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Ezekiel 1: What the Passage Says

92 claims across 28 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Ezekiel, a priest living among the Judean exiles in Babylon by the Kebar River, dates the day the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. He describes a storm coming from the north and, inside it, four living creatures with four faces and four wings each, moving as a spirit directed them, with wheels beside them that moved as they moved. Above the creatures is a shining expanse, and above that a throne with a figure like a man surrounded by fire and brilliant light, which he calls the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. He falls facedown and hears a voice speaking.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • It happened in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month.
    • The speaker was among the exiles by the river Chebar.
    • The heavens were opened.
    • The speaker saw visions of God.
  2. 1:2
    • This was on the fifth day of the month.
    • That year was the fifth year of the exile of king Jehoiachin.
  3. 1:3
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi.
    • Ezekiel was the son of Buzi.
    • Ezekiel was a priest.
    • This happened in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar.
    • The hand of the LORD was upon him there.
  4. 1:4
    • The speaker looked and saw a stormy wind coming out of the north.
    • There was a great cloud.
    • There was fire flashing and taking hold of itself.
    • A brightness was around the cloud.
    • Out of the midst of the fire came something with the appearance of glowing metal.
  5. 1:5
    • Out of the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures.
    • This was their appearance.
    • They had the likeness of a man.
  6. 1:6
    • Each one had four faces.
    • Each one had four wings.
  7. 1:7
    • Their legs were straight.
    • The sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot.
    • They gleamed like the appearance of burnished bronze.
  8. 1:8
    • They had human hands under their wings on their four sides.
    • All four of them had their faces and their wings.
  9. 1:9
    • Their wings were joined one to another.
    • They did not turn when they moved.
    • Each one went straight forward.
  10. 1:10
    • The likeness of their faces was the face of a man.
    • All four had the face of a lion on the right side.
    • All four had the face of an ox on the left side.
    • All four had the face of an eagle.
  11. 1:11
    • Such were their faces.
    • Their wings were spread upward.
    • Two wings of each were joined to another creature's wings.
    • Two wings covered their bodies.
  12. 1:12
    • Each one went straight forward.
    • Wherever the spirit was to go, they went.
    • They did not turn when they moved.
  13. 1:13
    • The likeness of the living creatures had the appearance of burning coals of fire.
    • Their appearance was like the appearance of torches.
    • It moved back and forth among the living creatures.
    • The fire was bright.
    • Lightning went out of the fire.
  14. 1:14
    • The living creatures ran and returned.
    • Their movement was like the appearance of a flash of lightning.
  15. 1:15
    • The speaker looked at the living creatures.
    • There was one wheel on the ground beside the living creatures.
    • The wheel was for each of the four faces.
  16. 1:16
    • The appearance of the wheels and their workmanship was like the gleam of beryl.
    • All four had one likeness.
    • Their appearance and workmanship was as a wheel within a wheel.
  17. 1:17
    • When they moved, they went toward their four sides.
    • They did not turn when they moved.
  18. 1:18
    • Their rims were high.
    • Their rims were dreadful.
    • Their rims were full of eyes all around, in all four of them.
  19. 1:19
    • When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them.
    • When the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
  20. 1:20
    • Wherever the spirit was to go, they went.
    • There the spirit was to go.
    • The wheels were lifted up alongside them.
    • The spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
  21. 1:21
    • When those moved, these moved.
    • When those stood still, these stood still.
    • When those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up alongside them.
    • The spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
  22. 1:22
    • Over the heads of the living creature was the likeness of an expanse.
    • The expanse was like the gleam of awesome crystal.
    • It was stretched out over their heads above.
  23. 1:23
    • Under the expanse their wings were straight, one toward another.
    • Each one had two wings covering its body on one side.
    • Each one had two wings covering its body on the other side.
  24. 1:24
    • The speaker heard the sound of their wings when they moved.
    • The sound was like the sound of many waters.
    • The sound was like the voice of the Almighty.
    • The sound was a tumult like the noise of an army.
    • When they stood still, they let down their wings.
  25. 1:25
    • There was a voice from above the expanse that was over their heads.
    • When they stood still, they let down their wings.
  26. 1:26
    • Above the expanse that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne.
    • The throne had the appearance of sapphire stone.
    • Upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man above upon it.
  27. 1:27
    • The speaker saw the gleam of glowing metal.
    • It was like the appearance of fire enclosed all around, from the appearance of his loins upward.
    • From the appearance of his loins downward the speaker saw what looked like fire.
    • It had brightness all around it.
  28. 1:28
    • The appearance of the brightness all around was like the appearance of the bow in the cloud on a day of rain.
    • This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.
    • When the speaker saw it, he fell on his face.
    • He heard a voice of one speaking.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
"The thirtieth year" is left unexplained in the Hebrew (no starting point is given, and the text never supplies one. Suggestions offered since ancient times include Ezekiel's own age, or a count from some event in the life of the nation; the ambiguity is in the original. The fourth month of the Hebrew calendar falls in roughly June–July. The Chebar was not a river in the ordinary sense but a large canal in Babylonia, near the city of Nippur, where groups of deportees from Judah had been resettled. "The prisoners taken from our land" are those exiles) Ezekiel is writing from among them, hundreds of miles east of Jerusalem.
1:2
King Jehoiachin of Judah surrendered Jerusalem to the Babylonians and was deported with the court, the craftsmen and the leading families. Dating events by the years since his deportation was standard practice among the exiles; the fifth year works out to about 593 BC.
1:3
"Chaldeans" is the older name for the ruling people of Babylonia; it means Babylonians. "The hand of the LORD was on him" is a fixed Hebrew phrase for a prophet being seized and overpowered by God's compelling presence: it describes the onset of the experience, not a literal touch. Note that this verse speaks of Ezekiel in the third person, though the verses on either side are in his own voice. The switch is in the Hebrew. LORD printed in this way stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud.
1:4
"Amber" translates the Hebrew word *hashmal*, which occurs only in this book and whose meaning is uncertain. It clearly refers to some brilliant, glowing metal or alloy, early translators guessed at a gold-and-silver mix, or at electrum. "Amber" is a traditional guess, not a certainty. Babylon lay east of Judah, but invading armies and, in older poetry, the storm of God both arrive from the north; the direction carries that association.
1:5
"Living creatures" renders a Hebrew word meaning, quite plainly, "living things", the text deliberately withholds a name for them here. In chapter 10 Ezekiel identifies these same beings as cherubim, the winged attendant figures whose carved images stood in the temple.
1:7
Bronze polished to a mirror shine was among the most brilliant surfaces known in the ancient world; the comparison is to a hard, dazzling, reflective gleam.
1:10
The four faces are the four most powerful kinds of living thing as the ancient world ranked them: the human being, the strongest wild animal, the strongest working animal, and the greatest bird. Composite winged figures with human and animal parts stood carved in stone at the gates of Babylonian and Assyrian temples and palaces, so this kind of creature was a familiar sight to anyone living where Ezekiel was living.
1:12
The Hebrew word here, *ruach*, means wind, breath and spirit all at once, and the text does not settle which is meant, an impulse driving the creatures, a wind, or the spirit of God. Translators must choose one word where the Hebrew holds all three.
1:13
"Lamps" here means torches or burning brands, not the small clay oil lamps used indoors.
1:15
"With his four faces" uses "his" the way older English used it for a thing with no gender, where we would say "its." The four faces belong to the creature, and each creature has a wheel beside it.
1:16
"Beryl" translates the Hebrew *tarshish*, named after a distant trading port; the exact stone is unknown. It was some gleaming, translucent gem, proposals include yellow topaz, chrysolite and beryl.
1:18
"Rings" in the King James is an older word for the rims of a wheel, the outer band, not a separate ornament. "Dreadful" in 1611 English meant awe-inspiring, something that fills a person with dread in the sense of overwhelming reverence. It did not mean bad or unpleasant, as it does now.
1:22
"Firmament" translates the Hebrew *raqia*, a word for something hammered or beaten out flat. In Hebrew descriptions of the world it is the great dome spread over the earth, holding back the waters above; here the same kind of dome is spread over the creatures' heads, forming a floor for what sits above it.
1:24
"The Almighty" renders the Hebrew title *Shaddai*, an ancient name for God whose original sense is uncertain, traditionally understood as "the Almighty," though some connect it with mountains. "An host" in the King James means an army on the march; the comparison is to the massed noise of troops in motion.
1:26
The Hebrew *sappir* is probably not the modern sapphire but lapis lazuli, the deep blue stone flecked with gold that was prized throughout the ancient Near East. Notice how carefully the wording is hedged: not a throne but "the likeness of a throne," not a man but "the appearance of a man." Ezekiel piles up these qualifiers throughout the chapter, and translations preserve them because they are the point of his grammar: he is describing a resemblance to a resemblance.
1:27
"Loins" in the King James means the waist or hips.
1:28
"The bow that is in the cloud" is simply the rainbow; "bow" was the ordinary English word for it. "The glory of the LORD" translates *kavod*, a Hebrew word whose root sense is weight or heaviness, used for the visible blazing presence of God, the thing that filled the tabernacle and the temple. It is a technical term for a manifestation that can be seen, not an abstract quality of honor. Falling face down on the ground was the ordinary posture before a king or a god in that world; it signals overwhelmed submission rather than collapse.

Read Ezekiel 1