Ezekiel 1

The chapter opens with a precise date — the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's captivity, the fourth month, the fifth day — and a precise location: Ezekiel ben Buzi, priest, is among the exiles by the river Chebar in Chaldea. This is 593 BCE, approximately eleven years before the final destruction of Jerusalem. The prophet sees the heavens open — the formal mark of a call vision — and a great storm cloud approaches from the north, with fire flashing and a brightness around it. Out of the fire emerge four living creatures in human form, each with four faces (a man, a lion, an ox, an eagle) and four wings, with straight legs and hooves like a calf's. They move in straight lines, directed by the spirit, and fire moves between them like torches.

Beside each living creature is a wheel, and each wheel contains a second wheel set at right angles — a device that allows motion in any direction without turning. The rims of the wheels are tall and full of eyes. The creatures and the wheels move together, guided by the same spirit. Above the creatures is a firmament like crystal; beneath the firmament their wings are stretched out toward one another. Above the firmament is a throne like sapphire, and on the throne the likeness of a human figure, glowing like amber and fire above and below. A rainbow surrounds the brightness. Ezekiel identifies the whole as the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord, falls on his face, and hears a voice speaking. The vision establishes the book's governing image: the kavod, the divine glory, is mobile, present in exile, and of an order of strangeness that language can only approach by accumulating likenesses.