What’s Going on with Ezekiel’s Vision? by PETER LEITHART for The Gospel Coalition
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.
Ezekiel is different. He gets an up-close, interior view, and he shares it with us.
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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).
