid to reach into the wheelwork.
7. gave it into the hands of the man. No explanation is offered as to how his hands would not have been scorched. Contrast Isaiah 6:6, where a seraph needs tongs for the fiery coal.
12. four of them, their wheels. The ostensible apposition here looks awkward and “their wheels” may not belong. It must be said that there are several junctures in this description of the celestial chariot where the text looks garbled. This might even reflect a confusion on the part of the ancient scribes about what precisely was going on in this bewildering vision.
13. As to the wheels . . . they were called wheelwork. The puzzling fact is that both ʾofanim, “wheels,” and galgal, “wheelwork,” mean “wheel.” This translation follows Greenberg and the New Jewish Publication Society version in using “wheelwork” for the collective noun galgal, but that may be no more than a strategy of desperation.
14. The face of one was a cherub’s face. The description here diverges from the description in chapter 1. There, each of the creatures had four different faces. Here each appears to have four similar faces with the differences showing from one creature to the next. The face of the bull, moreover, in chapter 1 is replaced here by the face of a cherub (unless, as some have claimed, cherubs had bull faces). These discrepancies may derive from the fact that Ezekiel had two parallel but not entirely identical visions of the same celestial apparatus, or they may reflect struggles in the process of transmitting this difficult vision.
15. these were the creatures. Though the Hebrew uses a singular noun, the context requires understanding it as a collective noun.
22. the same look. The Hebrew here sounds odd: marʾeyhem weʾotam would be literally “their looks and them.” The translation is thus somewhat speculative.