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Ezekiel wasn’t the first man to see Yahweh’s glory cloud.
The Lord had descended on Sinai in a storm cloud
(Ex. 24:16). When Moses finished the tabernacle, the
cloud moved from the mountain to the Most Holy Place,
resting above the wings of the cherubim on the ark
(Ex. 40:34–35). Later, the same glory filled Solomon’s
temple, consecrating the Lord’s house (1 Kings 8:11).
The priests and elders on Sinai peered up through a
sapphire pavement to see the God of Israel and Moses
got to enter the cloud.
Mostly, Israel saw Yahweh’s glory from a distance and
from the outside; Moses didn’t record a description of the
interior.
Ezekiel is different. He gets an up-close, interior view, and he
shares it with us.
Biblical Theology of Direction
From a distance, Ezekiel sees what Israel saw, a storm wind
and a great cloud flashing with lightning and fire. Even from
a distance, he sees something “like glowing metal in the midst
of the fire” (Ezek. 1:4). As the cloud approaches, he sees
what’s inside—living beings, later identified as “cherubim”
(Ezek. 10:1). They have a human form (Ezek. 1:5), but with
bronze legs and hooved feet (Ezek. 1:6) and four wings
(Ezek. 1:6). Each cherub has four faces—the face of a bull,
a lion, an eagle, and a man (Ezek. 1:10).
These faces always face the same direction (Ezek. 1:12),
and we know which direction. The cloud comes from the
north (Ezek. 1:4), and the face at the front is the face of a
man; that means the man face faces south. To the right of
the man face is the lion face, facing west, and to the left is
the bull face, turned east. That means the eagle face must
be facing back to the north, toward the Lord’s throne at the
pole of the sphere of heaven (cf. Ps. 48:2).
Ezekiel’s directional indications may seem extraneous, but
they hint at connections with other four-corner arrangements
in the Bible. When Israel camped in the wilderness, the
12 tribes were divided into four groups, with three turned
toward each of the four cardinal directions (Num. 2).
The tabernacle was at the center of the camp, with
furnishings at each point of the compass: the bronze altar
in the courtyard to the east, the ark in the far west, the table
of showbread on the north wall of the Holy Place, and the
lampstand on the south wall. We may be tempted to think
that David-plus-three-mighty-men form a human replica
of the glory, and then we might recall that Jesus, the son
of David, also has his three: Peter, James, and John.
The parallels among these different structures are suggestive. Yahweh’s original glory includes four four-faced cherubim, each face turned in a unique direction. But Yahweh’s glory also appears as a four-cornered sanctuary, as the four-faced
nation of Israel,
as a four-man royal entourage. We might conclude that
Israel is a cherubic nation, called to stand watch at the
house of God, just as cherubim were stationed at the
gate of Eden (Gen. 3:24). We might surmise that David
and his men are glory in human form.
Yahweh’s Glory and Chariot
Beside each of the living creatures is a wheel of sparkling
beryl, wheels that move at the direction of the living
creatures, since “the spirit of the living beings was in
within wheels” is tantalizingly vague. Perhaps it means
that the wheels were spheres that could change direction
without being turned. The key point, though, is the wheels
themselves, which indicate that this cloud is also a chariot
—Yahweh’s chariot that was usually “parked” in the Most
the creatures and the wheels form Yahweh’s mobile palanquin.
We might conclude that Israel is a cherubic nation, called to stand watch at the house of God, just as cherubim were stationed at the gate of Eden.
Above the heads of the cherubim is an expanse, a
firmament gleaming like ice (Ezek. 1:22), and above
the expanse, Ezekiel sees a lapis lazuli throne, occupied
by a figure like a man made of fire and metal
(Ezek. 1:26–27). This is the heart of the vision.
The cherubim and wheels and the expanse are only
mechanisms to move the enthroned one from place to
place. At the center of the vision is Yahweh himself,
appearing as a glorified man to the prophet by the
river Chebar.
Altogether, the glory is a microcosm. Below, toward
earth, are four living creatures that represent the
main categories of land and sky creatures: wild
animals, domesticated cattle, birds, and men. Above
these is a firmament, like the expanse of the sky, and
above the sky is Yahweh’s throne. The chariot is the
original glory of God, and the world itself is modelled
after the pattern of this glory.
There is a thread of Jewish mysticism based on
Ezekiel’s chariot or “Merkabah.” It’s thought that
Ezekiel describes a path of ascent into heavenly places
to the throne of God. In Ezekiel, though, the movement
is the opposite. Instead of an ascent, he sees a descent,
the original living throne of Yahweh moving from
heaven to earth. The chariot can rise from the earth
(Ezek. 1:19), but the wheels are on the earth (Ezek. 1:15).
The chariot isn’t in the first instance a means of
mystical ascent; it’s medium for divine descent.
It doesn’t take Ezekiel up to heaven; it brings
heaven to earth.
We can get so caught up in the strange details of
Ezekiel’s vision that we miss the concrete setting.
Ezekiel sees the glory Moses and Solomon saw, but
Ezekiel doesn’t sees it on Sinai, at Shiloh, or in Jerusalem.
When Ezekiel sees the vision, in the fifth year of
Jehoiachin’s exile (Ezek. 1:2), the temple is still
standing in Jerusalem (cf. Ezek. 33:21–22). Yet the
glory isn’t in the temple. It’s with the exiles in Babylon,
who gather by the river Chebar. Something like this
has happened before. When the Philistines destroyed
the tabernacle at Shiloh, they took Yahweh’s ark back
home as a war trophy, where Yahweh made war on
Israel’s enemies (1 Sam. 4–6). It happens again in
Ezekiel’s time. Yahweh’s departure from the temple
is a judgment on Judah, but it’s also an act of compassion.
When Yahweh sends Israel into exile, he packs up and
heads into exile with them. He enters Babylonian territory
riding on his war chariot, on the wings of the cherubim.
True Prophet’s Prophetic
Commission
To get the full effect of the vision, we need to see that
Ezekiel 1 is only the first of a three-chapter sequence,
during which Ezekiel is commissioned as a prophet.
When Ezekiel sees the vision, he falls like a dead man
(Ezek. 1:28). A voice from the throne revives him
(Ezek. 2:1), the Spirit enters him, he eats a book,
and then he’s sent out to speak the words of Yahweh and
stand as a watchman over the house of Israel
(Ezek. 3:16–21). Like Isaiah’s vision of glory (Isa. 6),
Ezekiel’s is part of his ordination as prophet. It’s a fitting
prelude to a prophetic commission. A prophet is someone
with access to Yahweh’s judgment hall and his divine
council (Jer. 23:18–22). Ezekiel glimpses the interior of the
throne room because Yahweh is about to invite him to take
his place among the living creatures.
“The heavens opened,” Ezekiel tells us (Ezek. 1:1). It’s
a remarkable rare occurrence in Scripture. In the Old
Testament, the heavens typically open so Yahweh can rain
his blessings on Israel (Deut. 28:12; Ps. 78:23; Mal. 3:10).
But the heavens open to welcome Ezekiel, the
“son of man” (Ezek. 2:1, 3, 8; 3:1, 3, 4, 10; etc.). And
centuries later, the heavens split open again as another
prophet, another “Son of Man,” is commissioned at the
age of 30 to see visions of God (Luke 3:21-24;
cf. Ezek. 1:1). Jesus is the Prophet (Luke 4:24; 7:16; 24:19),
but he’s more than a prophet. He’s both commissioned
prophet and commissioning glory, both Son of Man
and the fiery One who sits on Yahweh’s throne in
the midst of the living creatures. He’s the living
chariot of God, come from heaven to live among exiles,
his face shining with the light of God’s glory.
