Insights into Ezekiel’s Remarkable Merkabah Vision1

David J. Larsen

In Ezekiel, chapter 1, the prophet experiences an amazing theophany that has inspired

and perplexed readers for centuries. Ezekiel was privileged to see the “Merkabah”, the flying

chariot-throne of God, and “upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of

a man above upon it” (Ezek 1:26). 

  In the account that we have of this vision, we read of a whirlwind, fire, living creatures,

wheels, a firmament, and other complex images. Attempts to depict what Ezekiel was seeing

have been varied (and sometimes rather amusing). Early Jewish and Christian writers were

enamored with Ezekiel’s vision, and much time and effort was dedicated to pondering its

mysteries (as can be seen in the Ma’asei Merkavah and the Kabbalah, for example). Looking

past the symbolic expressions, scholars have recognized in Ezekiel’s Merkabah the essential

elements of Solomon’s Temple, which had been destroyed. If we are to understand what Ezekiel

was seeing, we must look to the Temple!

Hebrew University’s Rachel Elior analyzes the similarity between the Merkabah

imagery and the Temple setting. The winged cherubim of the Holy of Holies (1 Kgs 6:23–29,

8:6-7; compare Ezek. 1:5–11),  the stands in the Temple court with their copper wheels (I Kings

7:27–30, 33; compare 1:10, 13-16), the four threesomes of creatures facing all four points of the

compass, the lions, oxen, cherubim, and ofanim (wheels) -- all made of burnished bronze –

1 This article was originally published June 4, 2008 on my blog, www.heavenlyascents.com, at http://www.heavenlyascents.com/2008/06/04/understanding-ezekiels-remarkable-merkabah-vision/

  

-became four sacred winged creatures, sparkling with that same bronze luster, with

the faces of lions, oxen, eagles, and human beings. They stood on four wheels (Heb.

ofanim) which had the appearance of “two wheels cutting through each other” and

faced all four points of the compass (Ezek 1:4–11, 16–21), like their counterparts in

the Temple. The gold-plated winged cherubim in the sanctuary, whose wings were

extended and “touched each other”, and which stood on their feet, were

transformed in Ezekiel’s vision into sacred, sparkling, winged creatures, “each of

whose wings touched those of the other” (Ezek 1:9) and whose legs “were fused into

a single rigid leg” (Ezek 1:7); their appearance was “like burning coals of fire…”

(Ezek 1:13). There is thus a whole system of correlations between the ideal picture

of the destroyed earthly Temple and the visionary Temple revealed in heaven

(Rachel Elior, The Three Temples, trans. David Louvish; Oxford: The Littman

Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).

Ezekiel saw the principal elements of the First Temple as a mobile unit which was not fixed in an

earthly Temple but was a heavenly reality that could travel wherever God pleased. In essence,

however, this is the vision of Isaiah (Isa 6)–Yahweh seated upon the cherub-throne in the Holy

of Holies. Ezekiel was visited by this chariot-throne while in exile in Babylon, and then saw it

return to the Temple in Jerusalem. In a time when the people had lost their city and their Temple

but hoped to return and rebuild it again, Ezekiel’s visions gave them the assurance that God

could and would be with them at all times and in all places.