What does the first chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel give to the theologian?

Speech before the defense of the master's thesis. About the importance of the correct understanding of the 1st chapter of Ezekiel not only for biblical science, but also for Christian dogma, two opinions are hardly possible. Although the main goal of the prophet in this mysterious chapter of his book was to describe the God who appeared to him, the prophet is concerned here not so much with this inaccessible subject, to which only the last 2½ verses of the 28 verses of the chapter are devoted, but with the direct bearers of the Divinity and the mysterious engines of the glory of God - the cherubim. The Prophet thereby invites the reader - about the unapproachable height of God, which could not be shown, and to him, like all previous seers of God, to form a concept “on the nearest sphere of discovery of the Divine,” as the venerable author of the best treatise on angels aptly called the cherubim. The extent to which a concept formulated about it in such a way will correspond to its subject is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that even such a distant image of God as man still makes it possible to form some idea of ​​his Prototype. “God, who is above all, speaks of the cherubim of the 1st chapter. Ezek. doctor angelicus Thomas Aquinas, incomprehensible to his creation; That’s why He, without placing any image to represent His invisibility, placed incomprehensible natures as the image of His throne” (Sum. Theol. 1, 2, III, 4 centuries). So, the 1st chapter of Ezekiel is the chapter of Christian angelology, and in this last one it is the first and most important chapter, the chapter devoted to the study and examination of that face of angels who occupy such an exceptionally high position among the angels that they can hardly be called angels, and in the exact language of St. The Scriptures are not called that. No one anywhere spoke about this rank of the heavenly hierarchy in such detail and completely as St. Ezekiel did in the 1st chapter of his book. The Prophet Ezekiel could be given the honorary title of Cherubologist. The little information that the Old Testament had about the cherubim before Ezekiel, like weak rays of light, only thickened the deep sacred darkness into which they fell. And the New Testament added almost nothing to what St. Ezekiel gives on this issue. What is revealed to St. Ezekiel about the cherubim and what he tells us in the 1st chapter. of his book, has one feature that makes this revelation inconvenient for us. In the 1st chapter. According to Ezekiel, we are dealing with that direct contact of one spirit with another, in which they, so to speak, immediately and completely reveal their very essence to each other. This kind of knowledge, even in everyday life, is valued above discursive familiarization with the subject. When the human soul comes into contact with a disembodied spirit in this way, it, not being able to think otherwise than in concrete images, cannot help but clothe the influence of this spirit on itself in material images. And it is natural that the more such a spirit rises above the earth, the more difficult it is for the soul to directly perceive it into such images, the more refined, complex and strange these images should be. The images that fill the 1st chapter. Ezek. in this regard they reach their zenith. The reader will then understand the prophet here as he should when he examines behind these images the great and mysterious essence that influenced the consciousness of the prophet, and when this contemplation makes him experience, at least in part, what the prophet experienced on Khobar. Our book wants to promote such a reading of this difficult chapter. Although the cherubim are given the most significant part of the 1st chapter. etc. Ezekiel, but they do not constitute the main goal and subject of this chapter. God is such a goal. And in this regard, Chapter 1. Ezek. gives a lot. Rationalistic biblical criticism is partly right when it distinguishes the God of Ezekiel from the God of other prophets and, in particular, Isaiah. In the vast being of God for our minds, St. Ezekiel, with his divinely enlightened eye, saw something that other prophets did not see, at least in such clarity. In Ezekiel, especially in chapter 1. in his books, God appears before us from his, so to speak, most stunning and reverently terrible side, from the side of his “holiness” or, in the language of new philosophy, transcendence, worldliness. Just as in Isaiah He attracts the heart to Himself, giving rise to the most joyful hopes in it, so in Ezekiel He makes human thought go numb and numb before Him, but there is something sweet in this sacred horror. Ave. Ezekiel has the high honor of being the first precise distinction between that which in God is somewhat accessible to human understanding and, so to speak, contact with the world, and that which in it is inaccessible even to any name. Having apparently described God himself in the 1st chapter. of his book, in 2:1 he warns the reader that he saw only the Glory of God, and not the Glory itself, but only a “vision of the likeness” of it, and is afraid to put a subject to vajjomer. Having determined what in God can appear to a person, St. Ezekiel and in what a person can see in God, and what his great predecessors were worthy of seeing, one might say, he examined new features and not unimportant particulars, at least he drew his and the reader’s attention to them. Appearing, like some previous mystics, in the likeness of a man and sitting on a throne, God appears to Ezekiel, moreover, all shining with a special, unearthly light. The prophet is unable to find among all the types of earthly light a worthy likeness to this light and in indecision stops at the brilliance given by one mysterious jewel (chaschmal, LXX - ilectr), which, perhaps, the current exhausted nature does not produce. This inexplicable light in the appearance of God, as it appears from its description in Ezekiel, is the main thing, which was not noted by previous visionaries of God. Only with the Epiphany of Khovar it became possible to talk about God as Light. From that time on, light began to be thought of in the concept of God with almost the same necessity with which reason, will, and life are thought of in it. Another new feature is introduced into the image of the appearance of the Glory of God to man by the vision of Ezekiel, but only this feature is indicated as if with a mysterious secrecy, with the mental “let him understand.” The Lord who came to the prophet lets him know Himself first of all, as a qol, voice, sound, indefinable by anything and in no way closer. This Divine noise is clearly different from, if not directly opposed to, the noise of the appearance of the cherubim, which is described in great detail, while the former is defined only as “a voice from the firmament.” New Testament exegesis would gain new perspectives if the genetic search for the Logos were advanced to Ezek. 1, 25. Giving so much for biblical theology, 1st ch. Ave. Ezekiel also has a meaning that can be called philosophical and historical. From an unusually sublime and, so to speak, completely unexpected point of view, it illuminates that turning point in Old Testament history, which is represented by the Babylonian captivity. If our understanding of the general thought of Chapter 1. Ezek. has scientific value, then the divinely inspired contemplation of our prophet compares the Babylonian captivity in global significance with such important historical moments as the loss of paradise by the ancestors, the Sinai legislation and the very end of the visible world. The common thing in all these events was that they all caused the appearance of God on earth, moreover, a phenomenon that differed from other appearances of God by the mediation of cherubim, and this is the kind of mediation that least of all takes away from the appearance of God the high quality of immediacy. Chapter 1 is interesting. Ave. Ezekiel and in textual terms. The historian of the biblical text can draw instructive conclusions from it. In it, which is undoubtedly the most difficult page of the Old Testament, filled with untranslatable expressions and ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, the advantages and disadvantages of various biblical monuments are most clearly reflected. In our opinion, the heated debate of current biblical criticism about the comparative merits of the Masoretic text and the LXX, which began with sensational revelations in the field of the first by de Lagarde, is being resolved remarkably peacefully by the authoritative voice of the history of the text of this chapter. In this cruce interpetandi, both texts are two witnesses of the ancient voice of God with absolutely equal truthfulness, but together they are equally incapable of unconditional truth. Just one verse in chapter LXX is conveyed by the Masorets in a deliberately inauthentic form: how the Alexandrian translator fears in Art. 7. attribute the legs of a calf to the cherubim, so the mazor in the 13th century. clearly trying to explain what was unsaid by the prophet about the imaginary fire-like appearance of cherubs. In the critical assessment of various texts, this work is based on original principles, the reliability of which, we hope, cannot be doubted: 1) omissions in the sacred text were more possible than additions; 2) unclear expressions could rather fall out of the text than penetrate it. On the first basis, we consider as genuine all the advantages of the Masoretic text against the LXX and LXX against the Masorets; On the second basis, we consider the smooth readings of obscure passages in the Vatican and related codes to be very doubtful. In the dangerous business of so-called restoration of the text, we act with caution, which would probably seem ridiculously unnecessary to a Western biblical scholar. You might be interested in: