Ezekiel 10:5-6 - Exposition

And the sound of the cherubim. The use of God Almighty ( El Shaddai; comp. Exodus 6:3 ), the name of God as ruling over nature, while Jehovah expressed his covenant relationship to Israel, is, it may be noted, characteristic of the early stage of the religion of Israel ( Genesis 17:1 ; Genesis 28:3 ; Genesis 43:14 ; Genesis 48:3 ). Shaddai alone appears eighty-one times in the Book of Job. Psalms 29:1-11 . explains the voice of El Shaddai (though there it is "the voice of Jehovah") as meaning the roar of the thunder. The hands of the "living creatures," now recognized as cherubim, had been mentioned in Ezekiel 1:8 , and it is one of those hands that gives the fire into the hands of the linen vested minister of wrath. The elemental forces of nature, of which the cherubim are, partly at least, the symbols, are working out the purposes of Jehovah. The two words translated wheels are different in the Hebrew. The first is singular and collective ( galgal, the "whirling thing," used of the wheel of a war chariot, Ezekiel 23:24 ; Isaiah 5:28 ), and might well be translated "chariot" here. The second, that used in Ezekiel 1:15 , Ezekiel 1:16 , also in the singular, is applied to the single wheel of the four by which the angel, ministers stood.