Historical

8 And in the sixth year [of the capitivity of King Jehoiachin], in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house [a captive of the Babylonians] with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of the Lord God fell there upon me.

² Then I beheld, and lo, a likeness of a Man with the appearance of fire; from His waist downward He was like fire, and from His waist upward He had the appearance of brightness like gleaming bronze.

³ And He put forth the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heavens and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the door of the inner [court] which faces toward the north, where was the seat of the idol (image) of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy.^(A)

⁴ And behold, there was the glory of the God of Israel [Who had loved and chosen them], like the vision I saw in the plain.^(B)

⁵ Then He [the Spirit] said to me, Son of man, now lift up your eyes toward the north. So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and behold, on the north of the altar gate was that idol (image) of jealousy in the entrance.

⁶ Furthermore, [the Spirit] said to me, Son of man, do you see what they are doing? The great abominations that the house of Israel is committing here to drive Me far from My sanctuary? But you shall again see greater abominations.

⁷ And He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall.

⁸ Then He said to me, Son of man, dig now in the wall. And when I had dug in the wall, behold, there was a door.

⁹ And He said to me, Go in and see the wicked abominations that they do here.

¹⁰ So I went in and saw there pictures of every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel, painted round about on the wall.

¹¹ And there stood before these [pictures] seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan [the scribe], with every man his censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense was going up [in prayer to these their gods].

¹² Then said He to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his [secret] chambers of [idol] pictures? For they say, The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.

¹³ He also said to me, Yet again you shall see greater abominations which they are committing.

¹⁴ Then He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the Lord’s house; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz [a Babylonian god, who was supposed to die annually and subsequently be resurrected].

¹⁵ Then said [the Spirit] to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? Yet again you shall see greater abominations that they are committing.

¹⁶ And He brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house; and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the bronze altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were bowing themselves toward the east and worshiping the sun.

¹⁷ Then [the Spirit] said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too slight a thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they must fill the land with violence and turn back afresh to provoke Me to anger? And behold, they put the branch to their nose [actually, before their mouths, in superstitious worship]!

¹⁸ Therefore I will deal in wrath; My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.^(C)

9 [The Spirit] cried in my ears [in the vision] with a loud voice, saying, Cause those to draw near who have charge over the city [as executioners], every man with his destroying weapon in his hand.

² And behold, six men came from the direction of the Upper Gate, which faces north, every man with his battle-ax in his hand; and one man among them was clothed in linen, with a writer’s ink bottle at his side. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

³ And the glory of the God of Israel [the Shekinah, cloud] had gone up from the cherubim upon which it had rested to [stand above] the threshold of the [Lord’s] house. And [the Lord] called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer’s ink bottle at his side.

⁴ And the Lord said to him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in the midst of it.

⁵ And to the others He said in my hearing, Follow [the man with the ink bottle] through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have any pity.

⁶ Slay outright the elderly, the young man and the virgin, the infant and the women; but do not touch or go near anyone on whom is the mark. Begin at My sanctuary. So they began with the old men who were in front of the temple [who did not have the Lord’s mark on their foreheads].^(D)

⁷ And He said to [the executioners], Defile the temple and fill its courts with the slain. Go forth! And they went forth and slew in the city.

⁸ And while they were slaying them and I was left, I fell upon my face and cried, Ah, Lord God! Will You destroy all that is left of Israel in Your pouring out of Your wrath and indignation upon Jerusalem?

⁹ Then said He to me, The iniquity and guilt of the house of Israel and Judah are exceedingly great; the land is full of blood and the city full of injustice and perverseness; for they say, The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see [what we are doing].

¹⁰ And as for Me, My eye will not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their wicked doings upon their own heads.

¹¹ And behold, the man clothed in linen, who had the ink bottle at his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as You have commanded me.

10 Then I looked and behold, in the firmament that was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something looking like a sapphire stone, in form resembling a throne.

² And [the Lord] spoke to the man clothed in linen and said, Go in among the whirling wheels under the cherubim; fill your hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city. And he went in before my eyes.^(E)

³ Now the cherubim stood on the south side of the house when the man went in; and the cloud [the Shekinah] filled the inner court.

⁴ Then the glory of the Lord mounted up from the cherubim to stand over the threshold of the [Lord’s] house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory.^(F)

⁵ And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when He speaks.^(G)

⁶ And when He commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim, [the man] went in and stood beside a wheel.

⁷ And a cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between the cherubim, and took some of it and put it into the hands of the man clothed in linen, who took it and went out.

⁸ And the cherubim seemed to have the form of a man’s hand under their wings.

⁹ And I looked and behold, there were four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub and another wheel beside another cherub; and the appearance of the wheels was like sparkling chrysolite.

¹⁰ And as for their appearance, they four looked alike, as if a wheel had been within a wheel.

¹¹ When they went, they went in any one of the four directions [in which their four individual faces were turned]; they did not turn as they went, but to the place to which the front wheel faced the others followed; they turned not as they went.

¹² And their whole body, their backs, their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that each had.

¹³ As regarding the wheels [attached to them], they were called in my hearing the whirling wheels.

¹⁴ And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, the second the face of a man, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

¹⁵ And the cherubim mounted upward. This is the [same] living creature [the four regarded as one] that I saw by the river Chebar [in Babylonia].^(H)

¹⁶ And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels did not turn from beside them.

¹⁷ When those stood still, these stood still; and when those mounted up, these [the wheels] mounted up also, for the spirit of life was in these [wheels].^(I)

¹⁸ Then the glory of the Lord [the Shekinah, cloud] went forth from above the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim.

¹⁹ And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight, and they went forth with the wheels beside them; and they stood at the entrance of the East Gate of the house of the Lord, and the glory of the God of Israel [the Shekinah, cloud] was over them.

²⁰ This is the living creature [of four combined creatures] that I saw beneath the God of Israel by the river Chebar, and I knew that they were cherubim.

²¹ Each one had four faces and each one had four wings, and what looked like the hands of a man was under their wings.

²² And as for the likeness of their faces, they were the same faces which I saw by the river Chebar, with regard to their appearances and themselves; they went every one straight forward.