The wheels of Ezekiel
A thread · The vision of Ezekiel 1 and 10, and the readings built on it
Ezekiel describes wheels with eyes, moving beside four winged creatures. The text is stranger and more hedged than the retellings, and it ties the wheels to the creatures’ spirit, not to an engine. The spaceship reading dates from the late 1960s. The older readings treated the vision as a dangerous mystery.
- Vision dated
- c. 593 BCE
- Setting
- Chebar canal, near Nippur
- Spaceship reading
- von Däniken 1968, Blumrich 1973
- Type of connection
- later reading documented; Near East link unresolved
- Open questions
- 3 logged
What does Ezekiel actually describe?
Ezekiel 1 opens with a date and a place. In the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile, Ezekiel is among the exiles by the Chebar canal in Chaldean land. The text does not say what the thirtieth year is counted from. He says the heavens opened and he saw “visions of God”. I read the JPS 2023 translation through Sefaria and paraphrase it throughout.
What he sees comes in layers. A violent wind from the north, a great cloud, flashing fire. In the fire, four living beings of human form, each with four faces (human, lion, ox, eagle) and four wings, with human hands under the wings and feet like calves’ hooves. Beside each creature, a wheel. Above the creatures’ heads, a vast expanse that gleams like crystal. Above the expanse, something like a sapphire throne, and on it a figure resembling a human, shining like amber above the waist and like fire below. Ezekiel calls the radiance the likeness of the Presence of God, and falls on his face.
The wording matters. Ezekiel keeps writing “like”, “resembling” and “semblance”. The JPS notes also say some phrases in this passage are uncertain in the Hebrew.
The wheels, verse by verse
| Verse | What it says (paraphrased) |
|---|---|
| 1:15 | A wheel on the ground beside each of the four creatures |
| 1:16 | The wheels shine like beryl. All four share one form, as though one wheel crossed through another |
| 1:17 | They can travel in any of four directions without turning aside |
| 1:18 | Their rims are tall and awe-inspiring, and covered with eyes |
| 1:19 to 1:21 | They move beside the creatures, rise when the creatures rise, and stand still when the creatures stand still, because “the spirit of the creatures was in the wheels” |
| 10:9 to 10:11 | The same picture in chapter 10: four wheels beside the cherubim, shining like beryl, going in four directions without swerving |
| 10:12 | The cherubim’s whole bodies, backs, hands and wings, are covered with eyes, and so are the wheels |
| 10:13 | Ezekiel hears the wheels called “the wheelwork” |
| 10:14 to 10:15 | Each creature has four faces, with a cherub’s face in place of the ox. Ezekiel says these are the same living beings he saw by the Chebar canal |
| 10:17 | The wheels stop when the cherubim stop and rise when they rise, because the living creature’s spirit is in the wheels |
Verses paraphrased from the Revised JPS Tanakh (Gender-Sensitive Edition, 2023) as shown on Sefaria. The short quotation is as my text-fetching tool returned it. I have not read the Hebrew.
Where and when
The book dates Ezekiel’s visions to the years 593 to 571 BCE. He was a priest from a Jerusalem family, deported in 597 BCE after a revolt against Nebuchadnezzar II, and he lived among the exiles at Tel Abib. The Chebar canal appears in the Murashu archives from Nippur in the 5th century BCE, and recent scholarship places it near Nippur in modern Iraq. Older commentaries identified it with the Khabur in Syria. Wikipedia gives the name Tel Abib as perhaps from Akkadian Tel Abūbi, “the tel of the flood”. I have not checked that against an Assyriological source.
The setting is part of the point. This vision is seen in Babylonia, not in Jerusalem. In chapters 8 to 11 the divine presence leaves the Temple, and in chapters 40 to 48 it returns.
Where could the imagery come from?
Wikipedia’s article on the book points inside Israel. The four creatures parallel the cherubim of the Ark and the Holy of Holies, and the wheels may recall the rings used to carry the Ark, or the wheels of a cart. In chapter 10 the text itself identifies the creatures with cherubim.
The other direction is Mesopotamia. Winged hybrid guardians, the lamassu and shedu, with eagle wings and the body of a lion or bull, were common in the ancient Near East. Scholars have tried since the nineteenth century to link the word cherub to Akkadian: Delitzsch (1896) to kirubu, a name for the shedu or lamassu, and Dhorme (1926) to kāribu, an intercessory being whose name means “blesser”. The question is not settled. Wikipedia’s article on cherubs says the animal forms in Near Eastern art do not closely match Ezekiel’s vision, and it does not claim direct borrowing. I would call that a thematic parallel, not a documented tie. The wider question of what Israel took from Mesopotamia is in the thread Where do the Bible stories come from?
How it was read afterwards
The wheels got a name and a rank. The Hebrew word ophanim means “wheels”. In the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q405) they are treated as angels. 1 Enoch (61:10 and 71:7) lists them with seraphim and cherubim as beings that guard God’s throne, and 2 Enoch calls them the “many-eyed ones”. Maimonides ranks them second-closest to God. They appear in the morning kedusha prayer and in the El Adon hymn. In Christian angelology some systems identify them with the Thrones, following De Coelesti Hierarchia, a view Thomas Aquinas accepted.
The vision also became a subject of mysticism. Merkabah mysticism, which Wikipedia dates from about 100 BCE, with its main texts (the Hekhalot literature) composed c. 200 to 700 CE, centres on the throne-chariot. The word merkavah itself does not appear in Ezekiel 1. The Mishnah (Hagigah 2:1) limits teaching it to one wise pupil at a time, and the Talmud (Hagigah 13b) tells of a boy consumed by fire after grasping a term in Ezekiel 1:4. Rabbinic commentary treats the vision as an analogy, not a literal description.
That history does not settle what Ezekiel meant. It does show that the tradition closest to the text handled it as symbol and danger, not as a technical report.
The spaceship reading
Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1968) reads Ezekiel’s vision of angels and wheels as a spacecraft. Academics widely rejected the book. Carl Sagan is reported to have criticised it in Ronald Story’s The Space Gods Revealed (1976), and Kenneth Feder rebutted its claims in 2018. Soon after publication von Däniken was accused of taking ideas from Robert Charroux, and a 2004 Skeptic article says he took many from The Morning of the Magicians.
Josef Blumrich, chief of the systems layout branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, published The Spaceships of Ezekiel in German in 1973 and in English in 1974. On Wikipedia’s account he set out to disprove von Däniken and ended up agreeing, and he drew technical specifications for a shuttle-like craft. Critics say he mistranslated key verses: he rendered “visions” in Ezekiel 43:3 as “vehicular structure”, and Story (1980) accused him of altering biblical quotations. The book is considered pseudoscience. His engineering credentials are real. The dispute is about the translation.
One viral version, checked
A widely shared short video that I came across in October 2026 retells the vision as “beings not human, not even creatures”. Here are its claims against the text.
| The claim | What the text says | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Not human, not even creatures | The wheels stand beside the four living creatures and share their spirit (1:20, 10:17). Chapter 10 calls those creatures cherubim. Later tradition counts the wheels among the angels | Overstated |
| Covered in eyes | The rims are full of eyes (1:18). In chapter 10 the wheels and the cherubim’s whole bodies are (10:12) | Supported |
| Turning in all directions without rotating | They go in any of four directions without turning aside (1:17). Four, not all, and “without turning aside” is not “without rotating” | Overstated |
| Part of a system, not individuals | They move where the spirit leads, together with the creatures (1:20). “System” is the video’s word | Partly right |
| Always moving, never stopping | They stand still when the creatures stand still (1:21, 10:17). Watching the throne is a later tradition (1 Enoch) | Not supported |
| The tentacle-like images | Nothing in the text describes tentacles or a coiled mass | Not supported |
| It is a spacecraft | The text says “visions of God” and “semblance”. It names no engine. The translation behind Blumrich’s case is disputed | Not supported |
Status as of 20 October 2026. “Not supported” means the text does not say it, not that nothing can be read into the text. Everything here rests on one English translation and secondary sources.
What if the wheels are there to make a throne portable? The Temple was the place where God sat, and the first vision happens in Babylonia, by a canal, far away from it.
I am speculating about the image, not about any person. Why it is worth asking: the wheels are the odd detail. The Ark was carried on poles and rings, and a cart has wheels, but neither explains eyes on the rims. What supports it: the vision is set among exiles, the presence leaves the Temple in chapters 8 to 11, and Wikipedia notes the wheels may recall the Ark’s carrying rings or a cart. What speaks against it: the text never says why there are wheels, the many eyes point to other meanings, and a single functional reading would flatten a deliberately layered image. What would tell the readings apart: comparing the wording with other depictions of divine thrones and chariots from the same period and region, dated against the book. What stays unknown: whether the wheels carry any one meaning at all.
What is still open
Where do the creatures come from?
Temple cherubim, Mesopotamian winged guardians, or both. The Wikipedia article on cherubs says the animal forms in Near Eastern art do not closely match Ezekiel’s vision, and the origin of the word cherub is still debated, with Delitzsch (1896), Langdon (1923) and Dhorme (1926) proposing different Akkadian sources. I found no source that settles a direct borrowing.
How firm is the text?
The Septuagint is about eight verses shorter than the Masoretic Text, according to Wikipedia, possibly reflecting an earlier transmission, and the JPS notes call some phrases in chapter 1 uncertain. I have not compared the Greek and Hebrew, so I cannot say whether the wheel passages are affected.
What is the thirtieth year counted from?
The text does not say. The book implies Ezekiel was about thirty at his call, and the date is also given as the fifth year of the exile, which gives c. 593 BCE. Which of the two the “thirtieth year” refers to is a question the text leaves open.
Sources
- Ezekiel 1:1 to 1:28 and 10:9 to 10:17, Revised JPS Tanakh (Gender-Sensitive Edition, 2023), via Sefaria. Read in paraphrase through a text-fetching tool; the one quotation is as returned.
- Wikipedia: Book of Ezekiel (dating, structure, the Temple imagery, authorship debates, the Septuagint), Ophanim, Merkabah mysticism, Cherub (the Akkadian proposals and Near Eastern guardians), Kebar River, Chariots of the Gods? and Josef F. Blumrich. Encyclopedia pages, secondary sources. Primary texts such as 4Q405, 1 Enoch and the Mishnah are cited through them; I have not read those texts.
A thread, not a place. Page opened and last reviewed 20 October 2026. Written from one English translation and secondary sources; I have not read the Hebrew or Greek. If something here is wrong, tell me and it gets corrected on the page with a note saying what changed.