Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Ezekiel 1: Be Thou My Vision

A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew pictures.  Occasionally, she would walk around the room to see each child's work.

"What are you drawing?" she asked one little girl who was working diligently at her desk.

The little girl replied, "I'm drawing God."

The teacher paused and said, "But no one know what God looks like."

The little girl replied, "They will in a minute!"

The prophet Ezekiel has something in common with that little girl!  An exile from Judah living in Babylon, Ezekiel receives "visions of God" (vs. 1).

As you might imagine, Ezekiel struggles to put his heavenly vision into sensible words, just as we struggle to understand what he saw.  A brief outline of Ezekiel 1 would include these components of his first vision:

  • Four living creatures: rather monstrous-looking, they each have four faces and four wings.  Their faces are human, lion, ox, and eagle.  Fortunately, we may not have to picture these faces literally.  They could symbolize the totality of life by serving as the leading representative of each sphere of the animal kingdom: humanity, wild animals, domesticated animals, and birds.
  • Wheels: Ezekiel's famous description of a "wheel within a wheel" (vs. 16) comes from this section.  Almost like a war chariot, the wheels are somehow connected to the living creatures and move in conjunction with their movements (vs. 21).
  • Dome: above the wheels and the living creatures is a dome "shining like crystal" (vs. 22).
  • Throne: above the dome is a throne like a sapphire (vs. 26).
  • The appearance of the likeness of the glory of God: a human-like form on the throne, alternatively described as being like "glowing amber", "fire enclosed all around", and "the bow in a cloud on a rainy day"  (vs. 26-28).

You may wonder why I cannot be more descriptive or explain what these visions (symbols or representations though they may be) mean.  It is a theophany - an appearance of God on earth.  How can one even begin to translate what Ezekiel saw here?  He was barely able to put it in to words himself!

Suffice it to say, the prophet experienced a dramatic encounter with the Spirit of God while living as an exile in Babylon in approximately the year 593 B.C.  God must have an important message to deliver to His people, and He picked Ezekiel as the one to give it to!

No comments:

Post a Comment