The Wheels, the Watchman, and the Glory That Left

Ezekiel was a priest, the son of Buzi, and priests worked in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. Ezekiel was not in Jerusalem. Babylon had taken the king and thousands of people away, and he went with them, to a flat country of mud brick and water channels beside a great canal called the Chebar. There was no house of the Lord there. He was thirty years old, and it was the fifth year they had been away. And one day, sitting among the exiles by the water, he looked up and the sky opened.

He hardly ever says what a thing was. He says it looked like something, or was the likeness of something — and then starts again, because that was not right either. A wind came sweeping out of the north, he said, with a huge cloud in it and brightness all round and fire flashing inside; and in the middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber. And in the middle of that, the likeness of four living creatures. They looked something like people. Each had four faces and four wings, straight legs, feet that shone like polished bronze, and human hands under their wings on all four sides. Each one had the face of a man, a lion’s face on the right, an ox’s face on the left, and an eagle’s face. Their wings were spread above them, each touching the next. They never turned when they moved: wherever the spirit went, they went, all four together. In among them was something like burning coals, or lamps moving about; and the fire was bright, and lightning came out of it. Then he saw the wheels. One wheel on the ground beside each creature. They looked like beryl, a pale green stone, and each was made like a wheel inside a wheel, so it could go any of the four ways without turning. Their rims were high, and full of eyes all the way round. When the creatures moved the wheels moved, and when they rose the wheels rose, because the spirit of the living things was in the wheels. Over their heads something was spread out like a floor of ice, or crystal; and when they flew he heard their wings, and the sound was like a great deal of water. And above that floor something like a sapphire, shaped like a throne, and high above the throne a likeness with the look of a person about it — glowing amber from the waist up, fire from the waist down, and brightness all round it like the way a rainbow looks in a cloud on a rainy day. And there Ezekiel stops trying. This, he says, was the vision of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And he fell on his face.

And he heard somebody speaking. “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you.” A Spirit came into him and set him on his feet. “Son of man, I am sending you to the people of Israel — people who have pushed against me, and their fathers before them. Whether they listen or whether they will not, they will know that a prophet has been among them. Do not be afraid of them or frightened by their faces. They will rage at you, and you are living among scorpions. Say my words to them, whether they listen or not.”

Then he looked, and a hand was stretched out to him holding a scroll. It was unrolled in front of him, with writing on the front and writing on the back; and what was written was crying, and mourning, and woe. “Son of man, eat what I give you. Eat this scroll, and go and speak to the people of Israel.” So he opened his mouth, and God gave him the scroll to eat. And he ate it, and in his mouth it was as sweet as honey. Then the Spirit lifted him up, and behind him he heard a roaring like an earthquake, and voices saying, Blessed is the glory of the Lord from his place. And he was set down among the exiles by the canal, and sat there seven days without a word.

After the seven days the word of the Lord came to him. Every walled town had a watchman: he stood on the wall at night and looked out into the dark, and if he saw anything coming he shouted. Everybody’s life depended on it. “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Warn them for me. If I say to a wicked man, You will surely die, and you do not warn him, he will die in his wrongdoing — and I will ask you for his blood. But if you warn him and he will not turn, he will die, and you will have saved your own life.”

For years Ezekiel did strange things in front of people, because words were not getting through. He took a brick, drew Jerusalem on it, and laid siege to the brick with little ramps and camps, with an iron pan stood up between himself and it like a wall. He lay on his left side day after day, and then on his right. He was told what to eat while he lay there: wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and spelt, all in one pot, made into loaves. Eight ounces a day, weighed out, and about two and a half cups of water, measured, taken at set hours. That was how Jerusalem was going to eat and drink when the food ran out. And he was told to bake it over dried human dung, out in front of everybody. And Ezekiel, who was a priest, said no. “No, Lord God of Israel. I have never made myself unclean. From the day I was born I have never eaten anything that died of itself, or anything torn by animals, or any rotten meat.” So God let him use cattle dung instead. He packed a bag in daylight where everybody could see, and at dusk dug a hole through his own house wall and went out with the bag on his shoulder, like somebody escaping from a fallen town. And once God told him that the desire of his eyes would be taken from him at a stroke, and that he was not to weep. His wife died that evening. In the morning he did as he had been told; and he told them the holy place they were so proud of would be taken away too, and there would be no weeping for that.

In the sixth year Ezekiel was sitting in his house with the elders of Judah in front of him, and the Lord’s hand came on him again. Something like a man — fire from the waist down, glowing amber from the waist up — put out something like a hand and took him by the hair of his head; and the Spirit lifted him between earth and sky and carried him to Jerusalem. It was a vision. He was standing in the north gate of the house of the Lord. And God began to show him what was being done in the rooms. “Son of man, dig.” So he dug into the wall, found a door, and went through it. Inside, painted all round the walls, was every kind of crawling thing and animal and idol of the house of Israel; and in front of them stood seventy of the elders of Israel, each with a censer in his hand and the incense going up in a cloud. “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do, every man in his own dark room? They say: the Lord does not see us. The Lord has left the land.” Then he was taken to the north door of the house, and there were women sitting there weeping for a god called Tammuz. “You will see worse than this.” And he was brought into the inner court, between the porch and the altar; and there stood twenty-five men with their backs to the house of the Lord, bowing to the sun.

Then he heard God call out, and six men came down from the upper gate, each with a weapon in his hand; and with them a man dressed in linen with a writing case at his waist. “Go through the middle of the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the forehead of every person who sighs and grieves over the things being done in it.” And to the others he said: go after him and strike, and do not spare and do not pity; but do not go near anybody who has the mark. And begin at my holy place. So they began with the elders in front of the house. And Ezekiel fell on his face. “Oh, Lord — are you going to destroy everybody who is left of Israel?”

Then he saw the glory of the God of Israel move. It came up off the winged creatures and stood over the doorway of the house, and the cloud filled the inner court; and the sound of the wings carried as far as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when he speaks. And the glory went out of the house and stood over the winged creatures. They lifted their wings and rose off the ground with the wheels beside them, and stopped at the east gate; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. And then it went up out of the middle of the city, and stood still on the mountain that is east of it. Ezekiel watched it go. Before it went, God said something about the people already carried away. He would be a small holy place for them himself, in the countries they had gone to; he would gather them out of the lands they were scattered in and bring them back; and he would take the heart of stone out of them and give them a heart of flesh. Then the Spirit brought him back to the exiles in Chaldea, and the vision left him. And he told them everything he had been shown.

There was a saying going round among the exiles, and God told him to put a stop to it. “Why do you keep repeating this saying in Israel — the fathers ate sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? As I live, says the Lord, you will not say it any more. Every life belongs to me. The soul that sins is the one who dies.” And then God went through it case by case. A man who does what is right — who does not go up to the hilltop shrines, who leaves another man’s wife alone, who cheats nobody, who gives back what was left with him to hold, who gives his bread to the hungry and his clothes to the naked, who does not lend at interest — that man will live. And if he has a son who does every one of the things his father would not do, that son will not live on his father’s account. And if that son has a son who sees it all and will not do it, he will not die on his father’s account. “The soul that sins is the one who dies. The son will not carry his father’s wrong, and the father will not carry his son’s.” And then this. “If a wicked man turns away from all the wrong he has done, and keeps my commands, and does what is just and merciful, he will live. He will not die. Not one of the wrongs he did will be remembered against him. Do I take any pleasure at all in the death of a wicked man, says the Lord — and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? Throw away all the wrongdoing you have done, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, house of Israel? I take no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, says the Lord. Turn back, and live.” That was the word he was given while the city was still standing.