^ I think you’re referencing Ezekiel 1. It’s a complex, symbolic passage which isn’t unlike other trippy portions of the Bible that are in the apocalyptic tradition/genre. (Ezekiel 38-39 is largely apocalyptic in nature.)
Anyway, here’s Ezekiel 1:
In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.
2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— 3 the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was on him.
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
10 Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. 12 Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. 13 The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. 14 The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
15 As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. 16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
19 When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. 20 Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
22 Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. 23 Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. 24 When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
25 Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. 26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
The work was likely written around the time of the Babylonian exile and was added to and edited by later writers:
Wikipedia wrote:
The Book of Ezekiel is described as the words of Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571 BC. Most scholars today accept the basic authenticity of the book, but see in it significant additions by a school of later followers of the original prophet. According to Jewish tradition, the Men of the Great Assembly wrote the Book of Ezekiel, based on the prophet's words. While the book exhibits considerable unity and probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the very words of the prophet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_EzekielChapter 32, pages 603-604, of James L. Kugel’s book
How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now sheds some light on the purpose of the wheel of fire/chariot stuff. I underlined the main takeaways in the following quotes although it’s all relevant.
Quote:
A Movable Throne
In trying to understand the opening vision of the book of Ezekiel, modern scholars, as so often, seek to view things in terms of their historical setting—and, in this case, to connect that setting to the person of Ezekiel himself. Ezekiel was not just a priest, they point out, but most likely one of the elite Zadokites. This priestly clan traced its lineage back to Zadok, whom Solomon had made his sole high priest after banishing Abiathar (1 Kings 2:27). Thereafter, it seems, the Zadokites ran the Jerusalem temple continuously, not just in Solomon’s time, but for the next four hundred years, until the Babylonian exile. If Ezekiel was indeed a Zadokite, not only would that fit, scholars say, with what is known of his life history and with the closing vision of his book (chapters 40–48, focused on the Zadokites), but it would help explain his attitude toward the Jerusalem temple. Jeremiah may have seen the Babylonians’ destruction of the temple as an event comparable to the earlier loss of the temple at Shiloh, but for Ezekiel, any such comparison was profoundly irrelevant and perhaps sacrilegious. The Jerusalem temple was, for Ezekiel, God’s sole legitimate dwelling on earth; its destruction was thus nothing short of a cataclysm. How could He have allowed those bloodstained Babylonian boots to tramp unopposed in the very place of His earthly presence, the Holy of Holies?
Ezekiel’s apparent answer is that God was no longer there at the time. He had left, ascending into the heavens on a movable throne chariot—the same chariot that Ezekiel sees in chapter 1—long before the actual Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began. (See also Ezekiel 10 and 11, which, in a flashback, describe God’s departure from the temple.) That is why this God-bearing chariot could be seen by Ezekiel in Babylon, where he was “among the exiles by the river Chebar . . . in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin” (Ezek. 1:1–2), that is, in 593 BCE. Presumably, what happened was that Ezekiel, as a member of the elite, had been among the eight thousand Jews who were marched to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar after his initial incursion into Jerusalem in 598 BCE. At some point thereafter, God abandoned His temple and ascended into heaven on His chariot, following this first wave of Jewish exiles to Babylon. Indeed, it seems likely to scholars that the wheels mentioned in Ezekiel’s vision are precisely intended as an expression of mobility: God does not simply sit on a throne (as in Isaiah 6 and elsewhere), but on a throne chariot, one that moves through the air supported from underneath by four vaguely human-shaped, mythical beasts.
On the four faces in Ezekiel 1 from pages 604-605 of the same book and chapter as the previous quote:
Quote:
The Four Faces
Not long ago, archaeologists came upon an ancient pagan temple in ‘Ein Dara‘, in modern Syria. The temple, which was perhaps built in the eighth century BCE, has shed some light on one aspect of Ezekiel’s vision of God’s throne chariot. In the excavated lower court, archaeologists unearthed the figures of a number of hybrid creatures—human bodies topped with the nonhuman heads of an eagle or a lion—plus an ox’s head and body and a human figure with a human head. These, it will be noticed, are precisely the same four creatures mentioned by Ezekiel in his vision, “all four had a human face [in front] and a lion’s face on the right side, and the face of an ox on the left side, and an eagle’s face [in back].” That these same four, and no others, should appear at ‘Ein Dara‘ seems to scholars unlikely to be the product of coincidence. In addition, scholars have noted that these creatures all have upraised hands, as if they were supporting or carrying something—just as the four hybrid creatures in Ezekiel’s vision were supporting God’s throne chariot. How these similar elements might have entered into Ezekiel’s vision is something of a mystery; as best anyone knows, he never was at ‘Ein Dara‘, and in any case, the temple had been destroyed by the time of his birth. It was apparent—to these scholars, in any case—what Ezekiel saw was neither pure fancy nor extraterrestrial reality, but a vision rooted in a long-established ancient Near Eastern iconography (and not one exclusively associated with Israel’s God!).
All that is to demonstrate that the “vision” and imagery in Ezekiel is rooted in the beliefs, motivations, environments, and literary traditions of the priestly writers. They didn’t envision God as an abstract concept, unlike some Bible writers, but as a being who moves around in physical space. It was just part of a very ancient tradition of belief that doesn’t necessitate the presence of anything supernatural.
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“Tú, que me lees, ¿estás seguro de entender mi lenguaje?” — Jorge Luis Borges
18 Jan 2025, 10:44 am
