December 16

Babylon

Ezekiel was a priest. The work he had been trained for happened in one building in one city, and all of it assumed he had the run of the place. He could not get to it. He had been deported, and his book opens with him among the captives by the river Chebar, in the land of the Chaldeans, on the losing side of a war.

Jerusalem had not yet fallen. The house was standing, and he was in another country. The glory of the Lord is not confined to the building raised for it, and his training had not told him where else to look.

Then the heavens opened over Babylon.

Most of the chapter is taken up with what he saw below the throne, the living creatures and their wings and their wheels, and the throne itself comes late. The heads in the first line here are theirs.

Above the expanse that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, like the appearance of a sapphire stone, and above, on the likeness of the throne, was a likeness like the appearance of a man. I saw what looked like glowing metal, like the appearance of fire inside it, all around, from the appearance of his waist upward; and from the appearance of his waist downward I saw what looked like the appearance of fire, and there was brightness all around him. Like the appearance of the bow in the cloud on a day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice speaking.

Ezekiel 1:26-28

Every hedge in that is doing work. He records the likeness of a throne, and on it a likeness like the appearance of a man, and when he reaches the word he has been circling he guards it three times over: the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. He is telling you how far his words reach and where they stop. The last comparison is the bow in the cloud on a day of rain, which anyone caught outdoors has seen.

And on that likeness of a throne, over a priest who had been put out of his work, was a likeness like the appearance of a man. As close as he comes to it, what he saw had a human shape.

God took a human body outright, and the people who met him knew his mother's name and the trade he had worked at. The God Ezekiel reached for only by likeness was willing, in time, to be seen with nothing hedged. And Ezekiel got his look at that glory in Babylon, at the wrong end of a deportation, nowhere near Jerusalem.

Ezekiel had it in front of his eyes and still could not say it plainly. He got as far as the appearance of the likeness, and at that he stopped and fell on his face. He worshipped ahead of understanding. If your own account of God runs short early, you are in the company of a man who was looking straight at the throne. Say what you can of him, and when the words give out, bow anyway. What Ezekiel heard, once he was on the ground, was a voice.

Lord, your glory found a priest in Babylon who could not reach the temple he was trained for. I have no words equal to you. Take the worship I have, and let me hear your voice.