Ezekiel10chapter 10

Ezekiel 10:1-2

The prophet looks up into the firmament above the cherubim and sees the same sapphire throne he saw at the river Chebar, the vision resuming exactly where chapter one set it down. The Lord orders the man clothed in linen to take burning coals from among the cherubim and scatter them over the city, judgment carried out of the sanctuary itself rather than falling on it from outside. Keil reads the coals as the doomed city's own altar fire turned against her, since what once consumed sacrifice now consumes Jerusalem. Henry notes that the fire comes from between the cherubim, so the ruin is executed under the throne's own eye.

Ezekiel 10:3-5

The cherubim stand on the right side of the house while the same cloud that filled Solomon's temple at its dedication fills the inner court. Then the glory of the Lord rises from the cherub and stands over the threshold, the first step of a departure the book will not finish until verse twenty three, and the house fills with brightness. The sound of the cherubim's wings reaches the outer court like the voice of God Almighty, the very comparison chapter one already used for the throne's approach. Fairbairn marks this rising from the cherub to the threshold as the hinge of the whole book, the glory that filled the house at its founding now measuring its way toward the door.

Ezekiel 10:6-8

The man clothed in linen is commanded a second time to take fire, now specifically from between the wheels rather than merely between the cherubim, and one cherub stretches out his own hand to give him the coals. The detail that a cherub possesses a hand, and that the form of a man's hand appears under all their wings, ties the vision back to the language of a man's likeness upon the throne that chapter one already used. Clarke reads the transfer of fire from cherub to messenger as the ordinary pattern of divine judgment, carried by an appointed hand rather than loosed at random. Gill notes that the man in linen, marked out already in chapter nine with his writer's inkhorn, here becomes the one appointed to kindle the city's ruin.

Ezekiel 10:9-13

four wheels: The prophet counts four wheels, one beside each cherub, colored like beryl, and every wheel appears as a wheel within a wheel, able to move in any of its four directions without turning. Their rims, like the rest of the cherubim, are full of eyes round about, and a voice cries out to them by name, O wheel, as though the machinery of the throne answers to its own address. Keil takes the eyes as a picture of the all seeing providence that directs the throne's movement, nothing escaping the notice of the one it carries. Wesley reads the wheel within a wheel as a sign that God's providence works by means within means, one wheel of second causes turning inside another that only he directs.

Ezekiel 10:14-17

four faces: Each living creature has four faces, the cherub, the man, the lion and the eagle, the same set chapter one gave except that the ox of the first vision is here named the cherub. Commentators from Gill to Keil take the two names as one face under two words, the ox representing strength and readiness for service, a meaning the word cherub also carries, rather than a fifth living form. The wheels move exactly as the cherubim move, rising when they rise and standing when they stand, because the spirit of the living creature is in them and not merely alongside them. The whole complex machine therefore has nothing moving by a separate will of its own, wheel and creature obeying one spirit throughout.

Ezekiel 10:18-19

The glory that had only risen to the threshold in verse four now departs from it outright and stands over the cherubim, the second stage of an exit the book completes at 11:23. The cherubim lift their wings and mount up from the earth in the prophet's sight, wheels beside them, until the whole company stands at the door of the east gate of the Lord's house. Fairbairn reads the pause at the east gate as the glory's last hesitation over the temple threshold before it leaves the city altogether, a house it filled at its dedication and now abandons to judgment. Barnes notes the same eastward direction the glory takes here that it will retrace on its return in chapter forty three, so that departure and restoration are marked by the same gate.

Ezekiel 10:20-22

The chapter closes with the prophet's own identification, stated plainly, this is the living creature I saw by the river of Chebar, and I knew that they were the cherubims. What chapter one described in the guarded language of likeness and appearance, without naming the beings it saw, chapter ten now names outright as the same cherubim that guarded Eden and stood over the ark's mercy seat. Calvin, whose lectures on this book run only through chapter twenty, takes the repeated formula of appearances and themselves as the prophet insisting on his own eyewitness certainty against any reader who might doubt the vision. Every face and wing matches the first sighting exactly, and the company that will leave Jerusalem is confirmed to be the very throne guard that once dwelt over the ark in Solomon's house.