Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Glory Leaves the Threshold
Ezekiel 10:1-22
1 Then I looked, and see, in the expanse that was over the head of the cherubim there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. · WEB
The throne from the opening vision reappears inside the temple, and the fire that once fell on the altar is now scattered over the city.
The chapter opens by connecting two things the reader has been holding apart. Above the cherubim appears as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne — the same words used by the canal in chapter one. And in case the identification is missed, it is made twice more in plain terms: This is the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar, and then I knew that they were cherubim. The wheels seen in exile and the cherubim over the ark belong to one vision. The throne that travels has been standing in the temple all along.
What the man in linen is now told to do reverses the direction of the sanctuary's own fire. He is sent between the whirling wheels to fill both hands with coals from between the cherubim, and to scatter them over the city. Fire from that place had been the mark of God's acceptance of what was offered. Here it is taken out of the holy place by handfuls and thrown across the streets, and a cherub has to pass it to him, so the transfer is made deliberately and by the creatures themselves.
Then the movement that the whole book is built on takes its second step. In the previous chapter the glory had risen from the cherub to the threshold of the house Ezekiel 9:3. Here it stands over the threshold while the cloud fills the inner court, and then: Yahweh's glory went out from over the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim. The cherubim lift their wings, rise from the earth, and stop at the door of the east gate. Each stage is reported as a separate event, with the prophet watching.
The slowness is the point, and it is the mercy in the chapter. Nothing here is a departure in anger and nothing happens at once. God moves from the innermost place to the threshold, from the threshold to the gate, and in the next chapter from the gate to the mountain outside the city Ezekiel 11:23 — pausing at every stage, in full view, over a period the reader can follow. A leaving conducted that slowly is a leaving that could still have been interrupted. Nobody in the city is described as noticing.
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