27 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Ezekiel from across Jewish tradition.
27 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines ezekiel, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
Two hundred thousand Ephraimites left Egypt thirty years early, fought the Philistines, and died. Their bones became Ezekiel's valley.
Hiram of Tyre supplied the cedar for Solomon's Temple, then spent centuries building seven false heavens to claim the throne that was not his.
Moses passed four crushing sentences over Israel. Centuries later four prophets took his words apart one by one and softened every decree.
East of the garden the first angels were made, and they refuse one form, turning to man, to woman, to spirit, beside a sword of living fire.
The four living creatures strain forever under the Throne, crying blessed be the glory, and not one of them knows where that glory is.
By the Chebar canal Ezekiel named a day God had promised. Trace the promise back and you reach Moses, singing of arrows drunk with blood.
The rabbis nearly voted to suppress the Book of Ezekiel. One sage locked himself away with 300 jugs of oil and refused to stop until the book was safe.
Ezekiel saw the Chariot in exile, and centuries later a brilliant child reached into Ezekiel's book before the fire was willing to spare him.
Ezekiel sees human hands beneath the wings of creatures of fire. Kabbalah names them: the hands of cosmic Adam, reaching through the divine structure.
In Babylonian exile, Ezekiel watches the sky tear open. Fire, wheels full of eyes, and four impossible creatures arrive bearing the throne of God.
A slave woman at the crossing pointed at the sea and saw God more clearly than Ezekiel ever did in his greatest prophetic vision.
Ezekiel gave an uncertain answer about rescue. The three men declared they were ready to die regardless. That declaration was when the rescue became certain.
Ezekiel saw creatures with straight legs and wheels that moved in circles. The Kabbalists said the geometry mapped divine governance.
Ezekiel wades into a river that grows past crossing - ankle, knee, waist, then beyond reach. A vision of healing waters the future Temple will release.
Ezekiel was lifted to Jerusalem in vision and found twenty-five men in the Temple courtyard with their backs to the altar, facing east, bowing to the sun.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each encountered the divine, but Ezekiel by the Chebar Canal saw something none of them could describe. The rabbis traced why.
Moses sang about divine arrows drunk with blood on the edge of Canaan. Six centuries later, Ezekiel announced that the day Moses described had finally arrived.
Moses saw God most clearly of all the prophets. Ezekiel saw through nine clouded panes. So why is Ezekiel's vision so much stranger and more detailed?
God addressed Ezekiel as ben adam, son of man, beside the Chebar River in exile. Vayikra Rabbah says the word was not a warning but an act of affection.
Ezekiel received his vision on a Babylonian riverbank, in the heart of Israel's worst defeat, and the rabbis could not quite absorb it.
Ezekiel stands inside storm wind and fire where a word holds two opposites at once, silence and speech, stillness and flame.
Jehoiachin surrendered to save Jerusalem. Zedekiah was blinded by his own tears. Ginzberg gathered the legends behind the fall of Judah.
Targum Jonathan counts sixty-four faces and 256 wings on the throne. Ezekiel watches the glory move out through the east gate and waits for it to return.
The richest woman in besieged Jerusalem sends her servant for bread until nothing is left, then eats a fig skin from the gutter and dies in her gold.
At the topmost point of heaven the Throne of Glory burns sapphire-blue, and above it Aravot keeps the dew of resurrection and the unborn locked away.
When Ezekiel saw a storm from the north, he was not watching weather. He was seeing four klipot, shells blocking divine light, called there by human failure.
Ezekiel saw living fire around God's throne that opens its mouth, praises, then falls silent when silence is wanted.
