NOTES for Eze 1:1-28

Today, following the three-year Bible reading plan, we begin reading selected passages from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. One of the ‘major prophets’, Ezekiel was born in Judea around 622 BC and was a priest. Taken to Babylon with the first caravan of captives in 597 BC, Ezekiel lived in the settlement of Tel-abib by the river Chebar, near Nippur, one of Babylonia's religious centres. Here, by the river Chebar, God granted the prophet several visions, with which his prophetic ministry began in 592 BC. Ezekiel was about thirty years old at the time. The prophet's house in Tel-abib, like the houses of many priests in exile, became a place where the deported Jews gathered (it was from such houses of assembly during the Exile that the synagogue arose). It was probably to those who came to him that the prophet addressed his fiery sermons. When he wrote them down in a book is unknown. The prophet died around 571 BC.

The first chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel describes his first vision, which was also his call to prophetic ministry. Probably the most burning question in the prophet's spiritual life, as in that of all Israel at the beginning of the Exile, was: ‘Why?’ Why had this happened? How was it possible that the city of David, seemingly protected for ever by God's promise, had been devastated? And why had Israel, God's chosen people, failed to heed the stern warnings and calls to repentance that the Almighty addressed to them through the prophets of the late seventh and early sixth centuries? What had happened? And now an indescribable vision appears to Ezekiel, and God's glory is revealed to him as the answer to all these tormenting questions.

The radiance of God's transcendent glory, which Ezekiel tries to describe, is only the beginning of the revelation. Later the Lord will speak the word that the prophet will proclaim to his fellow Israelites and to generations to come. But it is important that he begins by describing an incredible sight. Amid the roar of the north wind, which for Israel had always symbolised God's wrath, the prophet silently contemplates a mysterious movement. The very description of Ezekiel's vision would forever shape all visual conceptions of the heavenly powers in the minds of believers. All Christian iconography of the incorporeal powers is based, in one way or another, on Ezekiel's words. Yet for his own time this description is entirely unique. The prophets of earlier times — Moses, Elijah and Isaiah — whom God had granted the privilege of contemplating His Glory, confined themselves to vague images. In the Pentateuch of Moses, God appears in darkness that the human gaze cannot penetrate. The presence of the Almighty touches Elijah like the breath of a gentle wind. Isaiah, in his own words, sees only the hem of His robes and hears the voices of incorporeal beings. Before Ezekiel, the only visible image of God's glory was the pillar of fire and cloud that went before Israel during the exodus from Egypt. Ezekiel is the first to try to use likenesses of earthly objects to describe — or, more precisely, to paint in words, as in an icon — what was revealed to him.

It is hardly possible to give a detailed interpretation of the vision of God's glory that Ezekiel describes in the first chapter. A characteristic feature of this description is its approximate nature. The prophet himself calls these images ‘likenesses’, so that we are not tempted to think that we know precisely, and have seen, the entire fullness of the Glory. Nevertheless, we can distinguish several meaningful aspects of the vision.

First and foremost is the mysterious movement taking place ‘in all four directions’ at once. Elusive in terms of iconography, this movement emphasises that the prophet sees something living: the Glory of the Living God. At the same time, this unceasing movement is revealed to him as the meaning and guiding force of all human history. He sees God coming to His people, as He promised through the prophets. Secondly, a characteristic feature of Ezekiel's vision is light, the radiance of the Godhead. This both continues the Old Testament tradition and anticipates Christ, who will be the Light of the world. Next, the prophet repeatedly uses the number four in his description. In the language of biblical numerical symbolism, this number denotes, first and foremost, all the points of the compass, the whole world. The Glory that the prophet contemplates encompasses the entire world, which appears to him as the footstool of the Almighty. Finally, for all their differences, the strange winged creatures with their many faces have one thing in common: none of them resembles a human being. Thus we find here an opposition to the anthropomorphic conception of the incorporeal powers that is so characteristic of Eastern and Hellenistic cultures. But at the centre of the vision is a mysterious humanlike figure, which the prophet describes in the final lines of the first chapter. We might say that it is not so much the prophet's vision that resembles a human being as the human being who resembles the One whose Glory was revealed to Ezekiel. This vision is partly the basis for the use by the prophet, and his successors, of the expression ‘Son of Man’, by which the Lord Jesus Christ most often refers to Himself.