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1 1-2 When I was thirty years old, I was living near the Chebar Canal off the Euphrates River among the exiles. On the fifth day of the fourth month (during the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile), the windows of the heavens were thrown open and I saw visions of the True God.
The literary structure of Ezekiel is arranged by how long the exiles have been in Babylonia after the 597 b.c. deportation of Jehoiachin and those with him (8:1; 20:1; 24:1; 26:1; 29:1; 31:1; 32:1; 40:1). The expatriates are counting the days until they can return to their ancestral lands in order to rebuild the temple. If Ezekiel is 30 years old when he has his initial vision, he is about 50 years old when he has the temple vision (chapters 40–48).
3 The word of the Eternal One came to Ezekiel the priest (Buzi’s son) near the Chebar Canal in the land of the Chaldeans. It was there that the hand of the Eternal settled on him.
4 I looked up, and I saw a ferocious and stormy wind coming from the north—a monstrous cloud filled with the constant dance of lightning, surrounded by a glowing, all-encompassing light. At the center of the lightning flashes was something that looked like gleaming metal, 5 and within that otherworldly scene were what looked like four living creatures. The creatures had a form that resembled humans, 6 but they each had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight like the pillars of a temple, and their feet looked like the hoofs of a calf and shimmered in the firelight like polished bronze. 8 They had human hands on all four sides under each wing. All four of these living creatures had faces and wings, 9 and their wings touched one another. As they moved, they did not turn to the right or left; they all went straight ahead. 10 Each of the four creatures had four faces: a human face in front, the face of a lion on the right, the face of an ox on the left, and the face of an eagle in the back. 11 The features of their faces were similar. Two of the creatures’ wings stretched upward, and one wing on each side of each creature was touching the wing of the creature on either side of it. The other two wings covered each creature’s body. 12 All of the living creatures went straight ahead wherever the spirit directed them; the creatures moved without turning to the right or left. 13 The living creatures had an appearance of something that looked like burning charcoal. Untamed ribbons of fire darted back and forth among them. It was all very bright, and lightning bolted out of the glowing fire. 14 The living creatures ran back and forth like flashes of lightning.
15 As I observed the living creatures with their four faces, I saw a wheel on the ground next to each of them. 16 The wheels glittered like sun-kissed jewels. All four wheels looked exactly alike, each appearing to have another wheel inside it. 17 As the wheels moved, they were able to go in the four directions the living creatures faced. They rolled straight ahead, never swerving off to the side. 18 The rims of the four wheels were tall and inspired fear, filled with eyes all around. 19 The wheels went wherever the living creatures went: when the living creatures moved, the wheels stayed right beside them; when the living creatures rose up from the ground, the wheels rose with them. 20 The living creatures went wherever the spirit directed, and the wheels stayed right beside them; for the spirit of the creatures directed the wheels. 21 When the creatures moved, so did the wheels; when the creatures stood still, so did the wheels; when the creatures rose up from the ground, so did the wheels, because the spirit of the four living creatures was in the wheels.
22 Suspended above the living creatures was something like a broad expanse; it had an awesome gleam like a crystal ceiling and stretched wide over them. 23 Beneath the expanse, the creatures stretched out their wings toward each other, and each creature had another pair of wings it used to cover both sides of its body. 24-25 Whenever the creatures moved, I heard the violent fluttering of their wings, like roaring rapids, like the voice of God Almighty, like the sound of an army besieging a city. Whenever the creatures stopped, they lowered their wings to their sides. As they stood silent, with their wings lowered, a thunderous voice sounded high above the expanse over their heads.
26 And above that expanse over their heads was something that looked like a throne made of sapphire. Sitting on that throne high above the earth was a humanlike figure. 27 From his waist up, I saw what looked to be glowing metal surrounded by an all-encompassing fire. Below his waist, I looked and saw something like a blazing fire. A glorious radiance was all around Him. 28 The glorious radiance resembled a rainbow that lights up the clouds on a rainy day. This was nothing less than the glory of the Eternal that appeared to me. When I saw the vision of the Eternal and His glory, I fell upon my face and heard a voice speaking to me.
Ezekiel’s strange vision of clouds and fires, light and lightning, creatures with four faces, wheels within wheels, and a throne-chariot is a prelude to his ultimate vision. For a moment he glimpses a humanlike figure seated on a throne; this, he says, is the glory of the Eternal. The word “glory” refers to God’s visible manifestation. Though God is unseen, from time to time human beings are given the privilege of seeing His glory. This glory accompanies Israel in the wilderness and resides in the temple in Jerusalem. But Ezekiel realizes God’s glory is not restricted to Jerusalem; it is in Babylon with those in exile. The fact that God’s glory is seen in Babylon and reported by His prophet offers comfort to those displaced in a foreign land.
2 The Voice (to Ezekiel): Son of man, rise to your feet. I want to speak to you.
2 As soon as the voice spoke, the Spirit entered me and lifted me to my feet; I listened to what the voice told me.
The Voice: 3 Son of man, I am dispatching you to the people of Israel. They are a rebellious nation that lives in defiance of Me. They and their ancestors have broken loyalties with Me even up to this very day. 4 Go to the Israelites, who are stubborn and hardhearted, and tell them, “This is what the Eternal Lord has to say.” 5 Whether this nation of rebels listens or refuses to listen to My message, at least they will know a prophet has visited them. 6 Do not fear them or their words, son of man. Though you will dwell among the thistles and briars of their hostility, though their reactions will make you think you’re sitting on scorpions, do not be afraid. Pay no attention to their threats, and don’t let their glaring faces intimidate you. They are a rebellious lot. 7 It is vital you feed them My words, whether they choose to digest them or not, for they are a rebellious people.
8 Listen to what I tell you, son of man. Do not follow their rebellious ways. Open your mouth and eat what I give you.
9 When I looked, I saw a hand extended toward me. In its palm was a scroll. 10 As I looked on, the scroll was unrolled, and I could see that there was writing on the front and back. It was covered with words of lament, grief, and disaster.
The scroll Ezekiel is handed is a transcript of what he will report about Jerusalem’s fate to his fellow exiles in Babylonia. Although scrolls typically have writing on only one side (the front), the prophet sees that this scroll is covered with writing on both sides. This signals not only the overflowing anger that God harbors for His people but also the scope of the disaster that will overwhelm God’s rebellious nation.
3 The Voice (to Ezekiel): Son of man, eat what you find here—consume the scroll you see before you. Then go and preach to the people of Israel.
2 So I opened my mouth, and He fed me the scroll.
The Voice: 3 Son of man, swallow this scroll I am giving you, and let it fill your stomach.
So I ate it, and these words of God tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
The Voice: 4 Son of man, go to the people of Israel and preach My message to them. 5-6 You are not being sent to a far away nation with an unintelligible language. I am sending you to the people of Israel. But if I had sent you to foreign peoples with unintelligible languages, surely they would listen to you. 7 But the people of Israel will refuse to listen to you because they refuse to listen to Me. As I told you, the Israelites are a hard-headed, stubborn-hearted people. 8 But I have set your jaw just as tightly and furrowed your brow just as deeply as theirs. 9 I have made your head as hard as any rock. Do not be scared or intimidated by them, even though they are a rebellious lot.
10 Son of man, take to heart all the words I am speaking to you. Listen carefully to what I am saying. 11 Now go to your people, the exiles in Babylonia, and give them My message. Proclaim to them, “This is what the Eternal Lord has to say.” It doesn’t matter whether they listen to you.
12 Suddenly the Spirit picked me up, and I heard a loud rumbling sound behind me—it seemed to say, “May the glory of the Eternal One be praised in His holy place!” 13 The sound I heard was the sound made by the wings of the four living creatures brushing up against one another and the rumble made by the spinning wheels beside them. 14 The Spirit picked me up and carried me away. I was at once resentful and impassioned, but I couldn’t escape because the hold the Eternal had on me was strong.
The name Ezekiel means “God strengthens.” God makes Ezekiel strong enough to face many challenges and accomplish his mission, but his strength is no match for God’s.
15 The Spirit took me to a group of the exiles who lived by the Chebar Canal at Tel-abib. I sat there among them in a daze for seven days.
3 So all of you who are holy partners in a heavenly calling, let’s turn our attention to Jesus, the Emissary of God and High Priest, who brought us the faith we profess; 2 and compare Him to Moses, who also brought words from God. Both of them were faithful to their missions, to the One who called them. 3 But we value Jesus more than Moses, in the same way that we value a builder more than the house he builds. 4 Every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. 5 Moses brought healing and redemption to his people as a faithful servant in God’s house, and he was a witness to the things that would be spoken later. 6 But Jesus the Anointed was faithful as a Son of that house. (We become that house, if we’re able to hold on to the confident hope we have in God until the end.)
For the first-century Jewish-Christian audience, Moses is the rescuer of Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt—the receiver of God’s law and the covenant. They remember how he shepherded the children of Israel safely through the desert for 40 years and led them to the brink of the promised land. He was indeed a remarkable man. Yet what Jesus has accomplished for everyone—not just the Jews—is on a totally different level. Moses was indeed faithful to God and accomplished a great deal as God’s servant. Jesus, too, is faithful to God, but He has accomplished what Moses could not because He is God’s very own Son.
7 Listen now, to the voice of the Holy Spirit through what the psalmist wrote:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
8 Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah
9 Where your ancestors tested Me
though they had seen My marvelous power.
10 For the 40 years they traveled on
to the land that I had promised them,
That generation broke My heart.
Grieving and angry, I said, “Their hearts are unfaithful;
they don’t know what I want from them.”
11 That is why I swore in anger
they would never enter salvation’s rest.[a]
12 Brothers and sisters, pay close attention so you won’t develop an evil and unbelieving heart that causes you to abandon the living God. 13 Encourage each other every day—for as long as we can still say “today”—so none of you let the deceitfulness of sin harden your hearts. 14 For we have become partners with the Anointed One—if we can just hold on to our confidence until the end.
15 Look at the lines from the psalm again:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah.
16 Now who, exactly, was God talking to then? Who heard and rebelled? Wasn’t it all of those whom Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And who made God angry for an entire generation? Wasn’t it those who sinned against Him, those whose bodies are still buried in the wilderness, the site of that uprising? 18 It was those disobedient ones who God swore would never enter into salvation’s rest. 19 And we can see that they couldn’t enter because they did not believe.
Psalm 104
1 Call Him good, my soul, and praise the Eternal.
I am here to declare my affection for You, Eternal One, my God.
You are indeed great—
You who are wrapped in glory and dressed in greatness.
2 For covering, You choose light—Your clothes, sunset and moonrise.
For a tent, You stretch out the heavens; for Your roof, You pitch the sky.
3 Your upper chamber is built on beams that lie in the waters overhead,
and the clouds, Your chariot;
You are held aloft by the wind.
4 You make Your messengers like the winds;
the breeze whispers Your words,
Your servants are like the fire and flame.
5 You made the earth,
and You made its frame stable forever.
Never will it be shaken.
6 You wrapped it in a gown of waters—
ancient mountains under layers of sky.
7 But when You reprimanded those waters, they fled;
the thunder of Your voice sent them running away.
8-9 They hammered out new depths, heaved up new heights,
and swallowed up whatever You commanded.
At first, they covered the earth,
but now You have bound them,
and they know their appointed place.
10 You send fresh streams that spring up in the valleys,
in the cracks between hills.
11 Every animal of the open field makes its journey there for drink:
wild donkeys lap at the brooks’ edges.
12 Birds build their nests by the streams,
singing among the branches.
13 And the clouds, too, drink up their share,
raining it back down on the mountains from the upper reaches of Your home,
Sustaining the whole earth with what comes from You.
And the earth is satisfied.
14-15 Thus You grow grain for bread, grapes for wine, grass for cattle—
all of this for us.
And so we have bread to make our bodies strong,
wine to make our hearts happy,
oil to make our faces shine.
Every good thing we need, Your earth provides;
our faces grow flush with Your life in them.
16 The forests are Yours, Eternal One—stout hardwoods watered deeply, swollen with sap—
like the great cedars of Lebanon You planted,
17 Where many birds nest.
There are fir trees for storks,
18 High hills for wild goats,
stony cliffs for rock badgers.
For each place, a resident,
and for each resident, a home.
19 The moon strides through her phases, marking seasons as she goes.
The sun hides at his appointed time,
20 And with the darkness You bring, so comes night—
when the prowling animals of the forest move about.
21 It is then that lions seek the food You, the True God, give them,
roaring after their prey.
22 At sunrise, they disappear
and sleep away the day in their dens.
23 Meanwhile, the people take to the fields and to the shops and to the roads,
to all the places that people work, until evening when they rest.
24 One who hates may camouflage it beneath pleasant words,
but deep inside him, treachery still rages;
25 Don’t believe him when he speaks kindly
because his heart is completely ruled by evil.[a]
26 And though he covers his hatred with cleverness,
his wicked ways will be publicly exposed.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.