The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 1 — Section 184

CHAPTER X. Vere. 5, 6.-And the sound of the cheru- bim. The use of God Almighty (El Shad- Vers. 1, 2.-Then I looked, eto. There dai; comp. Exod. vi. 3), the name of God as follows on the work of judgment another ruling over nature, while Jehovah ex- theophany, like that of eh. i. 15-28. In the pressed his covenant relationship to Israel, '·' expanse," or firmament, like the " terrible is, it may be noted, characteristic of the crystal,'' there is seen as before the likeness early stage of the religion of Israel (Gen. of a sapphirethrone(see eh. i. 26, note). The xvii. 1 ; x.xviii. 3 ; xliii. 14 ; xl viii. 3). form of the man who is the manifestation Shaddai alone appears eighty-one times in of Jehovah is implied, though not named. the Book of Job. Ps. x.xix. explains the It is he who speaks to the captain of the six voice of El Shaddai (though there it is "the ministers of vengeance, himself the seventh, voice of Jehovah ") as meaning the roar of and bids him go in beneath the "whirling the thunder. The hands of the " living wheels" that are beneath the cherub (col- creatures," now recognized as cherubim, lective singular, as in eh. ix. 3), and fill his had been mentioned in eh. i. 8, and it is hands with coals of fire (eh. i. 13), and one of those hands that gives the fire into scatter them over the city, as the symbol the hands of the linen-vested minister of of its doom. We are reminded of Isaiah's wrath. The elemental forces of nature, of vision (Isa. vi. 6); but there tho work of the which the cherubim nre, partly at least, the firo was to purify, here simply to destroy. symbols, are working out the purposes of Vers. 3, 4.-Now the c,herubim stood, eto. Jehovah. Tho two words translated wheels The position of the cherubim is defined, are different in the Hebrew. The first is with II vivid distinctness of detail, which singular and collective (galgal, the "whirl- once more reminds us of Dante. They had ing thing,'' used of the wheel of a war- been stcmding on the right, i.e. the southern chariot, eh. xxiii. 24; Isa. v. 28), and might sido of the sanctuary. What follows is well be translated "chariot" here. The 1,robably a reproduction of the change of second, that used in eh. i. 15, 16, also in positions described in eh. ix. 3, and the the singular, is applied to the single wheel verbs should he taken, therefore, as pluper- of the four by which the angel-ministers fects. 'l'he cloud of glory, as in 1 Kings viii. stood. 10, 11 and Isa. vi. 1, 2, the Shechinah, that Vera. 8, 9. - The description of the was the token of the Divine presence, filled theophany that follows, though essentially the court, but the glory itself had moved identicl\l with that in eh. i., is not a. literal to the threshold at the first st11ge of its transcript of it. The prophet struggles, as peparture. before, to telate wh!\t Lu;, he,s actually seeg EZl!:ll:IEL, N 178 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. [on. x. 1-22.