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Ezekiel's vision of God in his chariot is confusing and a little disorienting. But it's actually a display of his mercy and compassion on Israel.

Bible & Theology What’s Going on with Ezekiel’s Vision? August 29, 2020 | Peter Leithart © iStock Share Share Post Post Email Advertise on TGC More By Peter Leithart Assessing the Ministry of Tim Keller Hamas Is Borrowing Tactics from the Amalekites On My Shelf: Life and Books with Peter Leithart Why Kings Sing: A Biblical Theology of Monarchs and Music The Ten Commandments Make Life . . . Livable Editors’ note: Take part in TGC’s Read the Bible initiative, where we’re encouraging Christians and churches to read together through God’s Word in a year. 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. Advertise on TGC 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. Ezekiel’s directional indications may seem extraneous, but they hint at connections with other four-corner arrangements in the Bible. 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 the wheels” (Ezek. 1:21). The famous phrase “wheels 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 Holy Place of the temple (cf. 1 Chron. 28:18). Together, 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 micro...