Ezekiel — who's who

Born into a priestly family in Jerusalem; deported to Babylon with King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE at approximately age twenty-five. Settled by the river Chebar (the Kabaru canal near Nippur in southern Mesopotamia) in the exile community. Called to prophecy in 593 BCE — the fifth year of his exile — by the chariot vision. Prophesies for at least twenty-two years. Married: his wife, called the desire of his eyes, dies suddenly in 588 and he is forbidden by God to make any public mourning, in symbol of the people's reaction to the destruction of the temple. Struck dumb for the early years of his vocation, recovering his speech only when news of Jerusalem's fall arrives. Performs more sustained symbolic acts with his body than any other prophet in the Hebrew Bible. Tradition holds he was eventually murdered by a fellow exile he had rebuked.

The four creatures of the opening vision of chapter 1 (identified explicitly as cherubim in chapter 10). Each has four faces — man, lion, ox, eagle — and four wings; they move straight forward without turning, directed by the spirit. Beside each creature is a wheel with a wheel within it, their rims full of eyes, moving wherever the creatures move because the spirit of the creatures is in the wheels. The founding image of the Jewish Merkavah tradition; in Christian iconography, the symbols of the four evangelists. The most visually elaborated angelic figures in the Hebrew Bible and the source of much later angelology in both Jewish and Christian traditions.

The image at the centre of the most quoted vision in the book — chapter 37. The prophet is taken to a valley full of very dry bones, asked whether they can live, told to prophesy to them. As he prophesies, the bones come together bone to its bone, sinews appear, then flesh, then skin; the breath enters them and they stand as an exceeding great army. Interpreted explicitly as the whole house of Israel. Read for two and a half thousand years as the scriptural foundation of the doctrine of bodily resurrection, and as a vision of the future restoration of Israel. Source of the spiritual Dem Bones.

The figure named in chapters 38–39: Gog, prince of the land of Magog, ruler of Meshech and Tubal, who in the latter days will lead a great coalition of nations against the restored Israel and be destroyed by direct divine action — earthquake, fire, brimstone, and a plague. The historical and geographical referents have been the subject of two thousand years of speculation. In Ezekiel he serves a structural function as the last great threat before the visionary temple, proof that God's power on the world stage is final. Invoked again in Revelation 20.

The figure who appears at the start of chapter 40 — a man whose appearance was like brass, with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed — and who guides Ezekiel through the entire visionary temple of chapters 40–48, measuring as he goes. He measures the outer wall, the gates, the courts, the temple building, the altar, the sacred chambers, and the depth of the river at successive distances. Not named; the type of the heavenly interpreter who in later apocalyptic literature (Daniel, Revelation, 4 Ezra) becomes a recognisable figure. His measuring is the vision's theology: what God has built will be measured, and what God has measured stands.

The leaders of the Jewish exile community in Babylon, who appear repeatedly sitting before Ezekiel and asking for a word from the Lord. They come to him in chapter 8 (mid-conversation the prophet is taken in vision to Jerusalem), in chapter 14 (told they carry idols in their hearts and will receive no answer while that remains true), in chapter 20 (the whole history of Israel rehearsed as continuous rebellion), and in chapter 33 (listening to the prophet's words as to a beautiful song with a lovely voice, without doing what they hear). They are not individually named or characterised; they are the community to whom the prophecy is addressed.