A. Introduction
1. Ezekiel in captivity
● The skies were opened and I saw visions of God when I was among the captives by the River Chebar in the thirty-first year, in the fourth
month, on the fifth day of the month. Ezekiel’s narrative of his
prophecy is not a fairy tale from an unidentified time and location; it
occurs in the thirty-first year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day. He
was a genuine person with a real life, a real home, and extraordinary
visions of God on a real day.
● Ezekiel was most likely born in the thirty-first year. Numbers 4:3 states that priests often started serving in the temple when they were thirty
years old. This date also indicates that Ezekiel was a child during King Josiah’s reformation.
● In some ways, Ezekiel’s prophetic work served as restitution for the priestly calling that the unfortunate circumstances of exile had taken
from him. God called him to another area of employment just as his
time of ministry was about to start. The priest received a prophetic
commission.
● Ezekiel would have been born around 622, during the reign of the
godly King Josiah, if he had been thirty years old in 593. The prophet
got married in the year 600, when he was about 23 years old. At the
age of 26 and as an exile, he traveled to Babylonia with his wife. He
would have been 51 years old when the final prophecy in his book
(Ezekiel 29:17) is for the year 571. Meanwhile, when he was 37, he
would have lost his wife (24:18).
a. The Babylonian Empire overran the Kingdom of Judah in a series of assaults, and they carried away captives in three waves. I was one of the prisoners along the River Chebar.
● · 605 B.C. – Daniel and other captives were carried to Babylon after a raid on Jerusalem.
● · 597 B.C. – Jerusalem was invaded, the temple’s treasure was looted, and more prisoners were transported to Babylon.
● · 587 B.C. – Jerusalem is destroyed, and the majority of the kingdom’s inhabitants were banished.
● In the second stage, which began in 597 B.C., Ezekiel was captured. Ezekiel’s captivity is described in 2 Kings 24:12–16 as the result of a
conquest. There is no proof he ever went back to Judah.
● When Ezekiel began his prophetic career, Jerusalem’s temple still stood and was in use, and Judah was still a sovereign nation (although one that was firmly ruled by Babylon). Before Judah was fully conquered at this time, there were many false prophets in Jerusalem and Babylonia who asserted that God would deliver Judah and that those who had already been captured (like Ezekiel) would soon be released (Jeremiah 28:1-4; 29:15-28). Ezekiel’s message was intended to condemn the sinful desire to avoid the just
punishment the Babylonians would soon bring and to provide God’s people with genuine hope rather than the delusional hope of false prophets.
b. Ezekiel had these incredible visions by the river: “The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” They reportedly appeared to him as visions—mental pictures that resembled dreams when awake.
2. Ezekiel was influenced by the LORD’s word and hand.
The word of the LORD specifically came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Chebar on the fifth day of the month, which was in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity. The LORD’s hand was also upon him there.
● According to several estimates, King Jehoiachin’s imprisonment (2 Kings 24) took place in 597 B.C., ten years before the total collapse of the Kingdom of Judah. This was the fifth year of his captivity. His fifth year of captivity would have occurred five years before Jerusalem and Judah were totally destroyed.
● Ezekiel the priest received the word of the LORD specifically: Not only did Ezekiel the priest receive the word of the LORD, but it did so in an
extraordinary way—explicitly.
● Ezekiel’s name “suggests either God’s power or God’s strengthening.”
● ii. Feinberg outlined what is known about Ezekiel as a person. We are aware of:
● The significance of his name.
● He most likely was born in 627 B.C. (if his age is indicated by Ezekiel 1:1).
● He worked as a priest (Ezekiel 1:3).
● In 597 B.C., he was captured alongside King Jehoiachin. (Ezekiel 1:2; Ezekiel 33:21)
● He was at Chebar, probably a Nebuchadnezzar royal waterway (Ezekiel 1:3).
● He was wed and owned his own house (Ezekiel 8:1, 24:18).
● During his ministry, his wife passed away, and God told him not to remarry (Ezekiel 24:16-18).
● Ezekiel most likely resided with other Jewish prisoners in this city or town on the river in the land of the Chaldeans along the River Chebar.
● There, the LORD’s hand was upon him, and Ezekiel experienced God’s word in a unique way (expressly). Because of the LORD’s hand being upon him, he was also specifically God’s agent or ambassador.
B. The living things and God in Ezekiel’s vision.
1. The gust of wind from the north.
When I turned to look, I saw a whirlwind emerging from the north, a large cloud surrounding itself with a raging fire, and brightness radiating out of the fire’s center in the color of amber.
● An approaching whirlwind, resembling a tornado, was coming from the north, as seen by Ezekiel. The north is frequently connected to God’s wrath on Israel through its formidable foes and captivity (Jeremiah 1:14–15).
● The whirlwind Ezekiel saw was compared to the grand conceptions of God’s presence: a huge cloud with blazing fire devouring itself. The manifestation of God’s presence with Israel throughout the wilderness was the cloud by day and fire at evening (Exodus 13:21-22). One is reminded of the blazing bush that Moses saw, which burnt but did not devour itself, by a raging fire that is swallowing itself.
3. The four creatures that live.
● Four lifelike creatures’ likenesses also emerged from within. They looked like men, and such was their appearance. Each of them had four faces and four wings. The soles of their feet resembled those of calves, and their legs were straight. They glittered with a burnished bronze-like sheen. On each of their four sides, behind their wings, were the hands of a man. Each of the four had a face and wings. Their wings came into contact. When moving, the animals did not turn; instead, they all moved forward in a straight line.
● Four prominent beings became apparent from within this storm of God’s presence: four likenesses of living things. These amazing creatures were eventually described by Ezekiel as cherubim (Ezekiel 10:8–15), special angels who surrounded God in glory and might.
● Although they resembled men, Ezekiel pointed out that they were actually angelic creatures rather than mankind. However, they resembled males in both overall form and physical structure.
● Ezekiel will go into further detail on each person’s four faces in the lines that follow. Perhaps indicating that certain entities can consist of more than one person is the fact that one being had four faces. There is one God who exists in three different personalities in a way that is beyond our comprehension. These cherubim may be one deity who exists in four different personalities based on their four faces.
● Cherubim are a particularly unusual class of celestial creatures, and this is one of the few occasions in the Bible where we are told that wings are even remotely connected to angelic beings. Each one had four wings.
● They had straight legs that resembled human legs in some ways because they were made to seem like men, but their feet were completely different, like the soles of calves.
● These individuals had a gleaming, dazzling appearance. They gleamed like burnished bronze. They shimmered and radiated a color resembling bronze. ● Another instance of how they resembled men is when they had the hands of a man under their wings.
● The four cherubim were close together rather than spread out over a wide area; their wings met.
4. The way that living creature seem and behave.
● Regarding the similarity of their faces, each had the face of a man; on their right sides, each had the face of a lion; on their left, each had the face of an ox; and on their front, each had the face of an eagle. Their faces reflected this. Their wings were spread out aloft; two brushed each other and two covered their bodies. Each one continued to move forward in a straight line, going wherever the spirit directed them.
● When it came to how the living things looked, they had the appearance of torches moving back and forth among them, like flaming coals of fire. The fire was very visible, and lightning frequently struck it. The live things then began to move back and forth, appearing to be lightning strikes.
● The cherubim’s faces resembled those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, respectively. John seems to describe four entities with one of these four faces in his vision of heaven (Revelation 4:6-8). Most people believe that John was merely describing the specific face that was facing in his direction.
● Isaiah described this in Isaiah 6:2, but this is different—though not contradictory—in that two of each wing contacted one another and two covered their bodies. The burning ones, or seraphim, had six wings: two for flight, two for concealing their faces, and two for protecting their feet. The two needed for flight and the two used to cover the feet appear to have been mentioned by Ezekiel. Why the faces were hidden in Isaiah’s vision but not in Ezekiel’s is a mystery to us.
5. Look down to see the wheels connected to the living things.
● As I turned to face the living things, I saw that next to each creature with four faces there was a wheel on the ground. All four of the wheels shared a similar appearance and mechanism that resembled beryl in color. Their workings have the appearance of a wheel in the middle of a wheel. They did not turn around when they moved; instead, they headed in one of four directions.
● Regarding their rims, they were awesomely high and covered in eyes all around the four of them. The wheels followed the moving animals everywhere they went, and when the moving creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose with them. The wheels were lifted along with them since the spirit of the living animals was in the wheels. They traveled wherever the spirit desired to go because that is where the spirit went.
● When those moved, these moved as well; when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted off the ground, the wheels were raised with them because the wheels contained the soul of the living animals.
6. Above everything; He who sat upon the throne.
● A throne that looked like a sapphire stone was depicted above the firmament over their heads, and a man’s figure appeared to be perched high above the throne. Additionally, I appeared to see the color of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it from the appearance of His waist and upward, and from the appearance of His waist and lower, I appeared to see the appearance of fire with brightness all around.
● The brightness all around it had an appearance similar to a rainbow appearing in a cloud on a rainy day. This was how the LORD’s splendour appeared; it looked like him. I subsequently dropped to the ground upon seeing it and heard a voice of One speaking.