Ezekiel Was the Wheel

Ezekiel’s name means “God strengthens,” and a good thing since Ezekiel was a priest in ancient Jerusalem when the first Temple, Solomon’s, was crushed by the invading forces of the Babylonians. The Israelites were sent into disarray and exile, with Ezekiel himself becoming one in a “community of exiles” forced into residence in the foreign land of the Chaldeans (Babylonians).

Our Judaism, which is mostly understood through the lens of the writings of Rabbis and philosophers after the two significant Temple destructions and diasporas (586 BCE and 70 AD), nevertheless overlays a very ancient tradition which fixed God in physical place. In Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, religion scholar Karen Armstrong describes the predilection of our ancient ancestors for locating God in physical space: each of the many gods and goddesses worshiped in the Holy Land had their own altar stone, tree, holy site or geographical magnet, and our God (Yahweh/Elohim) resided in Jerusalem where the Temple Mount is located. God lived in that temple and held His 'meet and greets' there; it was where the Israelites brought their offerings, came to be instructed by Torah, and witnessed sacrificial smoke billowing forth from the ritual pyres.

The Book of Ezekiel, is perhaps the strangest and most dramatic in the Bible. I like to think of Ezekiel as the action-picture or horror filmmaker of our literature because of his sharply drawn imagery, dramatic language, and frightening vision, a vision that combines elements of both the science fiction and horror genres; for those who love imaginative literature, it should not be missed as a classic.

Two aspects of Ezekiel’s vision are crucial: the first is his vision of the Temple which has become desecrated through the wayward behaviors of the people and their priests. The major sin in early Judaism is that of straying from single-hearted worship of our God; in fact, the first “utterance” is that of having no other God before Me, which in its grammatic formation (Elohim is plural) actually acknowledges that there are other gods, but that the covenanted relationship is between this One God and this Am Israel; in the very crux of our monotheism, we are forever united. The Temple is the Holy Place where formalizing rituals brought God together with His people.

The second aspect of Ezekiel‘s vision is most intriguing: it is his description of several “cherubim” who descend, with their accompanying Segways and the chariot-throne of God, into the Temple. Now these are not your Renaissance cherubim pink-pastry babies. They are hybrid beings who combine human and animal forms, and are often terrifying in aspect. Etymologically, the Hebrew word kerub may be related to the Akkadian karibu, ‘an intercessor guardian creature.’ Only later did cherubim join the choirs of angels; in their original incarnations in Torah and the Netivim, the prophetic books, cherubs were not creatures you would want to meet on a deserted highway, unless of course you had been extraordinarily bad and in need of a kind of shock therapy in order to change your ways. This, I think, is exactly how the Bible is using them. In Ezekiel 1 and 10, they become the power by which God’s chariot-throne is able to fly, kind of God’s helicopter. And, God is greatly displeased.

So, here’s the thing: Ezekiel’s vision describes these intercessors of God as having taken arrived in God’s holiest place, the Temple. There is a case to be made for seeing the Book of Ezekiel as first haunted house story. And considering that the Book of Ezekiel ends with a description of a rebuilt Temple, it gives one pause to think that such an easily occupied and horrifying House would ever be desired, but there are those who think Yahweh’s vision won’t be complete, and the Messiah won’t come, unless it is reestablished. I for one, would vote against any kind of rebuilding, particularly in light of the geographical contest that marks the locale of the Temple Mount. And, I think there is particular danger in establishing any one House of God as the right one, the most Holy. This may be part of what Ezekiel is telling us subliminally.

Here’s a brief rundown of the physical characteristics of the four visiting cherubim as described in Ezekiel 1 and then again in chapter 10.:

* The cherubs are hailed in fire and are accompanied by fire, like torches, and they can put their hands into fire. Many painterly depictions of this scene in the Bible emphasize the firey aspect of Ezekiel’s vision.
* Each cherub has four wings, and under the wings the hands of men. The wings are two above--I think lifted up--and two at the sides of the cherub’s bodies. The wings can raise and create lift-off from the surface of the earth.
* Each cherub is accompanied by four wheels, one traveling beside each cherub; the wheels gleam like beryl stone but all have the same form, ‘as if two wheels are cutting through each other,’ and they move in any direction. The wheels travel with the cherubs whenever they move, and can rise up as the cherub rises up.
* Each cherub has four faces, one facing each direction: in chapter 1, the cherubs have the face of a lion (right), an ox (left), a human (front), an eagle (back); in chapter 10, they have a cherub’s face (whatever that is), a human face, a lion’s face, and an eagle’s face. The cherubs move in the direction of one particular face at a time, with the wheel coming along beside them.
* Each cherub has a single calf’s hoof rather than a pair of feet.
* Perhaps strangest of all, the bodies of the cherubs and the wheels are covered all over with eyes.

Deep within the most sacred of places, we have this vision of powerful, mobile, energetic creatures, vividly described. Ezekiel’s vision of the cherubim is associated with the manifested presence of God. They bear the message that the people (we) have been false and unfaithful and are to be sent into death and exile. This is a crisis moment, a moment of supernatural terror when we are confronted for our terrible wrongdoing. It is a message meant to frighten us. We are in the ultimate haunted house. The strange thing is, Ezekiel’s vision occurred after the destruction of the Temple and while he, and we, were in exile already. So, if it was meant to shake us up enough to preserve the Temple and our lives in the Holy Land, it failed to do so.

In Jungian archetypal psychology, the house is frequently understood to be a symbol of the complex psyche, the individual Self. Levels of consciousness are represented by movement within the house: going down into a basement often is described as going into a deeper unconscious Self while rising to a tower or attic is aspiring to something higher, Soul-driven. In Ezekiel’s vision, the cherubim are in the heart of the Temple, and relegated to the southern part of the Temple, the direction of intransigent Judah.

As a house represents an individual psyche, the Temple might be inferred to represent the collective psyche of the Jewish people. Twice destroyed, and, for the reason of our bad behavior and insistence on turning away from God and God‘s prescribed way of living. If nothing else, the Jewish people have been consistently willing to “own“ its sin, to accept guilt for its bad behaviors. The soul of the religion, howevr, is to provide us with methods for redemption, for making right the wrongs we inevitably commit, because that is what God wants us to do. Rather than focusing on victimization, Ezekiel aims at a vision of taking responsibility.

In spite of having our home destroyed twice in marauding and bloody conquests, the Temple’s only remaining wall still standing in Jerusalem is a magnet, drawing Jewish worshippers from around the world, as a place they understand to be sacred soil where God resides. Never having been there, I cannot imagine what it is like, but from every report by those who have made the pilgrimage, standing at the Wall is a transformative experience.

However, exile, diaspora, and assimilation into other cultures has, in my opinion, led to a broader understanding of God and our relationship with God. Most of us have lost the primal concept of God dwelling in any particular place; God became more abstract and mobile, carried in our imaginative consciousness rather than being rooted in a special plot of land. This differs from earth religions, but does not have to be seen as contrary to them. For me, God is an abstraction but an omnipresent, omniwhere abstraction or Being with a message of sacredness that resides within each living thing, and that we can consequently carry with us; in this way, God is everywhere and nowhere. It’s a much harder concept to wrap the mind around, but for me it feels more honest and complete, and removes the temptation to worship an object, a person, or a place as the touchstone for experiencing God.

The cherubim are a frightening, horrific manifestation called into being by a betrayed God. Just as a science fiction movie may warn a society that its technology or tampering with nature have gotten out of control, or a haunted house story warns that even our place of supreme safety, our home, can become abruptly terrifying if we neglect the signs of change, the Temple cherubim are meant to scare us “straight.”

At this season, we are given a chance to redeem ourselves, in the form of Yom Kippur’s instructions of forgiveness, compassion, judgment, setting things right.