Объяснительное чтение

Introduction of the prophet into the book. Art. 1. Initial "I" Already with its first word, or rather, with its first letter, the chapter under study presents such a difficulty that exegesis cannot yet cope with. The chapter begins with the conjunction ו “and”, the meaning and meaning of which no one, of course, ever doubted, but whose appearance here, at the very beginning of the book, is unexpected: it is strange to begin a book with a connecting conjunction. In addition to the book of St. Ezekiel, several other biblical books begin with the conjunction “and” (Exodus, Joshua, Ruth, Judges, Kings, Jonah, Esther, 1 Macc.). This shows that for the ancient Jew such a beginning of the books did not represent something as unusual and strange as for us 23. This beginning of the biblical books is usually explained by the fact that the sacred writer wanted to present his book as a direct continuation of another book written by himself (Exodus - the continuation of Genesis) or by someone else (Ruth and 1 Samuel - the books of Judges), or he wanted to attach his book to the canon of the saints that existed before him. books, continue this canon with your book. The latter is considered possible in relation to the book of St. Jonah and the book of Ezekiel. However, regarding the last book, the first assumption is also considered possible: the initial “and” its author, they think, wanted to connect his book with the book of St. Jeremiah, whose message to the captives in Babylon (Jer. ch. 29) seemed to outline a program for the activities of Ezekiel (Geng. and others). It is in no way possible to agree with this explanation, neither in its first nor in its second form. Is it possible for an entire book, a work in which a well-known idea is developed in a long series of propositions? Is it possible to connect such a work with another similar work by one conjunction placed at the beginning of the book? The union connects only neighboring thoughts. A whole preface is needed to connect the book to the book. The biblical writers were also aware of this: if they needed to show the relationship of the book being written to others, they prefaced the book with an introductory remark; so does Moses in Exodus; this is what the author of the book of Judges does, etc. The other existing explanation is no more tenable. Smend thinks that with the conjunction “and” the prophet wanted to connect his story with the chain of events that was in his mind, but which will become clear to the reader only from the story itself. In a somewhat different form, the same opinion was expressed by the ancients (Blessed Augustine in his commentary on Ps. 4, Gregory V. in this place) and medieval interpreters (Cornelius and Lapide). According to their explanation, both in the book of St. Jonah and here the union “and” can mean a transition from the internal thoughts of the prophet, from internal contemplation to the external expression of these thoughts, to the word. Gregory the Great says: “Prophets perceive the spiritual just as we perceive the physical, and for them it is clear what we do not see. Hence it happens that in prophetic thought the internal is united with the external, since they contemplate both together; they are closely connected with what they hear inside themselves and what they express in the external word. Hence the reason is clear that the one who had not said anything before began his speech with the words: “And it came to pass in the thirtieth year”; he connected with this the word that he utters outside with the one that he heard inside himself.” It cannot, of course, be denied that the divinely enlightened thinking of a prophet differs in many ways from ordinary human thinking and that this difference should leave its mark on the prophetic language. But no matter how deep the difference is between the thought and language of the prophetic and ordinary language, the prophet must speak in such a way as to be understandable. And in this case, he cannot connect his speech with the internal process of his thought, unknown to his listener. When addressing someone with our speech, either orally or in writing, we always assume that our listener does not know the previous internal process of our thought, and without introducing him to this process, we cannot relate our speech to him. Some (Keil) consider the union in question to be simply a pleonasm peculiar to the Hebrew language. They say that this is the most beloved conjunction among Jews, used in all sorts of meanings. Here (Ezek. 1:1), among other things, it also serves to take away from the 2nd Hebrew aorist יְהִי (abbr. from יִהְיֶה) the meaning of the future tense and give it the meaning of the past, just as the 1st aorist with the same conjunction has the meaning of the future. This explanation is more likely than the previous ones. But it does not eliminate all confusion. If this is a pleonasm, what is its meaning and why is it used here? Why use the conjunction “and”, so strange at the beginning of the book, to change the meaning of the 2nd aorist into the 1st, when it is easier to put the 1st aorist directly? The mysterious appearance of the conjunction “and” at the very beginning of the book so attracted the attention of interpreters to this conjunction that the appearance of this conjunction again a few words later escaped them. They did not pay attention to the fact that both in the passage under discussion and in other similar places (i.e. in the first verses of other books beginning with “and”) ו (and) is not at the beginning of only the first sentence, but at the beginning of two or more adjacent sentences: “and it happened in the year 30, in the 4th month on the 5th day of the month” “and (in the Russian Bible “when”) I was among the immigrants;” Ion. 1:1–3: “And the word of the Lord came to Jonah... and Jonah arose to flee”; Ruth 1:1: “and... there was a famine in the land, and a certain man went up from Bethlehem.” It is obvious and expresses the connection between these sentences, which really have a close relationship with each other. The only question is, why is this connection expressed by more than one “and” placed at the beginning of the second sentence? Why "and" and before the first sentence? This question arises because the Jew knew the connection through one conjunction (at the beginning of one of the connected sentences) and gave it quite wide application; Thus, he connects sentences that stand in relation to causality and purpose with only one conjunction (מִין כִי). For the most part, ו (and) is not required at the beginning of the first sentence being joined. In order not to look too far, let us read the words immediately following the given words of verse 1 of the book of Ezekiel: “the heavens were opened (not “and opened”) and I saw visions of God.” If the absence of “and” here may seem suspicious (that’s how LXX and Pescito seem to read it), then here is verse 3: “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, and the hand of the Lord was on him.” If you delve into the meaning of both uses of “and”, it turns out that in the first category of cases of double “and” - it connects sentences that are related to each other in relation to time sequence; whereas in the latter, the second sentence complements and explains the first. In the first case, the thought of each sentence is completely independent and can stand alone; in the second, one is subordinate to the other, exists for the other, and this subordinate position must be marked by some change in her alone (as the subordinate position of the definable in relation to the definition is expressed in Hebrew by a change in the first - casus constructus). For this use of ו, one can point out analogies in Greek μεν with δε, in Latin nam, igitur, which often begin, apparently, completely new and independent sentences and entire tirades. Both these classical conjunctions and the Hebrew ו, when used in this way, impart a certain roundness, smoothness, and even solemnity to speech. In this case, the conjunctions do not have their own grammatical meaning and therefore are not conveyed by Russian conjunctions and, in general, by conjunctions of new languages. In Russian, sentences connected by double ו would stand without any conjunction and would be separated by a dot. Therefore, the beginning of the book of Ezekiel in pure (literary) Russian language would have to be conveyed as follows: “It was in the year 30, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month. I was among the captives on the shore of Chebar." שָׁנָה בִּשְׁלֹשִׁים וַיְהִי Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ τριακοστῷ ἔτει. And be in the thirtieth summer. No further than in the second word of the chapter, the interpreter encounters a new great difficulty, which has also so far not yielded to the efforts of exegesis. Ezekiel calls the year of his miraculous calling to prophetic ministry the thirtieth, without saying where this year comes from the thirtieth. The Prophet himself probably recognized the inadequacy of such a date, because further (in verse 2) he supplements it by noting that this “thirtieth” year was the fifth year of the captivity of King Joachim. Thus, even without understanding the first date, we will not remain in the dark about the year in which everything described in the first chapter took place. But still, one cannot leave the first mysterious date without an explanation, if only in view of the dispute that it aroused among the interpreters of St. Ezekiel. An ancient, now almost abandoned explanation of the “thirtieth year” of verse 1 refers to it as the thirtieth year of the prophet’s life. When reading the book of Ezekiel in its original language, this explanation may be the first to be presented to the reader. It is known that in the Hebrew language special ordinal numbers exist only for the first ten. Therefore, verse 1 of Ezekiel could be read like this: “and it was (=behold) at thirty years old... I was”... And the absence of further explanation of the word “30” first of all turns the reader’s thought to the 30th year of the prophet’s life. In Christian antiquity, this understanding of the “thirtieth year” of verse 1 seems to have been the most accepted. It is expressed by Origen, Ephraim the Syrian, Gregory Dvoeslov. He does not dare to leave him completely and the blz. Jerome. The main motivation for Christian interpreters to accept this explanation was the coincidence of the call to prophecy of Ezekiel in the 30th year with the appearance in the 30th year of the Savior's life in public ministry, a coincidence that seemed to them very significant. “Why do I need, asks Origen, the number of years, if not so that I learn that in the thirtieth year the heavens were opened for both the Savior and the prophet, and so that, comparing spiritual with spiritual, I understand that all scriptures are the speech of one and the same God?” (Migne, s. gr. XIII, 673). Later interpreters (with the exception of Gengstenberg and Schröder) considered this explanation so naive that they hardly deigned to refute it. But recently, exegesis, having tried all possible explanations for this mysterious figure, again returns to the forgotten old explanation (Klosterman, Cook, Kretschmar). In fact, all the objections made so far against understanding the year 30 in the sense of the 30th year of the prophet’s life are rather weak. Such a date (by age), they said, has no example in other prophets. But this is because other prophets use the chronology of reigns (of the kings of Judah or Israel). For some reason, Ezekiel does not use such a chronology (although he could have used it at the beginning of the book). He actually does not have a real, scientific, so to speak, historical chronology. Its chronology is somehow subjective, autobiographical, according to the years of “our captivity” (33:21, which is the same as the captivity of Jehoiachin: 1:2). Such an era, if it can be called an era, was compiled by him and only for himself, for his book. They further note that if in verse 1 there was a date that was not according to the age of the prophet, then it would be inappropriate to indicate the month and day. The month and date are indicated only with exact reckoning for any era. But the years of the prophet’s captivity (coinciding with the years of Jehoiachin’s captivity) were not the years of any era, and yet with them the dates of the month are indicated everywhere in the book. With the same right, the prophet could indicate the day of the month of the year of his life. We can remember the dates of the month on which the most important events of our lives fall, but find it difficult to immediately name the years of these events according to the generally accepted era. It is interesting to know the date of the month when we do not know the year of the event. The number of the month indicates the season (in nature), and knowing the latter is often more important than any other chronology for the completeness and vividness of the idea of ​​a well-known event. The objections to this ancient understanding of Bertholet's date in question are interesting. In the book of Ezekiel, he finds indirect indications that the prophet, when resettled to Babylon, was much older than twenty-five years old (if you see an indication of age in 1:1, then the prophet was 30 years old in the 5th year of Jeconiah’s captivity, and since he was resettled with Jeconiah, at that time he was 25 years old). “It has long been noted,” says Bertholet, that the book of Ezekiel must have been written by a man of mature age. In the very elongation of the style, perhaps one can even see something senile. This assumption is confirmed by the following facts. 1) Ezekiel turns out to be married (24:16–18), and it is unlikely that he married in captivity; 2) in 592 the elders visit him (8:1), which indicates that he was already invested with significant authority; 3) he is so familiar with all the places of the Jerusalem Temple and all its rituals that he had to personally participate in them; 4) He speaks to God about his ritual purity: “from my youth...” (4:14); 5) his description of Gog’s hordes will then be quite understandable if he was strongly impressed by the attack of the Scythians in his youth” (Einl. XIV). All these considerations do not force the fact that the prophet Ezekiel was more than 25 years old when he moved to Babylon. He could have begun his book (and this is more likely) not immediately after his calling, but perhaps at the end of his over twenty years (cf. 1:2 and 29:17) of prophetic activity; He could study Jerusalem and the church even as a twenty-year-old youth. As for marriage, undoubtedly in the ancient east people got married much earlier than here, i.e. immediately upon reaching puberty. And now 12-year-old boys are marrying 11-year-old girls there (Geiki, Holy Land and the Bible, St. Petersburg 1894, 1, 179). The prophet gained authority among the “elders of Israel”, of course, not by his age, but by the clear finger of God on him, especially by his first vision. In Josephus we encounter the legend that Ezekiel was resettled to Babylon precisely in his young years, παῖς ὧν (Arch. X, 6, 2 according to Bert. Einl. XIV). One cannot help but think that Jeremiah, etc., was called to prophecy by a youth (1:6) and that he indicates this circumstance at the very beginning of his book. Consequently, his successor Ezekiel could have begun the book by indicating his “young” (30 years was considered youthful years among the ancients) age at calling. Still, resolutely defend this understanding of the date of Art. 1. difficult. We can only say that of the existing views, this last one is unfairly considered by the latest interpreters to be the most unfounded. What prevents us from completely agreeing with this view is, firstly, the ambiguity of the expression (the prophet does not say: in the 30th year of his life, but simply in the 30th year). Then it is not clear why the prophet had to indicate his age: except for Jeremiah, none of the prophets indicate their age when speaking in public preaching. It is really necessary for the latter to indicate in which reign the calling of the prophet followed: without this, his speeches, which always relate to contemporary events, will be incomprehensible... Can an accurate idea of ​​the age of the prophet significantly contribute to his understanding? And prophets do not like to write unnecessary things, especially about themselves. However, the indication of age could have some meaning here. “If this is the thirtieth year of his life, then Ezekiel entered the prophetic ministry at an age when, under other circumstances, he would have received priestly ordination. In this year he received spiritual baptism into prophecy, as a rich replacement for the lost priestly ministry” (Kr.). This was the fullness of age that, according to the fate of Providence, turned out to be necessary for the Savior himself to begin His ministry. If the ancient Jews had such a generally accepted chronology as the Christian one or like the chronology of modern Jews (from the creation of the world), then the present short date would not have aroused any bewilderment. Ezekiel could then have called the year of his calling simply the thirtieth year with the same right with which we always and everywhere call the present year simply “190...” But the fact is that the ancient Jews did not have a domestic era. Therefore, years in the sacred books nowhere, with the exception of one present place (and Neh. 1:1, but there the reign of Artaxerxes is clearly meant; cf. 2:1; 5:14) are not designated by a bare number. St. Ezekiel himself, nowhere in his book, does not use the mysterious number that he uses in verse 1 of the 1st chapter. Despite the decisive absence in the sacred books of any indication of the existence of any era among the Jews, most interpreters insist that in this place St. Ezekiel uses some generally accepted chronology. This chronology, they think, could have come into use shortly before Ezekiel and soon after it fell out of use; That's why no one uses it anywhere anymore. Interpreters differ in the particular definition of this chronology. Some think that the chronology used here by St. Ezekiel has its starting point in the year in which the book of the law was found under the pious King of Judah Josiah in the Temple of Jerusalem and when the Passover, which had not been celebrated among the people for a long time, was solemnly celebrated. This was at the beginning of the year 18 of Josiah. The years of reign were counted in parallel with the civil years, so that if the king ascends the throne not at the beginning of the civil year, but in the middle and even at the end of it, then this entire year is considered the first year of his reign, the next year the second, etc. For this reason, a reign that lasted less than a year is not counted separately, but is counted towards the previous one (Ptolemy does this in his “Canon of Kings”). Thus, the year in which the calling of St. Ezekiel followed, being the 5th year from the time of the captivity of Jehoiachin, falls precisely on the 30th year from the time of the discovery of the book of the law under King Josiah. This is the explanation of the 30th year, 1st Art. Ezekiel is captivating first of all with its venerable antiquity. It is given in the targum on the prophets Jonathan ben Uzziel, a disciple of the famous Hillel, therefore, in a monument dating back to the time of Christ. Thus, in those days, this explanation was generally accepted in the synagogue (since the targum should be considered, as it were, the official synagogue edition of the Bible for the people, and not a private one - see Cor., Prol 110-111). It is separated from the time of the prophet himself by only 5 centuries. The Targum begins his free translation of the book of Ezekiel: “And it came to pass 30 years after Hilkiah the high priest found the book of the law in the house of the sanctuary in the porch under the portico at midnight after the setting of the moon in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the month of Tammuz, on the fifth day of the month”... (according to the Latin translation of Rose). The opinion of the Targum is shared by the most learned of the rabbis Kimchi and Rashi; then from the teachers of the church - Blessed. Jerome, and from Western exegetes Gefernik, Ideler 24; Fr. also leans towards him. Christmas. In defense of the era of Josiah, Gephernik cites the following considerations: “the last happy period under Josiah is opposed by the last disastrous period. Numbers are prophetically significant data, indicating the importance of prophetic ministry in a wonderful time full of fate. Only in this way is the double chronological date in Ezekiel sufficiently explained. And if one cannot seriously blame the first date for uncertainty and darkness, then this latter is already completely eliminated by the certainty of the second date in Art. 2.” But still the era is built on pure speculation, which cannot be supported by any biblical evidence. No matter how great the social significance of the mentioned event might have been, there were certainly more important events in the life of the Jews. Why didn’t they give the basis for some kind of chronology, but this is essentially such a random event? “No era is dated by the destruction of the cult of the high places under Hezekiah,” says Hitzig (2 Kings 18:4, 22), just as nothing is dated within the Bible and the construction of the church (dated outside the Bible. Ideler 508, Geth.). There is no surviving news that Josiah introduced chronology from here, although his other institutions are described in great detail. And the consequences of Josiah’s reform were not such that other kings had reason to begin a new reckoning with it.” Even if we assume that this event could give rise to the beginning of chronology, then such an era, counting at the time of Ezekiel only 30 years of existence, did not give the writer the right to use it without explanation: for this it was too young. Some modification of the above explanation is represented by another explanation expressed by the blzh. Theodoret and developed by Maldonat. According to this explanation, the “thirtieth year” of verse 1 is the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity. The reasons for this view are as follows. There is no doubt that the main subject of the book of St. Ezekiel is the great punishment that befell the Jewish people at that time, namely the Babylonian captivity. We can say that the entire book of this prophet is devoted to the consideration of this one subject from its different sides, with all its circumstances and consequences. Ave. Ezekiel is the prophet of the Babylonian captivity, not only in the chronological sense, but in the sense of the divinely inspired interpreter of the captivity. It is for this interpretation of captivity that this prophet, one might say, was erected. Isn’t it natural to expect after this that he will begin his book by indicating in what year of captivity he was called to prophetic service? In any case, it is more natural for him to count the years from the beginning of the captivity than from his birth or from the acquisition of the book of the law, neither of which circumstances he mentions in the book. But was the year of Ezekiel’s calling really already the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity? The captivity of Jehoiachin, with which Ezekiel was taken to Chaldea, was not rather the beginning of the Babylonian captivity, and not the middle (the 30th year) of it? In 4:6, notes the blj. Theodoret, God says to the prophet: “And sleep on the second ribs of your right hands, and inflict injustice on the house of Judah for fourty days, a day for one year ordained for you”; these words indicate that there are still 40 years of captivity left; and since all the years of captivity should have been 70 (2 Chronicles 36:21; Jer. 25:11, 12; 20:10), then 30 have already passed. Since the announcement of the 70-year captivity, thus. 30 years must have passed by the time of Ezekiel. The question now is, had 30 years of captivity really passed by the time Ezekiel was called? As we have seen, 30 years before Ezekiel was called, Judah was prospering under the godly leadership of Josiah. But it was precisely in that year of this king when Hilkiah found the book of the law and in connection with this discovery, Huldama made a prophecy about the coming disaster to Judah. Through this prophetess, God, however, only confirmed that all His previous threatening decisions about Judea would not be stopped even by the great reforms of Josiah and should begin with the death of this pious king. Thus, the prophecy of Huldama can be considered as the final proclamation of the unchangeable will of God about the Babylonian captivity, although the actual proclamation of the 70-year captivity was made by Jeremiah in the 4th year of King Jehoiakim and the 1st Nebuchadnezzar (25:1, 11). “That the prophet’s captivity begins from his announcement (prediction), says the blessed one. Theodoret, it shouldn’t seem strange. For God also spoke to Abraham Genesis. 15:13: “You know that your seed will be abject in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave me, and embitter me, and humble me for four hundred years,” and meanwhile we will not get 400 years for the Jews to stay in Egypt except by counting them from the time of this prediction.” According to the blessed Theodoret, this only testifies to the mercy of God that He, setting a period for one or another of His punishment, calculates its years not from the time the guilty person actually served it, but from His announcement of it. One cannot partly disagree with all the arguments given in defense of this view, and at least one cannot decisively challenge them. The Prophet Ezekiel could begin his book by pointing to that year of the Babylonian captivity, in which he came out with his divinely inspired interpretation of this captivity. At the beginning of the book, which is entirely occupied with this captivity, he could rather give such an instruction than any other. It is also possible to consider God’s prediction as the beginning of captivity, especially since it is difficult to date this beginning to any specific event: captivity, so to speak, began over years and even decades, and gradually engulfed Israel. But still, these arguments, as arguments in favor of the views considered, do not go beyond the limits of possibility and leave room for the previous objections. If the year of the prophet’s calling was the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity, then this should have been said to the prophet, it should have been added after the words “in the thirtieth year,” for example. “our captivity” or something similar. The absence of such an increase gives the right to accuse the prophet of involuntary ambiguity, a heavy accusation for a divinely inspired writer. And if so, then the prophet simply could not call the year of his calling, even if it was really the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity, the thirtieth. A little more likely is another widespread assumption regarding the “30th year” - that this is the year of the Babylonian, so-called Nabopolassar era, i.e. that this is the 30th year from the accession to the throne of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar. Nabopolassar (according to the “canon of kings” of Ptolemy) reigned for 21 years. Since his son Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in the fourth year of Joachim’s reign (Jer. 25:1), then after Nabopolassar (under Nebuchadnezzar) Joachim reigned for another 8 years and Jehoiachin for 3 months 10 days; total: Reign of Nabopolassar Joachim after Nabopolassar Thus, the coincidence with the chronology of St. Ezekiel is not complete, but quite close. This is the explanation of Ezek 30. 1:1 is the most common among the newest interpreters. It was expressed for the first time and substantiated in some detail by Prad 25 . Since the prophecy (i.e., the first vision) of Ezekiel is marked by two eras, says Prad (according to Ros.), and one of them is the era of the kingdom of Judah, then the other, i.e. The 30th year must be related to the Chaldean kingdom, in which the prophet lived, i.e. must be the era of Nabopolassar, then still newly established. Chaldean astrologers also constantly used it, as can be seen from the famous “canon” of Ptolemy, who, imitating their calculation, counts the years of the reign of Cambyses of Persia, Darius Hystaspes and even the Roman Emperor Hadrian from Nabopolassar. It is impossible to find a calendar more accurate and older than this. This opinion is also favored by the fact that the prophet wrote among the Babylonians and had to adapt to their custom, as Daniel later did (2:1; 7:1; 8:1; 9:10), Haggai, Zechariah and Ezra, who all, as Babylonian or Persian subjects, use in their books chronology according to the years of the reign of the kings there, saying: in the second year of Darius, in first year of Cyrus, etc. (In the same way, Nehemiah writes at the beginning of his book: “and I was in Susan-Abira...”, which here must be understood as the 20th year of Artaxerxes, clearly from 2:1; cf. 5:14; Ezra 7:7). All this only proves that St. Ezekiel could, following the example of other prophets, use the Babylonian era in his book, i.e. designate the time of their prophetic revelations and speeches by the years of the reign of the Babylonian kings. But whether he really uses such an era in the first verse of his book cannot be stated with certainty. And this is especially true since nowhere else in the book does he use this era (in 40:1, the two dates given there fall on the same Judean side. Gitz.). For this reason alone, the prophet had to express himself here more clearly and more precisely, and not in the same way as Nehemiah (who in 2:1 fills in what was left unsaid in 1:1). It is also incorrect (as Fr. Rozhdestvensky noted) that the era of Nabopolassar was generally accepted among Chaldean scholars and Ptolemy: Ptolemy calculates chronology not from Nabopalassar, but from Nabonasar, who is 100 years older than Nabopolassar. “No news at all has been preserved about the chronology from Nabopolassar’s accession to the throne. True, he founded a dynasty, made himself independent from Assyria (Abyden in Chr. Eus. p. 55: cf. p. 44, as well as Diodorus 2, 44); only with this assumption is it clear why Berosus, who until now only mentions the Assyrian supreme kings of Babylon and passes by the silence of the vassal kings, continues the ranks of the first with Nabopolassar, but from this we only get the possibility of an era dating from him” (Gitz.) Not to mention the fact that, as we have seen, there is a complete coincidence between the era of even Nabopolassar and the chronology of the prophet Ezekiel in 1:1 does not work: it turns out there is a difference of 4 years; so one would have to assume that Ave. Ezekiel has an error or corruption in the text. It is impossible not to mention one more view on this issue. They think that the prophet Ezekiel uses the so-called jubilee era in 1:1, i.e. counting according to anniversary years. Jewish rabbis begin counting jubilees from the 14th year after the Jews entered Canaan, and the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuzaradan is believed to be in the 36th year of the then anniversary (Fr. Birth.). Since this destruction occurs in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 52:12), then the 1st year of Nebuchadnezzar corresponds to the 17th–18th year of the jubilee. And the first year of Nebuchadnezzar coincides with the fourth year of King Jehoiakim of Judah (2 Kings 23:36; 24:1; cf. Art. 8:12.), who reigned for 11 years; therefore, after the 18th year of the anniversary of the reign of Joachim, 7 years remained. the rest of Joachim's reign The existence of such a view is mentioned by the blj. Jerome. Apart from some Jewish scholars, it is shared even by such an authority as Gitzig. “The Jubilee years,” he says, repeating himself periodically, were, in theory, independent of events; and, therefore, there was no need to name it here as the starting point of the era.” This opinion is rightly objected to: “The question is, is this calculation of jubilee years correct? Isn’t it itself based on a preconceived understanding of this passage in the book of St. Ezekiel? The question of the jubilee period has not yet been finally resolved; they also argue about whether this period lasted 50 years or only 49. It is all the more difficult to calculate exactly which years the anniversaries fall on, since there is no indication of their celebration in one year or another.” (Fr. Rozhd.). If there was not and could not have been during the time of St. Ezekiel any era according to which the year of his vision fell on the thirtieth, then the prophet could not give this year such a short, bare numerical designation. If he wanted to be understandable, he should have definitely indicated where this year falls in the thirties. The absence of such an indication here casts a shadow on the authenticity of this place. Indeed, the assumption of corruption of the text seems to be the only way out of the difficulty created by this uncertain date. The reader of the book of Ezekiel cannot help but find it strange that the prophet designates the year of his calling twice - in the 1st verse and in the 2nd. For an accurate idea of ​​the time of this calling, what is said in verse 2 would be sufficient. There the prophet uses the same number of years that he further uses throughout his book and which is quite clear and natural. From this it is possible to conclude that the unclear, indefinite and seemingly unnecessary date of verse 1 was introduced into the text by a later hand. It could be an explanatory note (glossa), which previously stood in the margins and then ended up in the text itself. This is the assumption made by some interpreters regarding the present date (Merxx according to Cor., Cor. and Bert.). “It is known, says Bertholet, that Jeremiah indicated 70 years for the captivity, but Ezekiel speaks (4:6) only of 40. Anyone subsequently reconciling this contradiction by simply supposing that Ezekiel's vision, of course, was in the 30th year of captivity. This explanation, first expressed in the margins of the book, later found its way into the text.” Even Kretschmar calls this assumption strange. Other amendments to the text are also proposed: Luzzato 26 thinks that in the original text there was כשלשש וגיי “in the 13th year” (i.e. Nebuchadnezzar, who ascended the throne in 604 BC; 604–13 = 591), from where, thanks to the replacement of addition by multiplication, 3 by 10=30. According to Kretschmar, “there is no era here, as the failure of any immediate definition proves, for for the reader who is not able to guess thoughts, it must somehow be indicated which era Ezekiel has in mind. Therefore, it is best to remain with the explanation, coming from antiquity, that the 30th year is the year of the life of the prophet. The current expression, of course, is strange and is found in Gen. 8:13 (Closter.) only very insufficient support, since the corresponding Gen. 7:11 there is no antecedent here. But with Masoret. of the text as it is, nothing will come of it, and therefore one can take for the initial reading, if not שיי בן־שיי ואחי “and I was a son of thirty years old,” then כןיי בהייתי אני ויהי “and it came to pass when I was a son of 30 years old.” To the suffixed Inf. with ב Ezekiel has a special predilection: 15:5; 16:22, 30, etc.; similarly to the connection of ב with int. constr. from הוה: 6:8, 13; 15:5; 16:22, etc. If בן was abbreviated as ביי (see Perles, Analekten zur Textkritik des A. T. 20; Vinck. 182), then the sign of abbreviation could easily be seen. Then a further consequence was that בהיתי or אני after ויחי fell out.” The previous objections to such assumptions remain valid. And the gloss, so that it was an “explanation” and did not obscure the prophet even more, calling the year of Ezekiel’s vision the thirtieth, should have added where it considers it to be the thirtieth; she should have said: “in the thirtieth year of the Babylonian captivity” - or the like. Moreover, one can resort to the assumption of damage to the text only as a last resort to explain a well-known expression, i.e. when all methods of interpretation have been exhausted and none have led to anything. Can this be said about this place? We see that from the explanations offered by exegesis for the 30th year of Ezek. 1:1 each has its share of credibility and each leaves a lot of room for objections. They are all equally hampered by the strange circumstance that the prophet left his date without further explanation. But might not this very strange circumstance provide some clue to its explanation? Was there something that did not allow the prophet to indicate where the year of his vision came from in the thirtieth? If this year were the thirtieth from any specific event in time, then nothing could prevent the prophet from naming this event. But the fact of the matter is that the starting point for calculating some mysterious times and periods is not always a specific event in time. Exegesis still cannot decide where to count the 400 years of “the resettlement of Abraham’s seed in a land that is not their own” (Gen. 15:13), where to begin counting the weeks of Daniel. And such questions, we believe, are inviolable in essence, since the beginning of these symbolic periods must be lost for human comprehension in sacred darkness. What happened on Chebar, as we have seen, was an event in the history of Israel, also important enough to have the same mysterious dates as the Egyptian slavery, like the Babylonian captivity. It happened upon the fulfillment of the well-known and undoubted by its symbolism number of years “30” from something that cannot be named and indicated by a human finger. It was appropriate for the Khobar vision of the prophet Ezekiel, full of secrets, to have a mysterious date. And in no way could the prophet so immediately and so strikingly warn the reader about the strange mystery of what he was preparing to tell, as by defining the very time of this with a symbolic, significant and inexplicable number. This explanation of the date 1:1 Ezek. may seem strange to many. And it is really strange for our, European, so to speak, thinking. But we must keep in mind that the first verse of Ezekiel with this date, impossible for our ears, was read and copied for tens of centuries in this form, with this naked number 30, and not a single reader or copyist, not a single ancient scribe or rabbi thought about a possible mistake here, no one decided to correct the prophet here, to finish his omission (if the Targum decides to do this, then for the same reasons for which it replaces everything bold phrases and expressions of the Bible are safer for popular understanding). So, according to all antiquity, the prophet had reason to call his year 30, without indicating and without being able to indicate why he was the thirtieth. לַחֹדֶשׁ בַּחֲמִשָּׁה בָּרְבִיעִי Ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ μηνὶ πέμπτῃ τοῦ μηνὸς In the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month. Each prophet could indicate in his life the moment from which he became a prophet and from which his entire life and activity flowed in a completely different direction than it had gone before. But it is possible that while for some prophets this miraculous revolution took place and matured gradually, for others the power of God instantly regenerated the soul. The prophet Ezekiel was one of these latter. He became a prophet overnight. It is not surprising, therefore, that while other prophets indicate only the year of their calling (Jeremiah), others limit themselves to designating the reigns during which they served (Isaiah, Amos, etc.), and some do not indicate the time (as well as place) of their activity at all (Nahum, Habakkuk, Jonah), the prophet Ezekiel, in addition to the year, also indicates the month and day of his calling. His call to prophetic service happened in such a stunning way for him that this day could not help but be imprinted in his soul forever. No prophet was called to his ministry in such a stunning way. Naturally, no prophet designates the time of his calling with such precision as Ezekiel. In addition, as Gefernik noted, later biblical writers in general “show much more chronological care than the most ancient ones.” The prophet Ezekiel designated the month and day of his calling so clearly that this designation, apparently, cannot cause any confusion or questions. The Prophet said that it was “the fourth month, the fifth day of the month.” But if we wish to transfer the date of the prophet to our time reckoning, we will encounter some difficulties. It is not known where the Jews began the year at the time of the prophet. And if so, then it is impossible to determine which month of ours and, therefore, also which season of the year the fourth month of the prophet corresponds to. Needless to say, knowing this last would be very important for the completeness and accuracy of the idea of ​​the great vision of the prophet. A little later, we will even be convinced that such a reduction is essential for understanding one feature in a vision. Apparently, there can be no doubt about where the Jews began their year. According to the law of Moses (Ex. 12:2), the month of Nisan or Aviv, corresponding to our March-April, should be the first month of the year. But it was a sacred and ecclesiastical year. In addition to this, they say, the Jews also had a civil and agricultural year, which began in the fall, from the month of Tisri. Hints of such a year are seen in Lev. 25:12. Rationalists, who attribute the origin of part of the Pentateuch (the so-called “priestly code”) to the time of the Babylonian captivity, even argue that the church year, beginning with the month of Nisan, came into general use and replaced the civil year only after the captivity (Change on Ezek. 40:1). Without going into an analysis of this opinion, we will only note that the sacred writers in their books do not know and do not use any other year other than Mosaic, as can be seen from Zech. 1:7; 7:1.; Esf. 2:6; 3:7; 8:9. Of the prophets of the Old Testament, Ezekiel, perhaps less than anyone else, could use the civil year in his book: he was too committed to the ritual law for this. We are not saying that the very existence of such a year is only a guesswork. So, there is more evidence that St. Ezekiel uses the church year and that the month of his vision was the fourth, counting from Nissan. It must be said, however, that the view of time reckoning in St. Ezekiel, according to which the prophet counts the year from the fall (from the month of Tisri), also has the voice of one church teacher behind it. Blzh. Jerome considers the fourth month of St. Ezekiel to correspond to our January, noting that “among the eastern peoples, after the harvest of fruits and grapes, when tithes were brought to the church, October was the first month, and the fourth was January.” But the blzh. Jerome does not insist on such an understanding: in his interpretation of Ezek. 29:1. he already says that the tenth month of the prophet corresponds to our January; therefore, in his opinion, in other places in his book the prophet counts the months from Nissan. As Rosenmüller rightly notes, Blessed. Jerome, more for the purpose of allegorical use, wants to see January in the fourth month of this place, so that the month and even the day of the calling of St. Ezekiel would coincide with the Baptism of the Lord, which, according to church tradition, was January 6. Opinion of the blessed Jerome stands alone on this issue. Even interpreters who admit that the Jews have a civil year in addition to the church year are inclined to think that the prophet Ezekiel counts the months according to the first time reckoning. Rationalists say that, although in the time of the prophet Ezekiel the civil year was generally accepted among the Jews, starting in the fall, such a time reckoning had already begun to give way (cf. Ezekiel 45:18, 20) to the Babylonian one, according to which the counting of months was to be carried out from the spring (See Bert.). Thus, interpreters of the most opposite directions agree, although for different reasons, in asserting that the month of the calling of the prophet Ezekiel was the fourth month of the holy or Passover year of the Jews 27. If so, then it corresponded to our June in the second half and July in the first. So, it was a hot summer time. The eastern summer was in full swing with its heat, interrupted at times by devastating storms. It was one of these storms that the prophet’s miraculous vision began. We will find a detailed description of this storm in verse 4. The prophet Ezekiel also indicates the day on which his calling followed. It was the fifth day of the month or, as the prophet puts it, “the fifth day of the new moon, חדש.” This expression gives reason (Smend) to see here the influence of Babylonian timekeeping, since in Babylon the concept of “month” was denoted by the word “new moon”; among the Jews, in the ancient language, the month was called not chodesch “new moon”, but ירח (actually “turn of the moon”). But Exodus already calls months chodesch’ami (12:1-3). The ancient jerah over time became primarily a poetic name (Job 3:6; 7:3; cf. Steinberg, Jewish and Chaldean Etymological Dictionary for the books of V.Z., Vilna 1878, 1, 196). It is impossible not to mention a certain peculiarity that the authentic Hebrew text presents in the reading of this entire date. The designation of the month and date is given there without using the words “month” and “day”, i.e. literally translated into Russian as follows: “on the fourth to fifth from the new moon” 28. And such a reduction is usual in St. Ezekiel (cf. 8:1; 20:1; 31:5, etc.). If we remember that, according to the probable assumption of researchers of the biblical text, in the ancient writing of the Jews all numbers were given a numerical designation through the letters of the alphabet, then the present abbreviation will not seem so strange. It will be very reminiscent of our customary abbreviated designation of the numbers of the month: by means of numbers placed next to each other. We would write the date of the prophet: 4.5 i.e. just as, in all likelihood, the prophet wrote in his autograph: ח ר עַל־נְהַר־כְּבָר בְתוֹךְ־הַגּוֹלָה Καὶ ἐγὼ ἤμην ἐν μέσῳ τῆς αἰχμαλωσίας ἐπὶ τοῦ ποταμοῦ τοῦ Χοβαρ And I was in the midst of captivity at the river Chebar. The prophet now needs to indicate his place of residence. “And I am among the captives on the river Chebar” is how the prophet’s answer to this question should be literally translated from Hebrew. The conciseness of the expression reaches the point that the natural verb “was” הייתי is omitted. The absence of this verb here is so unbearable for any ear except the Jewish one that LXX, despite all its literalism in the translation of the book of Ezekiel, added ἤμην. But even for a Jew, the verb would not be out of place here, why, for example. Nehemiah says in exactly the same case: “And it came to pass in the month of Haslev of the twentieth year, and Az Beh (הייתי ואני) in Susan-Avir” (Neh. 1:1). Obviously in our place the auxiliary verb was omitted deliberately because it was inconvenient in some respect. In fact, if he had stood here, the whole expression: “and I was among the migrants on the river Chebar” could only have a specific meaning: the prophet at the time, which will be discussed further, was among his fellow captives, in the company of 29 of them on the banks of the river Chebar. The absence of a verb extends the meaning of the expression. It takes on the character of a general acquaintance by the author of the reader with his personality at the place of residence. This is the prophet’s answer to the reader’s first natural question to him, who he is. “I am from the settlers near the Khovar River” - this is how this sentence can be conveyed in literary Russian. The preposition “between” בתוך used here is quite suitable for this meaning of this expression, especially the meaning and use that this preposition has in Ezekiel. It is noted that בתוך is an extremely favorite word in Ezekiel (3:15; 5:2; 4:5; 9:4 three times; 11:7, 9, 11, 23; 12:2, 10, 12, 27; 13:14; 14:8, 9; 18:18; 31:37; 22:3; 24:5, 7, 11, etc.); but nowhere is it expressive in him, but serves rather as a pleonasm (Kr.). And here it obviously has the general and broad meaning that it has, for example. in 2 Kings 4:13 (the Shunammite woman says to Elisha, “I live among my people”). Introducing the reader to his personality, the prophet first of all finds it necessary to note that he belongs to that for which even then the name גולה - golah, breathing sorrow and horror, was established. This noun, coming from a root consonant and unambiguous with the Russian gol (גלה, galah - the main meaning of “to bare” Gen. 9:21, Exod. 47:2, etc.) came into literary use with the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:15). Among the population of Judah spared by the Babylonian conqueror, it became a special name for those languishing in captivity (Ezek. 11:25), a name that sounded compassion, but, it seems, mixed with contempt (Ezek. 11:15). Serving as a collective name for captives, golah cannot be translated in one word into other languages, even those related to Hebrew, such as Chaldean, which is why the Targum already translates here: “among the sons of captivity” (Vulgate - in medio captivorum; Paremiyniki and Ostrozh. Bible - “among the captives”). But the current Slavic translation decides to put here “captivity,” which may have a collective meaning rather than “captivity.” Western biblical scholars prefer a simple transcription - golah. The word golah says it all and the prophet had the right not to add anything more to it. This one word immediately describes both the external conditions of the prophet’s life and the state of his spirit. No matter how brightly the newest biblical scholars portray (Stade. Geschichte. d. V. Isr. II, 1–63, etc.) the situation of the Jewish captives in Babylon, at least at the first stages of settlement in a foreign land, this situation could not help but be terrible. Not to mention homesickness, it took a lot of hard work and care to find the means to live in an unfamiliar country, where, of course, the worst plots of land, unnecessary to anyone, were allocated for the settlers. Noteworthy is the fact that the prophet cannot name his place of residence, his city or village, by name. He indicates only the river on the banks of which lived the Jewish colony to which he belonged. It was probably just an emerging, insignificant settlement created by labor and the sweat of captives, which had not yet received a name. And for future prophetic activity, God assigns Ezekiel not his original residence, but another (3:15 cf. 23) more significant and rich settlement of Tel Aviv (“hill of ears”) 30. Be that as it may, but instead of the name of the city, settlement or region in which the prophet lived, we hear from him the name of the river near which he and his compatriots lived. It is strange that the prophet names the very country in which this river was located, the country of his captivity, much later, only in v. 3, as if looking around that not every reader will subsequently know the location of that river, which his contemporaries were probably too familiar with to need to add anything to its name. There could be another reason why the prophet limits himself here to the name of the river near which he lived. Wherever in his book he mentions the mysterious vision described in the 1st chapter, he connects this vision with this river, represents what happened on this river. Obviously, here too he names this river not only as his place of residence, but as the place of his vision. The peculiar way of expressing it in the present sentence (without הייתי Neh. 1:1 and without ישב “was” Ezek. 8:1) allows just such a double meaning in it. The prophet clearly wants to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the heavens initially opened and he saw a vision of God precisely on the river Chebar. And it should be noted that epiphanies and visions repeatedly occurred on the banks of rivers and seas. Daniel had two visions on the banks of rivers (Dan. 8:2; 10:4). The greatest visions ever seen—the apocalyptic visions—were given on the open sea. In terms of suitability for visions, waters can rival mountaintops and deserts, these common places of visions and epiphanies. in the sound of waters one can always hear something mysterious, the voice of the Almighty (Ezek. 1:24; Ps. 41:7, 8; 92:3, 4). Perhaps Ezekiel, in the case described in Chapter 1, “sat on the shore of Chebar, attuned by the sound of the waters to lofty thoughts, which had as their subject the terrible fate of him and his people” (Kr. IV). So, we will get a correct idea of ​​both the place of residence of the prophet Ezekiel and the place of his vision when we find on the map of ancient Assyro-Babylonia a river with the name Chebara. It is not easy to find on this map, which is still being created by scientists only guesstimately and approximately, anything, especially such a little-known river. The difficulty of this search is further aggravated by the fact that it is impossible to establish with certainty the very name of the river, so one has to look for something whose name is completely unknown. The name of the Ezekiel River is rendered unequally by the Masoretic text, LXX and other ancient translations. There were several rivers in that area, their names reminiscent of one or the other of these editions of the name of the Ezekiel River. As the name of the Ezekiel River was read LXX, it resembles the river חבור Chabor, in 2 Kings. 17:6 and 18:11 (cf. 1 Chronicles 5:26), to which the Assyrian kings (Pul, Tiglaphelaser and Shalmaneser) resettled the inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel. The Arabic translation renders the names of these two rivers identically as “Chobara”. This consonance of the name was enough for some interpreters to identify the river of Ezekiel with this one and conclude from this that the captives of the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel were settled in one place. In this circumstance, they further wanted to see the special action of God's providence, which united on the land of captivity those who lived in constant discord in their homeland (this consideration was confirmed by reference to Ezek. 37:16, etc.). The data reported in the book. Kings and Chronicles about that river Chebar, allow it to be identified with the eastern tributary of the Tigris (Jacuti according to Schultens, Index geograficus, whose name Chabur for ancient times is confirmed by the mountains Χαβώρας mentioned by Ptolemy (6, 1). These mountains, according to Ptolemy, are located between Media and Assyria and Habor 2 Kings and 26 Chron. is located within Mussels. The dissimilarity of these two names in their Hebrew spelling apparently speaks against such an identification. In wt. i.e. the name of the river Iez. 1, 1 is written כבר kebar, and in 2 Kings. and 1 pair. חבור chavor. But kebar can be considered as an Aramaized form of chavor, with the transition of ח to כ, cf. eg חבל “rope” and כבל “chains” (Gitz.). However, without encountering any obstacles from this side, such an assumption regarding Ezekiel’s Chebar contradicts the geographical data about him. According to 1:3, Chebar St. Ezekiel must be sought in the land of the Chaldeans. But Chaldea or Shinar has always been the name given to the region adjacent to Babylon (having the northern border between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers at the great pier. Noldeke 1 p.) and this name has never meant the region north of the Tigris, where Chebar flowed 4 books. Kingdoms In addition, from the book of Kings it is not directly clear whether the Chebar mentioned there was a river or a city: the way of expression in the Hebrew text rather makes us consider it, like Halakh mentioned next to it, as a city on the rivers Media and Γωζαν'i. More plausible is another assumption about the river Chebar, which until recently was shared by all interpreters of Ezekiel. Strabo and Ptolemy mention one tributary of the Euphrates, which bears a name very similar to Ezekiel's Chebar, especially in its Greek translation. In Ptolemy (5, 8) this tributary is called Χαβώρας, and in Strabo (lib. 16) Αβόρρας. It originates in the Masian mountains near the ancient city of Ras-el-ain (near Nizibia), cuts through upper Mesopotamia along its length parallel to both main rivers, but, unexpectedly turning at right angles to the west through a transverse valley, flows into the Euphrates at Circesium (Carchemish. Ber. Ritter). The river is formed from an unusually large number of streams, some 300 (Geph.), and could rightfully bear both names כבד - “strong” (cf. Ex. 17:12; 28:2) and חבר “binding” i.e. many sources (Pliny Nat. Hist. 31, 22: suffitus “fragrant”, probably deriving the name from Arabic). The city of Thallaba was also known on this river - on the map of Anville at 360 370 latitude. Longitude 530 540 between Raselian and Obeidia. In general, in this area there were many cities with names starting with Tela (Tela-Birtha, Tel-Baser, Tel-Aphar, Tel-Eda). Tel in Hebrew is “hill” and this name was given to places with burial mounds so common in eastern Syria (Roz.). In the Middle Ages there were many cities in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthis Chebar, and in the time of Saladin it was a very important country (Geth.). Obviously, this Khobar lies much further north of Chaldea and could not be Ezekiel’s Khobar. In the region of ancient Chaldea itself, no river with a similar name has been preserved and no monuments are known. But in lower Mesopotamia in ancient times, not only rivers, but also the smallest canals were called “nahar”, נהר “river” (Neldeke in Bibel-Lexic. Schenkels “Chebar”), as the prophet Ezekiel Chebar calls it. Rawlison suggests that Khobar was a large canal in Lower Mesopotamia, connecting the Euphrates with the Tigris and called nahr-malcha “royal river”; During the time of Pliny, there was a legend that this canal was dug by the head of the region named Govar (Knab.). Moving southward in search of Chebar, exegesis now stopped at the very outskirts of Babylon and found in the newly discovered monuments a canal whose name almost certainly sounds like Ezekiel’s Kebar. An unexpected light was shed on the location of Khovar by a discovery made by Hilprecht in May 1813 in Niffer, ancient Nippur, to the southeast. from Babylon. In the tables of treaties published by this scholar (in The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania) from the times of Artaxerxes I (464–424) and Darius II (423–405) it is called twice, among other things, in one table dated 41 years of Artaxerxes, naru ka-ba-ru, as the name of a large shipping canal lying near Nippur. According to Haupt, in The Sacred Books of the O. Test. (to this place), probably this is the present Schatt-el-Nil, which represents some ancient shipping canal, flows through the middle of the Niffer and is about 36 m wide. It leaves the Euphrates at Babylon, flows to the southeast. and flows into it again at Warka, the ancient Uruk. For more information about it, see I. Peters, Nippur, 1897, 2, 106. 192. Since כבר in Assyrian. means “great”, “powerful”, then naru kab (b?) – a-ru (cf. Del. Assyr. Handwört. 315) was the “great canal” of Babylonia, therefore, one of the main waterways of this country. The form כְּבַר instead of the expected כַּבָר or כְּבַר is most likely explained by the dialectical pronunciation of the name; Wed Vavil. Puratu, pers. Utratu, heb. Perath (Euphrates). But it is possible that it is due to the punctators, who vocalized כבר according to the familiar נְהַר־פְּרָת stands here, as in other places. V.Z. eg Ref. 7:19; 8:1, respectively Assyrian. naru in the meaning of “water sleeve”, “channel” (Kr.). Please contact us Καὶ ἠνοίχθησαν οἱ οὐρανοί καὶ εἶδον ὁράσεις Θεοῦ And the heavens were opened and I saw the vision of God. If the dates contained in the first verse raise so many doubts and require such long explanations, then, apparently, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis verse is so clear and immediately understandable that it seems impossible for any error regarding it. But it is as if such was the fate of the first chapter of the prophet Ezekiel that even its first verse - this simplest verse of the entire chapter - remained ununderstood. In exegesis, a completely incorrect understanding of the thought of this verse has been established and is still dominant, not destroyed by anyone, due to which the remaining introductory verses (2 and 3) are deprived of their proper meaning. According to the generally accepted opinion, in the first verse the prophet begins the description of his mysterious vision on the river Chebar; namely, after indicating the time and place of this vision, he makes a general preliminary remark about it, that on Khobar the heavens opened before him, the prophet, and he saw visions of God. This last expression of the prophet, apparently, so clearly refers to the Khobar vision and constitutes such a natural preface to it that the interpreters did not even think that it - this expression - could have any other meaning and refer to something other than the Khobar vision. Until then, the indicated meaning of this expression seems inevitable that interpreters have not paid attention to the many difficulties that arise from such a “natural” understanding of the first verse. First of all, is it too early for the prophet to begin describing his first vision? The Prophet has not yet introduced his identity to the reader. He hasn't made the titles for his big book yet. And he is already forced to talk about one of his visions, to report such detail about this vision that with it the sky opened before the prophet, etc. The interpreters were misled by these last words of verse 1: “and the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” The heavens opened before the prophet more than once during his many years of ministry, and more than once he saw visions of God. It can be said that the abundance and majesty of the visions most distinguishes Ezekiel from other prophets. His book could be called the “book of visions.” Was it not proper and natural for him to begin his book by pointing out this distinctive property of it? Knowing that the attention of everyone in his book will be drawn primarily to visions and that in this respect his book will be little similar to previous prophetic books, the prophet Ezekiel could not help but warn the reader about this and not note in the preface that the reader in his book will have to deal mainly with visions. If so, then isn’t it more natural to apply the expression: “The heavens of God were opened and I saw visions of God” not to the vision of Khobar, but to all the visions of the prophet Ezekiel? Beginning his book, the main feature of which is the abundance of visions, the prophet indicates at what time and place this series of visions began for him, at what time the sky opened for him. The Prophet knew that further reading of his book would show the reader what meaning should be connected with the expression “the heavens were opened” and together would prove that he had the right to use it. But if we, having understood this expression in the literal sense, began to look in the book of the prophet and in his activities for isolated cases confirming such daring testimony about himself, we would come to some difficulty. Prophet Ezekiel several times in his life saw things (creatures and phenomena) directly heavenly, not earthly. But in the sense in which this took place in relation to other chosen ones of God, i.e. in the direct and literal sense, the sky did not open before him - it did not open as it opened at the baptism of Christ for the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, or as it opened before Stephen, Paul, and John the Theologian. The prophet Ezekiel, therefore, does not use such an expression about any of his visions in particular. If he uses it here, in verse 1, it is undoubtedly because we are not talking here about any particular vision, but in general about the ministry of the prophet, which was marked by a series of such mysterious visions that the very sky was opened before the prophet. Consequently, this expression in the mouth of Ezekiel can only have a figurative, figurative meaning. “The opening of heaven,” the blj notes in the interpretation of this place. Jerome, understand that this happened not as a result of the division of the firmament, but according to the faith of the believer, in the sense that the heavenly mysteries were revealed to him.” In this last sense, it seems that none of the prophets with more right than the prophet Ezekiel could use such an expression about himself, and it is probably not an accident that he alone uses it. God revealed the secrets of his economy to other prophets, and perhaps sometimes with greater completeness and certainty than to Ezekiel; for example, can the hidden and general predictions about the messianic times of Ezekiel be compared with the predictions of Isaiah, this evangelist among the prophets? But the secrets into which other prophets amaze us are the secrets of God’s economy, providence on earth and about people. As a result of this, the speeches of these prophets hover above the earth and above people, and rarely rise to the heights of heaven itself. Of all the prophets, Ezekiel speaks most about what is happening in heaven, in the immediate vicinity of the throne of Jehovah. Of the prophets of the Old Testament, he was almost the first before whom the sky opened, and in any case, he was the first to describe the sky with such detail and completeness. This is the meaning of Art. 1. expression “the heavens opened.” Admitting, however, that the reader may still have some doubts about the meaning of such a figurative, and most importantly, expression used for the first time in sacred literature, the prophet hastens to explain it with a more precise expression: “and I saw the visions of God.” In his time, the word “vision” fully established the definite, close meaning with which this word exists even now. Translations of the Old Testament, starting from the LXX, allow for inaccuracy (inevitable, however), when they convey the same word “vision”, ὅρασις, Hebrew מַרְאֶ֖ה or מַרְאָה (mar’eh, mar’ah) הזון (chason) and משח massah (Ex. 1:1; 13:1; 19:1; Hab. 1:1). The last two simply mean prophetic speech with a special connotation (chason - especially insightful, penetrating speech, - massah - stern, formidable) and only mar’ah (also mar’eh) expresses the concept similar to Russian “vision”. Already in the time of Moses, the word “mar’ah” had, along with its general root meaning (“appearance”), a special meaning of “vision” (Gen. 6:2; Num. 12:6), and by the time of Ezekiel and Daniel the second meaning had become the main, if not exclusive, meaning. At least the prophet Ezekiel noticeably avoids using this word in relation to ordinary vision (see 1:16; cf. v. 5). With him, as with Daniel, it is attached to the contemplation of that which, by its very essence, is invisible. That is why with this word almost everywhere (and here too) the prophet Ezekiel 32 has the adjective “Godly”, which in such a connection cannot be more accurately translated into Russian than the word “supernatural” (Steinberg o.s. word מראה). With this beginning of the book, the prophet immediately determines his place among other prophets, as well as the significance of his book in the ranks of everything written before him, as part of the sacred writing that had grown to significant proportions by his time. Speaking at such a time with a book, he naturally had to anticipate the mental question from everyone opening his book: what new can he say and what can he add to the speeches and predictions of the great prophets who were before him? Won't he just repeat them? The destinies of Israel were so fully revealed and clarified by the previous prophets that Ezekiel actually had to often repeat, almost word for word, his predecessors. But along with such repetitions, the prophet Ezekiel had in his book to give the reader something completely new, barely familiar to him from the previous holy books. This new thing is a series of visions, each larger than the other, as if developing during the prophet’s activity, growing in breadth and depth. The first verse warns the reader about this abundance of visions in his book. It seems that nothing (except perhaps novelty) can interfere with the proposed understanding of the first verse. If the prophet wanted to show the difference between himself and his book from other prophets (which was so natural to him after a number of such glorious and great prophets), then he could not do it better than by prefacing the preface customary for prophetic books (which begins with the second verse) and the date of his calling by indicating that from this calling he became able to see in the open heavens. If the prophet had written not in Hebrew, but in a richer and more accurate one of the newest languages, he might have expressed his thoughts more clearly. But even in Hebrew this idea is expressed quite clearly. A new writer would only replace “saw visions of God” with “began to see.” The correctness of the proposed understanding of the first verse is also proven by the impossibility and difficulties of the opposite (i.e., usual, generally accepted). If in the first verse the prophet already begins to describe the Khobar vision, then the first three verses of the chapter will be filled with many repetitions and will present a completely impossible placement of the thoughts contained in them. Bearing in mind precisely the usual understanding of verse 1 and not foreseeing the possibility of another, interpreters who were more daring in their judgments said that one must have absolutely no control over the pen in order to write such the beginning of a book (Bert.). “To make the prophet Ezekiel responsible for the first three verses of his book,” says Bertholet, is to completely deny him authorial ability. The change of the first and third persons in verse 1: I was, I saw... already in the 3rd: the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, the hand of the Lord was on him"), repetition of the geographical date (in verses 1 and 3 the prophet, according to the interpreters, speaks five times about where he had his first vision), a pile-up of various expressions denoting a state of prophetic ecstasy (“the heavens were opened”, “saw visions of God”, “the word of the Lord was”, “the hand of the Lord was”) - all this cannot be justified in any way.” In fact, to admit that a writer talks about the same thing five or four times over several lines means to have a low opinion of the writer. Meanwhile, interpreters who do not dare to suspect the authenticity of these verses admit the possibility of such repetitions on the part of the prophet and look for justifications for them. So eg. Regarding the five-fold repetition of the geographical date, they say that the prophet seemed very strange about the appearance of God in a pagan land; he seemed to be afraid that the reader would not believe his story because of this circumstance, and therefore considers it necessary to repeat several times in a row that God appeared to him precisely in the Chaldean land (Keil, Knab., Gautier, etc.). They think to protect the prophet with such artificial explanations! In this regard, the interpreters of the rationalist trend were fairer to the prophet: they directly denied the authenticity and integrity of the first three verses of the book on the grounds that if accepted in the form in which they have been preserved to us by tradition, and let us add, understood as they are usually understood, they would bring upon the Prophet Ezekiel the charge of inability to express himself. But we see that to justify the prophet there is no need to resort to such an extreme measure as denying the authenticity of the first verses of the book. If we abandon the generally accepted misunderstanding of the first verse, then the entire preface of the book will take on the most natural form. The prophet's preface to the vision. Articles 2 and 3 Home page הַמֶּלֶךְ יוֹיָכִין Home page Home עָלָיו שָׁם יַד־יְהוָה Πέμπτῃ τοῦ μηνός τοῦτο τὸ ἔτος τὸ πέμπτον τῆς αἰχμαλωσίας τοῦ βασιλέως Ιωακιμ. καὶ ἐγένετο λόγος Κυρίου πρὸς Ιεζεκιηλ υἱὸν Βουζι τὸν ἱερέα (ἐκεῖ) ἐπ᾿ ἐμὲ χεὶρ Κυρίου. On the fifth day of the month - this fifth summer - the captivity of King Jehoiakim - (and) the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the son of Buzi, the priest, in the land of Chaldeans, near the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord be upon me. It is only necessary to admit that the first verse does not yet speak about the Khobar vision, but in general about the beginning and nature of Ezekiel’s prophetic activity, and the next two introductory verses of the chapter - the second and third - will receive the simplest and clearest meaning, and will not contain any of those seemingly insurmountable difficulties that made one suspect the authenticity of the entire beginning of the chapter. In fact, couldn’t, let’s say more, could it have been different, could the prophet have begun the description of his first vision in a simpler, clearer and more understandable way, in which he was called to his ministry, could he, we say, begin this description differently, as with the following words: “on (that previously mentioned) fifth day of the month - it was the 5th year from the captivity of King Jehoiakim - the 33rd word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the son of Buzi, the priest, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, and the hand of the Lord was on him there and I saw...” The most common (stereotypical) beginning of a prophetic book with the necessary information about the personality, origin and place of activity of the prophet, where every word is clear, where nothing is superfluous, nothing can be omitted or replaced. From this usual beginning, the prophet Ezekiel made only that minor deviation that he preceded him (in verse 1) with a remark regarding the abundance of visions in his book and about when and where these visions began, the sky opened before him. And such a remark, in view of the uniqueness of his book, was far from unnecessary. – It is completely in the spirit of not only Hebrew, but also of any equally ancient language to convey the concept: “on the mentioned, on the named day” through the repetition of the nearest numerical designation of it. When starting to describe his first revelation, his vision on the Chebar River, the prophet had to indicate exactly its year. He actually did this already in verse 1: his vision on Chebar, in which he was called to prophetic service, occurred in the thirtieth year in which heaven opened before him. From this vision his rebirth began. But in addition to such personal significance for the prophet himself, that vision was also an event of social importance; in the life of the Jewish people, what could be more important than the appearance of a new prophet of Jehovah? Therefore, the prophet Ezekiel had to date his first vision in such a way as to indicate its place among other events in the national life of Israel. The date of verse 1 is made from a different point of view, and not from this point of view. And so Ezekiel adds a new date to that date, from which the reader can immediately see at what time in the national life of Israel his call to prophetic service occurred. “This is the fifth summer of the captivity of King Joachim.” Is it possible to say that given the date of verse 1, even if it were not so mysterious and unclear, this second date is superfluous? Whatever the first date may mean, it will not give such an accurate idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe era in which Ezekiel entered his ministry as this remark: “it was the fifth year of the captivity of King Jehoiakim.” This was the time when the people with their king were led into captivity and when, therefore, a prophet of Jehovah was especially needed for this people. Other prophets in their books designate the time of pronouncing certain speeches by the years of reigns. For the prophet Ezekiel, who was settled with his fellow captives so far from his native land that news from there reached him barely a year and a half later (cf. 33:21 and Jer. 39:1), such a designation of time was inconvenient. Moreover, the kingdom of Judah soon fell, so that the prophet Ezekiel only at the beginning of his book could designate the time of the reign of Zedekiah in years. On this, probably, basis, he chose a different method of calculating chronology for his book - he composed a kind of era for it: he begins counting the years from the taking of the Jewish king Joachim into captivity. This, indeed, was the most suitable era for his book. With this very king, with him as if at the head, the prophet himself and the entire migrant colony that was the closest circle of his prophetic activity were taken into captivity (3:14, 15). With this king, the best and most capable people of Judah, the aristocracy of the country, were taken into captivity: “all the princes, and all the brave army, 10,000 were deported, and all the carpenters and blacksmiths, no one remained except the poor people, and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his eunuchs, and the mighty of the land” 2 Kings. 24:14, 15. Although Joachim, or whatever he is otherwise called in the book. Kings, Jehoiachin 34 By voluntarily surrendering to Nebuchadnezzar, his future fate was significantly easier (compared to the terrible fate of Zedekiah), but still in captivity he was kept in custody “in a prison house” (Jer. 52:31). His position, therefore, was more difficult than that of his subjects, who were taken into captivity with him. It was as if he suffered alone for everyone, and perhaps this aroused new sympathy for him among the Jewish captives. They could not help but consider him their local king, their representative in Babylon, around whom they united. By designating the time of his revelations as the years of captivity of this king, St. Ezekiel could be sure that he had chosen the clearest and most understandable chronology for all the Jewish captives in Chaldea. Of course, this chronology sounds mournful: the years of captivity instead of the years of reign! 35 The captivity of Jehoiachin followed in the 8th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (2 Kings 24:12), and Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in 604 BC. Consequently, Jehoiachin was taken into captivity in 597, and Ezekiel's call and vision on Chebar was in 592–593. No matter how wonderful, unusual and unprecedented in the entire Old Testament history the vision of the prophet Ezekiel on the Chebar River was, this vision had the greatest importance for the prophet not from the side of its extraordinaryness, unprecedentedness, but from another side. The most important thing for the prophet in this vision was that through it he was called to his ministry, that it made him a prophet. It was the first revelation of God to him. Through him, God spoke to him for the first time, spoke in the voice with which he spoke to his prophets, and which not every person is able to hear. The secret of the prophets and the prophetic soul should remain how this voice sounded and what it was like, i.e. what happened in the soul and consciousness of the prophet when God spoke to him. Remarks and indications that appear here and there in prophetic descriptions (like Jer. 20:9; Heb. 4:12) on the properties of this voice of God would perhaps enable an attentive researcher to form some idea about it. But for us it is important here to establish only the position that by the time of the prophet Ezekiel they knew well what the “word of the Lord” was to any person and what it meant to hear and be worthy of this word. This meant becoming a prophet and receiving on the soul and consciousness that special seal of grace from God, which immediately sharply distinguished a person from those around him and made him different from himself in his previous state. In verse 3, the prophet Ezekiel wants to say it all: “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.” Thus this is the first thing he considers necessary to say about his wonderful vision on Chebar, which he will now begin to describe. First of all and most of all, this vision was important both for him and for Israel, because in this vision God spoke to him for the first time and that through it he was called to prophecy. To mark this aspect of the vision, the prophet had to make a departure from the sequential order in the description of his vision. At first, he sees many wonderful and amazing things on Chebar, which probably took him quite a lot of time to consider (see main article 12.21) and only in conclusion (chapter 2) he hears the voice of the Speaker (2:1). But since this voice, which told him the call to prophecy, was the main thing in the whole vision and for the sake of it, for the sake of the call to prophecy, and the vision itself followed, then with this, with an indication of this purpose of the vision, the prophet begins his description of the latter. So, it is impossible to say with some (Klosterman according to Knab., Peters according to Cor.) that the expression “the word of the Lord came...” is unnecessary here, disrupts the flow of the description of the vision and does not belong to the prophet, but represents a later insertion. On the contrary, it is difficult to imagine a more natural and suitable beginning for describing Khowar's vision than this. The prophet could not and should not have begun to describe the vision in which God first spoke to him with any other words other than these. These words can seem unnecessary and inappropriate only if we assume (as everyone does) that the prophet begins the description of the Khobar vision back in verse 1 with the words “the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” But we found out the real meaning of these words and proved that they do not reveal a description of the Khovar vision. This description begins only here and begins where it should - with an indication of the main purpose and essence of the vision, which was the first word (i.e. revelation) of the Lord to Ezekiel. It is impossible not to notice the special solemnity in the style with which the prophet begins the description of his Khovar vision. And was it possible to begin, without much solemnity, to describe a vision more majestic than which the Old Testament never knew? The expression “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel,” placed here apparently out of place, also sounds so solemn. The reader expects, after such an expression, an exposition of what exactly God said to the prophet - and instead, a picture of a vision, terrible in its grandeur, unfolds before him, and he begins to understand that the word of the Lord that he wanted to hear through the prophet was originally a silent word, a word without words, but all the more stunning and powerful. But the expression “there was the word of the Lord” has all its solemnity and sacred importance in the language of the original, in which there is הָיָה הָיֹה, indefinite with the indicative - an intensified phrase that in Slavic should have been conveyed: “the Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel” (similar to how God solemnly promises Abraham in Genesis 18:18: “Abraham being 36 will be great in tongue”). If only the reading of the Hebrew text here is correct, 37 then there cannot remain even a shadow of doubt that the prophet wanted to speak here in a solemn style, and the requirements of this style justify many of the features of the introductory verses, which brought upon them suspicion of authenticity from criticism. Thus, the solemnity of speech can explain the fact that the prophet replaces here (cf. 24:24) the personal pronoun “I”, which he used to designate himself in verse 1, with his own name and, moreover, his full one - with the addition of his father’s name and even the title “priest”. In the same types of solemnity, the prophet in this verse again indicates the place of his calling, and, moreover, with greater completeness and accuracy than in verse 1: “in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar” 38. One cannot but dwell, according to the custom of interpreters, on the name of the prophet. The name “Ezekiel” is not applied to the great prophet (elsewhere in the Old Testament the prophet is not named anywhere, only in Sir. 49:10) is found in the Bible only once, as the name of the ancestor of the 20th priestly environment under David 1 Chron. 24:16 ; there it is rendered in Greek Εζεκηλ, in slav. Ezekiel. In Hebrew the name Ezekiel Iechezkel reads – יחזקאל and consists of the verb חזק, to be strong and the name of God אל; if the verb here is in the form Kal, then the name Ezekiel means: “God is strong”; and if in the form of Piel, then “God will strengthen.” More likely, “God is strength” than “God makes (or make) strong” (Kr.). The name חזקיה, יחזקיה (Hezekiah) is related to him. Origen in homil 1 in Ez. explains the name Ezekiel as imperium Dei; in Hieron. Onom. sacr. II, 12 it is explained as fortis Dei vel apprehendens Deum, κράτος Θεοῦ. “The name contains the beliefs of pious parents at the birth of their son” (Kr.). He has a hint of the name of the prophet in 3:8. The name of Ezekiel's father is בוזי, LXX Βουζεὶ in On. Sacr. 57, 1 explained as despectus sive contemptus, ib 59,-|-18 as contemsit me. M.b. this meaning of the name indicates the low position that for some reason the family of the prophet occupied in Jerusalem. Hardly 44:10–14 makes one think (Bert. et al.) that the prophets belonged to the aristocratic priestly family of the Zadokids, which occupied the best places in Jerusalem. “The news” (Kr.) is based solely on empty rabbinical ingenuity that Buzius is identical with Jeremiah, who received such a nickname (“despicable”) from those dissatisfied with his denunciations. The appendix "priest" can be grammatically assigned to either the nearby noun "Buzi" or to Ezekiel. LXX, Jerome and all the ancient translations refer him to Ezekiel. “The prophet himself, and not his father, must be most closely identified, cf. eg Jer. 1:1; 28:1 "(Kr.). If Ezekiel did not hold the position of priest, then priestly dignity was inalienable from him due to his descent from Levi along a well-known line. The priests were also taken into captivity with Jehoiachin (Jeremiah 29:1). The priestly origin of the prophet explains much in his book and may. that is why the prophet mentions him. On the basis that the prophet called his Khobar vision the word of the Lord to him, the reader might think that this word (i.e., revelation) of the Lord to Ezekiel is no different from the divine revelation to other prophets, i.e. that God spoke to Ezekiel in exactly the same way as to the other prophets. Such a conclusion would be erroneous, and the prophet immediately warns him with the remark that during the revelation of God to him on Chebar, he felt the hand of God on himself in some special way: “and the hand of the Lord was on me.” Each prophet could say about his revelations that during them he felt the hand of God on himself. And indeed this expression in the Old Testament is used about any immediate miraculous and especially strong influence of God on man (1 Kings 18:46; 2 Chronicles 30:12; 2 Kings 3:15; cf. Acts 13:11). But in the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel it has a special meaning. If we compare the use of this expression in the prophet Ezekiel, we will notice that it invariably precedes the description of each of the prophet’s visions (1:3; 3:22; 8:1; 37:1; 40:1). Consequently, the prophet wanted to designate his state with this expression at the onset of the vision. The prophet wants to say that when the vision occurred, he especially clearly felt the hand of God on himself. What could such a feeling in itself be like? Of course, it is possible to say that the hand of God was on any person only in a figurative, figurative sense. And the image contained in such an expression is unusually bold and strong, as bold and strong as only an eastern image can be strong. To understand in all its depth this favorite technical expression of Ezekiel, we need to take it in a more accurate rendering, which we find in 8:1: “And the hand of Adonai the Lord fell upon me.” When descending, the falling hand first of all presses with its weight. One can imagine how hard a hand as strong, a muscle as strong as the Divine hand must press. When a Jew wanted to express the severity and unbearability of some calamity, he said that the hand of the Lord was pressing heavily (“heavily upon him”). When establishing the meaning of this expression in St. Ezekiel, interpreters usually omit this last thought, the thought of the pressure, the heaviness that the prophet must have felt when the hand of Jehovah lay on him. Meanwhile, this idea is very important. If by the expression: “the hand of the Lord was upon me” the prophet only wanted to say that he was subjected (on Chebar) to the direct influence of the power of God, then he would not have added anything new to the previous expression “the word of the Lord was.” To this last precise and clear concept for everyone, “the word of the Lord,” he would add a more general and vague concept. With each revelation to divine man, the hand (direct power) of God acts on him and there was no need to talk about it. Since St. Ezekiel speaks about the hand of God on himself only when describing his visions (1:3; 3:14 and 22; 8:1; 37:1; 40:1), he wants to say something else, and not just that these visions were inspired to him by God, that in them God directly acted on him. By this expression he wants to say that with some of his revelations, such as with Khovarsky and a few others, he, more than with others, felt the influence of the power (“hand”) of God on himself. As he puts it more precisely elsewhere, during these visions the hand of the Lord was “mighty” upon him (3:14). He wants to say that during his visions he quite clearly felt the strong, and therefore, of course, heavy hand of God on himself, and this feeling distinguished his visions from other revelations of God to him. The Prophet Ezekiel is generally distinguished by the extraordinary precision and power of his expressions. This expression will have all its power only with such a precise and literal meaning. When the first word (revelation) of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel on Chebar, he felt the hand of the Lord on himself for the first time, and this familiar sensation was later repeated with him during each of his visions and noted by him in his description of them. It was not what he felt with other revelations to him. With other revelations, he felt what other, former prophets had felt, heard the “voice of God” in himself. On Khobar, at the first revelation of God, and then during two or three other similar revelations, he felt something completely special, different, and he considers it necessary to note this feeling, adding in his story about the Khobar revelation to the expression: “the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel” “and the hand of the Lord was on him.” If what happened to the prophet during the ordinary revelations of God to him should remain a mystery to us, then it is absolutely impossible to form an accurate idea about the state of the prophet during the visions, these greatest revelations of God. The prophet himself, even if he wanted to, could not give us an idea about this, because then something inexplicable was happening in his soul. And the prophet Ezekiel tells us little about this state when he says that he then felt the hand of God on himself. The prophet’s condition was as if the hand of the Lord himself lay on him with all its strength and weight. Since God does not have a material hand, there can be no talk of any material pressure or gravity here. The prophet had to feel the “strong” hand of God on his soul. And since the soul is first of all a self-conscious being, then mainly the consciousness of the prophet had to feel the hand of God on itself. If we remember what happens to the prophet during visions and what, in particular, happened to Ezekiel on Chebar, then it will become quite clear to us how the prophet’s consciousness must have felt pressure on itself from the hand of God. In vision, the usual flow of consciousness and impressions is disrupted: a completely different, usually invisible world suddenly invades the consciousness of the surrounding external world, by which the external world is completely obscured. Such an alien intervention in the consciousness in the figurative language of the ancient Jew could be represented in the form of a position on the soul and consciousness of the prophet of the hand, and precisely in divine visions - the hand of God. This is what other sacred writers call “rapture” (2 Cor. 12:2, 3), “frenzy” (ἔκστασις Acts 10:10; 11:5; cf. Gen. 15:2) 40. Objections to the authenticity of verses 1–3 “Lying like a sphinx,” says Kretschmar, on the threshold of this book full of problems and difficulties, the first three verses give the reader a riddle, the solution of which entire generations have labored in vain. All their inconsistencies are such that to attribute them to Ezekiel would mean to consider him a very limited writer.” Some of these apparent inconsistencies are indicated in the analysis of verse 1. Here it remains to add the following, indicated by Gitzig: the 2nd half of verse 3 must precede the expression: “the word of the Lord came”; the name (of the prophet) should be mentioned in the 1st verse in the 1st person; “The word of the Lord came” goes beyond vv. 4–28, which only describes the vision.” Smend defends the authenticity of verses 1–3 with the following considerations: “all 13 subsequent chronological dates are given from verse 2; if it represents an insertion, then those that are impossible; but verse 3 does not allow for the assumption of insertion, since it generally defines the data of the first verse more closely; The remark of verse 3 about ecstasy is necessary to understand what follows; an instant transition to the 3rd person is caused by the introduction of a proper name, and this kind of change in Ezekiel is as frequent as the parentetic form of 41 expressions.” Previous comments on Art. 1–3. showed not only the complete appropriateness, but also the decisive necessity, the inevitability of their every word and expression; and this makes a detailed analysis of all the objections to the authenticity of these verses and all assumptions about their original form unnecessary. Therefore, we will limit ourselves to a simple listing of these assumptions and the briefest comments about them. The majority decide to remove Art. 2 and 3, which are considered an explanatory addition of later glossators (Venema. Lectiones academicae ad Ezechielem, Levard. 1790; Gitz. Bert. Toy). And in fact, “in a truly glossator style, the beginning of Art. 2, which is no longer used in Ezekiel., היה היה, and he also has an uncommon placement in front of the appendix המלך, as well as, first of all, the fact that 2 and 3 vv. clearly break the connection between 1st and 4th century. – favor this view. That in the entire book, with the sole exception of 24:24, Ezekiel speaks of himself only in the 1st person does not speak in favor of the authenticity of these verses. But still, despite everything, it would be very difficult to do without them, like the beginning of a book.” (Kr.). In particular, Klosterman, following Spinoza (1. p.), thinks that verses 2 and 3 were inserted by the persons who introduced the book of Ezekiel into the canon; They also seemed to throw out the previous beginning of the book, in which Ezekiel talked about his private life; from this beginning only the 1st verse remains, which therefore begins with the conjunction “and”; This verse also contains a date indicating the age of the prophet. That is why verses 2 and 3 speak of Ezekiel in the third person, because they do not belong to the prophet. We object: it is difficult to imagine that the beginning of the book could be changed as clumsily and carelessly as this hypothesis suggests. Ewald and Cook think that verses 2 and 3 were inserted by the prophet himself, but only when he revised and corrected his book, in order to supplement the previous insufficiently clear date with another one accepted in the entire book. - But this is more convenient, and it was easier to achieve by reworking the beginning of the book that was written earlier than by adding to it. Others (Peters according to Knab.) omit the 2nd verse and the beginning of the third and read the beginning of the book in this form: “and it happened in the 30th year, at 4:55 a.m., when I was among the settlers on the river. Chebar, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God, and the hand of the Lord was upon me.” The second verse, in this opinion, is a gloss to the words of the 1st verse: “on the 5th day of the month,” which is why it begins with the same words; and Art. 3a gloss to “and it was” in verse 1, which is why it begins with “and it was.” – But as “the 5th day of the month”, so “and it was” - we can say the only words in the 1st verse that do not require explanation (glosses). Merckx (according to Cor.), on the contrary, considers the first verse to be a fragment of another prophetic speech after the date 29:1, which, due to an oversight, ended up at the beginning of the book (sic!). Cornille also considers verse 1 to be inauthentic and in his edition of the text of the book prints it in small print. This verse, according to him, is filled with oddities that are completely inexplicable given the assumption of its authenticity. 1) It’s so strange, first of all, the first person pronoun comes before the name of the prophet; To avoid this oddity, the Targum also inserts into the first verse the words: “says the prophet.” 2) The remark “among the migrants” is incorrect: at the time of the vision the prophet was not among the captives, but alone on the shore of Chebar. 3) The expression “visions of God” is used throughout the book in the sense of indicating an ecstatic state, and not to objects of contemplation, as here. 4) It is impossible for an entire book to be filled with the conjunction “and”. Meanwhile, if you delete the first verse, the book will begin very naturally: with a chronological date. Only in the 2nd verse should the designation of the month be added from the 1st: “on the 5th day of the fourth month.” In this case, some difficulties of interpretation, like the “thirtieth year,” will naturally arise. But “verse 1,” says Kretschmar, too clearly bears the stamp of authenticity on its forehead for it to simply be pushed aside. It is dominated, as in the entire book, where Ezekiel is spoken of, by the 1st person; the external form of the date coincides exactly with that used everywhere by the prophet 8:1; 20:1; 24:1; 26:1; 29:1, 17; 30:20; 31:1; 32:1, 17; 33:21; 40:1 (29:1 only; 40:1 היה instead of ויהי); parentetic introduced by אני(ו) – adverbial clause purely Ezekiel cf. 8:1; as well as the absence of ו at the beginning of what follows after ויהי (according to Cornelius, this is the case in Ezekiel 8 times); and the expression “visions of God” 8:3; 11:24; 40:2; 43:3. The expression “the heavens opened” also does not sound like it could have come from a glossator. After all this, there is no other way to keep this verse as genuine; for what 30 in it is difficult to explain cannot be given as serious evidence of inauthenticity.” To Kretschmar’s apology we will add that all the oddities of the first verse indicated by Corneille exist only with the usual, incorrect understanding of it. And Cornille's proposed beginning for the book of Ezekiel is not at all as natural as it immediately seems. It would read like this: “On the 5th day of the 4th month in the 5th year of the captivity of King Jehoiachin the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the son of Buzi, and the hand of the Lord was upon me and I saw...”. Cornille does not notice that he is not speaking in the sacred Hebrew language (syllable). Of the prophetic books, only two relatively small books can be pointed out, which directly begin with a chronological date (Hag. Zech.). All others, especially the books of the great prophets, large books, begin, so to speak, with greater solemnity, have a larger or smaller preface and inscription, like: “the vision that I saw” (Isa. 1:1), “the word of the Lord that was” (Hos. 1:1; Zeph. 1:1; Mic. 1:1) or like Jonah: “and the word of the Lord came.” Cornille in vain destroys this solemn “and it was” at the beginning of the book of Ezekiel. It is also not entirely in the spirit of the ancient writers to begin the chronological date with the number of the month (cf. Hag. 1:1; Zech. 1:1, etc.). In general, it takes great courage to throw out an entire verse from a prophetic book, which is consistently conveyed by all texts and translations. And how to explain the penetration into the text of the book of Ezekiel verse 1? Why did the copyist need it with such a clear, natural beginning of the book? We must remember that we are dealing here with the very beginning of the book. The beginning of the book is most imprinted in memory. And we remember the first words of the best works of modern writers. And in ancient times, the beginning of the book replaced the title. That's why everyone knew him by heart. And suddenly, instead of the familiar beginning of the most famous book, another one appears under the hand of some copyist and displaces the previous beginning from everyone’s consciousness and memory! 42 A conscientious interpreter will not rush to conclude from the apparent inconsistencies of the text to its inauthenticity. He will use every effort to explain the originality of the text from the spirit of the writer, from the manner of his speech. The spirit and manner of speech of Ezekiel has always amazed researchers with its originality. You just need to keep in mind the peculiarities of Ezekiel’s style so that the flow of speech in the opening verses of his book does not seem strange, but completely natural for Ezekiel. The Prophet Ezekiel, as noted by his interpreters (Müller 35 43), is distinguished in his style by the peculiarity that he does not express everything at once, but loves to return to the previous thought in order to discover more and more new aspects in it (cf. esp. 3:18 et al. and ch. 18 and 33). This feature of Ezekiel’s style should have affected the opening verses of his book. It can explain those repetitions and prolixity that so confuse interpreters. Of course, another writer would have put his name and information about his personality earlier, not just in verse 3, or would not have indicated the year of the same event twice. But not all writers, even divinely inspired ones, were alike. In any case, a person with a certain type of speech can speak like this, as the preface of the book of Ezekiel is written. Vision. Storm of Epiphany. Art. 4 On the shore of Chebar, God appeared to the prophet Ezekiel. Perhaps the prophet at first did not know who and what was coming to him in that wind, cloud and fire that was approaching him from the north. But when the vision came close enough to him that he could see it, he saw in holy horror that God Himself had come to him. How can God - omnipresent and all-filling - come to a certain place and be in it, we also understand little, just as we understand little of God’s omnipresence. But that God can really come to a certain place and be in it in some special way, completely different from how he is in every place, there can be no doubt about it. The Holy Scriptures tell many cases of such a manifestation of God. Thus, God “walked in paradise” after the fall of Adam (Gen. 3:8); He went down to Mount Sinai for legislation (Ex. 19:18); throughout Israel's wanderings in the wilderness, God Himself walked before His people; and only after the well-known sin of worshiping the golden calf, He Himself wanted not to go with the people, but to send an Angel in his place, but even then, bowed by the prayer of Moses and the repentance of the people, He continued to go with His people (Ex. 33). Then, at the request of Moses, God passed before him with His glory (Exodus 33:19) and later also passed before Elijah (1 Kings 19). If there is no doubt that God can appear and be in a certain place on earth, then the earth in this place, with its even soulless nature, cannot remain completely insensitive to such a phenomenon. Man cannot see the face of God and live (Ex. 33:20). The earth, too, if not completely unable, then at least with difficulty, can tolerate the presence of God on it. In the place where God “descends,” nature cannot help but come into some excitement and confusion 44 . It would be impossible to talk about all this with such positivity if there were no clear indications of this in Holy Scripture itself. Whenever the Holy Scripture tells about the descent of God to earth, about His appearance in one place or another on earth, it also mentions the excitement and trembling into which nature then comes. When God descended on Mount Sinai, “there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very strong sound of a trumpet” (Ex. 19:16); the whole mountain was smoking... and smoke came out of it as from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook greatly” (v. 18). From the stories about other cases of the appearance of God, it is also clear that these phenomena were accompanied by one or another upheaval in nature. In stories about the appearances of God, a more or less detailed description of the shocks of nature during these phenomena is usually given. The present appearance of God to the prophet Ezekiel could not have passed quite calmly for the nature of the place where it occurred. Nature had to shake from the fear of the face of God. Unrest and confusion really happened in her. The description of the present vision of the prophet Ezekiel begins with a description of this trembling of nature in the face of the one who walked to the prophet in the glory of God. The description of the particular phenomena of this trembling of nature before God is given in the prophet Art. 4th. God warns the prophet Elijah that although a great and strong wind, an earthquake and fire will go before Him, He, the Lord, will not be in this wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire (1 Kings 19:11, 12). These phenomena in nature serve only as harbingers of the appearance of God. What happened in nature before Ezekiel's vision of Chebar had exactly the same relation to this vision. All this only preceded and accompanied the appearance of God to the prophet. It was the involuntary trembling of nature in the face of the Creator. Hence it is clear why the prophet devotes so little space to the description of these phenomena compared to the entire vision (one verse 4). Not to mention the fact that many of the phenomena that occurred in nature were phenomena usually observed in it; all of them, including those that usually cannot be seen in it, occurred in nature in previous cases of theophany and were sufficiently described by previous prophets. Ave. Ezekiel therefore did not find the need to talk about them in detail and limited himself to a simple list of them. But this complicates the work for the interpreter, who must constantly keep in mind all the descriptions of theophany known from other sacred books. What always happened in nature before the appearance of God and what happened in this case can be expressed in one concept “storm,” if only this concept is given the proper breadth so that it embraces the shock in all parts of nature (and not just in the air, in which sense this word is usually used). In other words, in nature, during the manifestation of God, a storm occurs, but not a simple one, but some kind of extraordinary storm, from which all of nature shakes and trembles, in all its parts. The word “storm” denotes the shaking of nature before the Epiphany. The Holy Scripture itself: “around Him there is a green storm” Ps. 49:3. In those cases where Holy Scripture does not intend to describe in detail the appearance of God and talk about everything that accompanied this phenomenon in nature, it is limited to the remark that God appeared in a storm. Thus, about the appearance of God to Job and his friends, it is only said that God spoke to them “out of the storm” (38:1; cf. Zech. 9:14). Having the intention of giving, albeit a brief, but still more or less accurate list of what happened in nature before the appearance of God to him, the prophet Ezekiel did not need to call it all with one name, “storm.” Nevertheless, in his description of the appearance of God, he also uses the word “storm”. It is when he more precisely defines the property of the wind that preceded the appearance of God that he says that it was the wind of a “storm” - the kind of wind that happens during a storm. The latter concept is expressed by the Hebrew word סְעָרָה. This word is also used in the book of Job about the storm from which the Lord spoke to Job. This name, more than other Hebrew names for the storm, suits the storm in which God usually appears. Of all the names for storm that existed in the Hebrew language, this name is the most broad. It is equally applied to disturbances at sea (Jon. 1:4 cf. vv. 11, 13) as on land (Isa. 40:24; Ezek. 13:11). LXX apparently had difficulty finding a word for it in Greek and translated it differently almost every time. Sometimes they convey it by such vague and general concepts as σαλός (Zech. 9:14) and σεισμός (Jer. 23:19) i.e. generally a shock, a shudder. Sometimes they do not even consider it a noun, but an adjective, as in this place and 13:11 - where they translate it ἐξαῖρον, glory. “lift up.” Indeed, the concept given by these words is too general to be the name of a well-known specific storm. Seharah - contains the idea of ​​some kind of shock in nature (σεισμος), but a very strong, deep shock, in which everything in the shaken trembles and fluctuates. The verb סער is used about the troubled sea (Jon. 1:11, 13; cf. Isa. 54:11), about winnowing grain (Hos. 13:3; cf. Zech. 7:14). It was impossible to use another word, more suitable, about what is accompanied in nature in general and was accompanied in this case by the appearance of God. As the prophet’s narrative shows, what started his Khovar vision was precisely a storm, a real storm, and, moreover, a storm of terrible, terrifying power. Describing this storm (in v. 4), the prophet indicates several moments in it, several individual natural phenomena with which this storm was accompanied and of which it consisted. We will consider each of these moments and phenomena separately. וָאֵרֶא וְהִנֵּה רוּחַ סְעָרָה Καὶ εἶδον καὶ ἰδοὺ πνεῦμα ἐξαῖρον And you have seen, and behold, your spirit is exalted. A series of extraordinary and amazing phenomena that the prophet Ezekiel observed on the shore of Chebar began with the wind. The Prophet says that the first thing he saw there was the wind. There was, of course, something special in this wind, if it in itself, in addition to what followed it, attracted the attention of the prophet. The prophet’s narration gives precisely the impression that the wind that suddenly rose in front of him somehow immediately attracted his attention. “And I saw that the wind of a storm was coming from the north,” this is how the prophet begins his story about the vision. When a man is caught in the field by the wind, he doesn’t talk about it like that. He says: “the wind rose,” “the wind appeared.” No matter how different the language and style of speech of the ancient Jew was from our language and style of speech, however, even the ancient Jew in this case would not have spoken as the prophet said here. He would express himself: “and there was a wind” (John 1:4) or “the wind blew and began to blow” (Matthew 7:25, 27), but he would not say that he “saw the wind” “coming” from somewhere. Interpreters have always felt the heaviness and awkwardness of this expression. To get out of the difficulty it created, the word “see” was given a special meaning: it was understood to refer to the state of seeing (visionary). With this word, they said, the prophet opens the description of his vision (Shr. et al.). But the verb to see in the Hebrew language, as in all languages, has only one meaning, wherever and whatever it is used about. The state of vision can only be denoted in Hebrew, as in Russian, by the noun “vision.” Therefore, if it were necessary to give the verb “see” the special meaning that it has in relation to the state of vision, then in the Hebrew language, as in Russian, it would be necessary to add this noun to it; one would have to say: “saw in a vision” (Dan. 8:2; 7:2). This would be said here too, if “saw” had such a meaning. But to put this word here in this sense would be both completely unnecessary and completely inappropriate. It is unnecessary because the prophet had already repeated several times in various expressions that he had a vision. It is inappropriate because what he saw in v. 4 was not yet a vision in the proper sense. So, the expression under analysis must be understood in the most ordinary sense and another explanation must be found for its strangeness and originality. What was the wind that arose before the beginning of the vision, the prophet himself determines more precisely when he says that it was a storm wind or a stormy wind, סערה. We have established the meaning of the word seharah. Containing the concept of throwing, scattering, when applied to the wind it should indicate the wind lifting objects from the ground and carrying them away. The LXX correctly understood the meaning of this word when they rendered it into the Greek ἐξαῖρον (glove, “exalt”; correct 13:11 to “exalt” or “exalt”). So, the wind, seen by the prophet, picked up various objects from the ground - first of all, of course, sand, and, perhaps, larger objects - circled and drove them in the air. From here it becomes somewhat clear how the prophet could “see” him. Any strong wind raises a cloud of dust. If the wind, seen by the prophet, lifted, “lifted up” from the ground only dust and similar small objects, then it was unnecessary to attach this definition to it (“lift up”). The words seharah and ruach seharah are used about the most powerful storms (Zech. 9:14), storms that are threatening to people (Jer. 23:19), causing the wreck and death of ships at sea (Jon. 1:4), and on land breaking stone walls (Ezek. 13:11), uprooting trees (Is. 40:24), leaving nothing in their path: destroying houses ( Job 1:19 cf. Matt. 7:27), throwing people from place to place (Isa. 27:8; 54:11), carrying away huge flocks of birds (Num. 11:31), tearing apart mountains and crushing rocks (1 Kings 19:11). In such winds one cannot help but recognize the terrible inspiration of the mouth of God (Isa. 27:8; Ps. 17:16), killing (as often happened in the proper sense) the wicked (Ps. 10:6; cf. 82:16; 34:5, 6). Such a wind could carry the largest objects. Even people and animals who did not take precautions could be caught up by it and rush forward with uncontrollable force. At the beginning of the vision, the Prophet observed the wind from afar and therefore could not see what it was carrying. But the wind, undoubtedly for the prophet, was carrying something big, a whole bulk of something, if the prophet could say that he “saw” it. Subsequently we find out what he was carrying. In addition to their extraordinary strength and gustyness, strong winds in the East are also distinguished by their heat. In Pharaoh's dream, the wind dries up 7 ears of grain (Gen. 41:6). The wind withered such a large plant, like the plant that gave coolness to the prophet Jonah with its shadow (4:6, 8). The prophet Ezekiel says nothing about the heat of his wind. Watching it from afar, he might not yet feel the heat from it. This property is only implied in its name “storm wind”. But then one circumstance is indicated that seems to be more than ordinary heat in this wind. As the prophet soon noticed, the wind coming towards him was straight with fire, with real fire. Just as the wind observed by the prophet was not just an apparent wind, but a real and terribly strong one, tearing everything in its path (ἐξαῖρον), so the fire, which, together with the wind, was advancing towards the prophet, was real fire and, of course, in its strength and size it corresponded to the storminess of the wind and the size of the cloud moving with the wind. One can imagine how the wind must have blazed and burned all around with the enormity of real fire. The heat and heat of the wind seen by the prophet had to adequately correspond to its storminess and strength. Resembling the natural winds of the East, the wind seen by the prophet Ezekiel did not arise from a natural cause. He was part of the storm that often accompanied the appearance of God on earth in the Old Testament. The deep shock and trembling of nature at the appearance of God on earth is, among other things, expressed in the wind, which is nothing more than a disturbance, a trembling of the air. When all nature trembles, the air cannot help but tremble. And to the extent that all nature trembles and shakes from the appearance of God on earth, to the same extent the air should shake and agitate. Hence the extraordinary storminess and strength of the wind, which attracted the attention of the prophet. Being the thinnest, lightest and most mobile element, air turns out to be the most sensitive to the appearance of God on earth. As can be concluded from the description of various theophany, he is the first of the elements to begin to worry and move during the theophany, the first on earth to respond to the theophany. If the appearance of God is not particularly powerful, menacing, but more or less meek, peaceful and quiet, then only the air responds to such a phenomenon with its movement and vibration, the “breath of the quiet wind.” Such was the appearance of God in paradise “in the cool” (inaccurately; LXX also: “in the afternoon”; Heb. לרוח) of the day. This was the epiphany to David during one of the battles with the Philistines, 1 Chron. 14:14, 15: “When you hear the sound of footsteps on the tops of the mulberry trees (LXX “the sound of noise from the tops of pear trees”), then enter into battle, for God has gone out before you.” This was the appearance of Elijah at Horeb. In all these cases, God appeared in the same wind. It is remarkable that the wind was destined to act more than once as a special instrument of Providence in the life of God’s chosen people. Some of the Jew's most cherished and sacred memories were associated with him. One of the Egyptian plagues was carried out by means of the wind: in order to devastate the Egyptian fields with locusts, “The Lord brought the east wind to the land... and the east wind brought the locusts” (Ex. 10:10). The greatest miracle of God’s mercy in the life of the Jewish people took place with the participation of the wind: the road through the Red Sea for the Jews was paved by it (“The Lord drove the sea with a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land and the waters parted” Ex. 14:21). Subsequently (in v. 12) we will see that the wind seen by the prophet on Chebar and m.b. identical with the wind, which appeared in other cases of theophany and God’s care for Israel, it had such an extraordinary quality that the name wind can hardly be applied to it, and it is not for nothing that LXX translated here ruach not ἀνεμος, but πνεῦμα. Why did the glory of the Lord come from the north? The wind that drew the prophet's attention to Khobar came from the north. Since God himself, the Glory of the Lord, came to the prophet in this wind (v. 28), all interpreters, not without reason, consider this circumstance to be very significant. But they explain it to the contrary in different ways. The usual and most accepted solution to this issue is this. The north is taken as the place from where the most disastrous invasions of the conquerors were made against the Jews, from where even now the attack of Nebuchadnezzar threatened. They compare the vision of Ezekiel with the vision of Jeremiah (also at the beginning of his prophetic activity) of “a konob set on fire from the north”; - the Lord himself explained this vision as follows: “from the north a disaster will be revealed to the inhabitants of this land” (Jer. 1:13, 14; cf. 4:6; 6:1). They say (Bl. Hieron. Knab. about the Birth.) that here too - in Ezekiel - the Lord, appearing as a judge and punisher of the Jewish people, surrounded by such formidable phenomena as a whirlwind, a cloud, naturally had to come from the north. The punishing God appears here as marching against Judea with the army of Nebuchadnezzar. To this it can rightly be objected that in the present vision God, as we have shown, does not appear at all in a menacing form, as a punishing Judge. He appears here in all His glory. The storm, cloud and fire do not indicate the formidable nature of the appearance of God, but the majesty of this vision. And pointing to the north, as the place from where the vision came, should have a similar meaning - to talk about the majesty of the vision, to add more grandeur to the vision. If the prophet wanted to imagine God coming to punish Judea in the army of Nebuchadnezzar, then again it is not clear why God is coming from the north. The prophet is at the moment of the vision precisely in the very north from where Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion was being prepared. The north in relation to this north will already be Media and other regions, from which nothing threatened Judea at that time. To eliminate this important difficulty, they decide (Geph.) to resort to the assumption that the prophet Ezekiel had a real vision in Jerusalem, where, as in the other two visions, he was transported by the “Spirit”; 3:14, 15 speaks of the prophet's return to his usual abode; track. during the vision he is in Jerusalem, in the church, where it is natural to expect a priest. – But in chapter 1 there is no indication that the prophet was transferred to Jerusalem for his vision, while the description of the other two visions begins with this indication (8:3; 40:1). Refuting the discussed opinion, Rosenmüller, which is generally followed by all rationalists: Ewald, Hitzig, Smend, and even such an orthodox as Trochon, replaces it with the following. “The mention of the north refers to the widespread opinion among people of that time that in the northern part of the sky there is an entrance to the home and castle of the gods. Since the course of the sun makes one imagine the south inclined downward, the north appears to lie higher and with its high mountains - Lebanon, the Caucasus - reaching the sky. Usually the ancients imagined the gods living on one of these northern mountains, supporting the sky just below the pole (the Greeks on Olympus). That the idea of ​​such a mountain existed in the ancient East is proven by newly discovered Assyrian monuments: the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pelizar I in a wedge-shaped inscription says that he was “called by the gods to sit eternally in the monastery of the world mountain.” This mountain, known from other monuments under the name “Aralu,” represented the entrance to the kingdom of the dead (from which Delitzsch explains its very name: Aralu = asar la amari “place without vision” - Greek Αιδης = α-|-ιδειν, “place of the invisible gods.” Wo lag. d. Par. 117 118. 121). They say that St. Isaiah had this mountain in mind when he put a proud speech into the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mountain in the assembly of gods at the edge of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High” (14:13, 14). The idea of ​​the mountain of the gods in the north, it was thought, is accepted by Ps. 47:3: “on the north side is the city of the Great King.” In Job, too, Jehovah comes from midnight: 37:22 (cf. 38:1). And Ezekiel, they say, could not only know about this belief, but also share it (cf. 28:14, 16). In the Khobar vision, he imagines the Glory of the Lord coming precisely from this mountain in the north, where she had retired from unfaithful Jerusalem. Jehovah had to appear to the prophet not from Jerusalem and the church - his former residence, now abandoned by him, but from this eternal dwelling of his, not from the west, but from the north. That the Jewish prophets, particularly Isaiah and Ezekiel, could have known about this belief of the pagans of the East and pointed to it in their speeches (as Isaiah probably does in the passage cited), it is possible. But the strict concept of the unity and spirituality of God could not allow the prophets to share this opinion of the pagans. If in fact there existed and was known to the Jews a mountain with which similar beliefs of the pagan East were associated, then to every pious Jew such a mountain could only seem to be a place of special action of dark forces, a mountain of demons (who are the gods of the pagans). In the opinion of the ancient Jew, could Jehovah come from such a mountain? What communication is there between light and darkness? A slight modification of the considered opinion is the explanation of the passage in Cook’s English Bible. Jehovah, according to this explanation, comes to Ezekiel from the mountains of Lebanon. The Lebanese Mountains, standing in the north of Palestine, could seem to the inhabitants of the latter “reaching to heaven”; they could seem like steps from heaven, along which visions descended that appeared to people. – Besides the fact that this explanation assumes that the prophet has anthropomorphic ideas about God, such an opinion of the Jews about the Lebanese Mountains is not known from the Bible. Moreover, in Chapter 1. Ezekiel does not mention any mountain or mountains. If Ezekiel imagined the vision coming from the northern mountains, why not say so? Such interpretations presuppose the prophet's belief that Jehovah had already left Jerusalem and retired to some mountain. “But only in chapter 11 God finally leaves the church and does not go to the north, but to the east. – For Israel, the mountain, which is associated with Jehovah, lay rather in the south: Deut. 33:2. Court. 5:4; Avv. 3:3; Zach. 9:14. Moreover, Ezekiel represented Babylon to the north of Palestine: 21:2 Heb. b. – Ezekiel sees the sky open and Jehovah coming from there, therefore, not from the mountain of the gods. – The prophet rebels against the popular opinion that Jehovah has already left the country (8:12; 9:9). In general, these explanations are based on a complete misunderstanding of chapters 8–11; Wed Os. 9:3 "(Kr.). In view of the inconvenience associated with accepting the first opinion (from those examined) and the complete unfoundedness of the last two, there seems to be room for only one more assumption, namely that Jehovah went to Ezekiel from His dwelling, which had not yet been abandoned in Jerusalem, from His temple in Zion. But Jerusalem is to the west of Babylon, not to the north. How could a vision, coming from Jerusalem, approach the prophet from the north? Müller eliminates this difficulty with the following considerations (pp. 15 et c.). 1. The road from Jerusalem to Babylon and back, he says, never ran through the deserts located between Syria and Mesopotamia, but through northern Syria and went in a decent circle. Trade caravans traveled along this road both in ancient and modern times. This road was also a military road along which Assyrian and Babylonian troops passed through Syria and Palestine (Sprenger, Post-und Reisenrouten des Orients, Taf. 15). Along this road - through Rivla to the north. Syria - Nebuchadnezzar's captives also walked. And if the Glory of the Lord went from the sanctuary of Jerusalem to the river. Khobar, then the chariot with four animals had to travel along the road that was well known and in common use at that time. 2. According to our current information, Babylon actually lies somewhat north of Jerusalem. But can the same be said about the river Chebar and Telabib, the abode of the captives? Is it not more likely that the latter indicate in the southern swampy countries? 3. Finally, was it possible at the time of Ezekiel to possess our current knowledge and could Ezekiel know exactly the position of Jerusalem relative to Babylon, whether one or the other lies somewhat to the south? According to Strabo, Alexandria, Babylon, Susa and Persopolis lie at the same latitude. Only Ptolemy puts Babylon much further north, but he also lacks accuracy, since Babylon is moved too far to the north. Consequently, if the chariot of vision moved along the air line, it had to go according to the then geographical ideas from the north. “Müller,” says Kretschmar, forces Jehovah to take a long detour through northern Syria, p.c. there was a regular road from Palestine to Babylon. But Jehovah's chariot was not bound by military roads, at least not the one Ezekiel saw. A reference to Strabo is not sufficient, since his views on geographical relations are excluded for Ezekiel 21:2; 20:46, where the prophet clearly places Palestine south of Babylon." The failure of all attempts at a symbolic explanation for the appearance of the glory of God from the north prompted the newest interpreters (Toi, Bert. Kr.) to turn to a purely natural explanation for this topographical indication of the prophet. “Ezekiel, when receiving a vision, happened to look to the north and from there saw the approach of a burning whirlwind, so min-hazzaphon (“from the north”) has a completely natural cause (Bert.). Subsequently, this circumstance, of course, for the prophet required a deeper meaning, as everything in his life was understood by them typically, and he could see in this an indication that the destruction to which he was called by this vision would fall on Jerusalem from the north (see 26:7 and Geng. Keil, who of course do not want to know anything about “later”). The north is an unfamiliar (צפן hide), icy, inhospitable country from which disasters take their path: 38:1 et al. 1:14; 4:6 "(Kr.). But biblical antiquity did not know the northern winds of special strength. The most stormy wind for biblical writers was the east wind - caddim: Ps. 47:8; 10:6; 17:16; Is. 27:8; Job. 7:6), and the next strongest wind is the south wind, “south” theman d.b. brought from the Arabian deserts (Ps. 77:26: “God aroused, that is, God in the Sinai desert, in the sky and brought down the south with His power, and the meat of quails rained on them like dust; Zech. 9:14: “The Lord will walk in the storms of the midday”). From the north, the Jew only knew life-giving winds: Song 4:16 - “rise up the north and bring down the south and blow the south into my garden, and fragrances will flow”). Moreover, against this explanation it must be said that in a vision where everything, every detail and feature, is full of deep meaning and mysterious signification, it is impossible in such a vision to consider the appearance of the first figure of this vision - the wind - from the north as an unimportant accident. It must be remembered that in this wind God Himself walked to the prophet, and His procession could not choose a random direction. Thus, we can say that this circumstance of the Khovar vision (like many other things in it) has not yet succumbed to the efforts of interpreters, since all the explanations presented for it allow for strong objections to themselves. The reason for the failure of these attempts in this case is the same as the unsatisfactory explanation of other parts of the Khovar Epiphany. They wanted to explain the appearance of the Glory of the Lord from the north here, without comparing this case of its appearance with other cases. They did not raise the question: where did the Glory of the Lord come from on other occasions of its appearance? Apparently, such a question cannot be posed, since even if there can be talk about the place from which the Glory of God is revealed and descends to earth, then this place should always be not one or another country of light, but the sky, the clouds, in which God usually descends to earth. Nevertheless, if we look at all the passages of the Old Testament that talk about the revelation on earth of the Glory of God, about cases of God directly descending onto earth and walking on it, we will be convinced that at times in some of these cases God chose a certain direction for His procession on earth, so that it could be said about Him in one case that He came from the south, in another, as here, from the north, and in the third - from the east. And it goes without saying that, like everything in God’s actions, this choice could not but have some important reasons and some deep meaning. And this is all the more so because in the choice of these directions for the procession of the Glory of God one cannot help but notice some correct alternation and consistency. So, before the prophet Ezekiel and his era, which was so critical for Israel, sacred writers, if they ever talk about where and from which country of the world the Lord and His glory come, then they always indicate the south as such a place: Deut. 33:2; Avv. 3:3, etc. For this reason alone, the remark of the prophet Ezekiel that the wind in which God walked to him moved from the north should have stopped every reader knowledgeable in the former sacred writing and led him to think: why and where did such a change come from in the direction chosen by the Glory of the Lord in its march across the earth? This question for the reader of our prophet should have, so to speak, become even more acute, become even more important and deeper, when at the end of the book of Ezekiel, where the prophet speaks of the future glorious St. earth, the Glory of the Lord, heading to the new church for permanent residence in it, is already coming from the east. No matter how we imagine the procession across the earth of God and His glory, about the cases of which the sacred writers speak, in each case these were not just symbols and images. We know what happened to the earth and its inhabitants when “God came from the south (Teman) and the Holy One from the mountains of Paran” (Arabian desert; Hab. 3:3) (exodus from Egypt). The procession of God from the north, spiritually contemplated by Ezekiel at Chebar, was supposed to be similar to the previous revelation of the Glory of God in the south. The glory of the Lord on earth is not revealed only in these or other majestic natural phenomena. It is revealed to an even greater extent in the great phenomena of human life. The mighty kingdom that was then growing in the north with immeasurable strength, the first of the earthly kingdoms to deserve the name of universal, was too great a phenomenon on earth to be simply the work of human hands. The divinely enlightened prophets could not help but see in him the manifestation of the glory of God. Such comparisons can be suggested by the direction chosen in the present case by the Glory of God that descended to earth. It goes without saying that a complete answer to this rightly stated exegesis of Chapter 1. Ezek. the question (the question of why God came to the prophet in this case from the north) cannot be answered, just as it cannot be answered to many other questions raised by this chapter full of secrets and mysteries. But insoluble questions are always the greatest and most important. Their greatness lies in their intractability. In relation to them, it is as if it is enough to place them and bow before their inaccessibility. And with this question we can consider the matter over, since it has only been established that, previously usually coming from the south, in the time of Ezekiel God is already coming from the north, and to the mysterious new church Ezek. 44 will enter from the east. Only from the west, the land of darkness and evil, He never came and never came out. עָנָן גָּדוֹל --- וְנֹגַהּ לוֹ סָבִיב Καὶ νεφέλη μεγάλη ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ φέγγος κύκλῳ αὐτοῦ And 45 great clouds are in it, and light is around it. If the wind that struck the prophet on Chebar, no matter how stormy it was, could in itself leave him in doubt about the real meaning of its appearance, then this doubt should have been resolved by the sight of what accompanied the wind. Along with the wind, a great cloud came towards the prophet and approached him (veniebat). God repeatedly appeared on earth in a cloud. Thus, during the Epiphany of Sinai, a cloud covered the mountain. During Israel's journey through the wilderness, "the Lord went before him in a pillar of cloud" Ex. 13:21. For revelations to Moses, God in this pillar approached a special tent and stopped at the entrance to it: “and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tabernacle, and all the people stood up and worshiped each one at the entrance to his tent” (Ex. 33:9, 10). After the construction and consecration of the Tabernacle of Testimony, this pillar already stood above it: “the cloud of the Lord stood over the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel” (Ex. 40:38). Immediately after the establishment of the tabernacle and its consecration, this cloud “covered the tabernacle, and the Glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Ex. 40:34). In the same form, the Glory of the Lord subsequently descended into Solomon’s temple: when the priests, after bringing in the ark, left the sanctuary, “a cloud filled the house of the Lord, and the priests could not stand to serve because of the cloud, for the Glory of the Lord filled the church of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:10, 11). The participation of the cloud in the theophany should have had the meaning that with it God hid Himself from those to whom He appeared. That is why the cloud is attracted to such epiphanies in which the very Glory of God was revealed. God surrounded himself with a cloud, one might say, when His gracious presence and revelation on earth reached almost the same degree as it has in heaven, closed from people, according to their always and ineradicable idea, precisely by clouds of airy waters. It goes without saying that the cloud in which God appeared on earth from time to time, in which He “set His ascent” (Ps. 103:3), could not quite resemble an ordinary, natural cloud, just as the wind on whose wings the Lord walked was not a completely ordinary wind. Nevertheless, such a cloud was a real cloud (like the wind is also a real wind) and only differed from an ordinary cloud in some features, which are not difficult to indicate from the descriptions of this cloud given more than once in the Bible. It is these descriptions that one must turn to in order to form a correct idea regarding the cloud of the present theophany. The brevity of the prophet's description of this cloud (as well as the description of the first figure of theophany - the wind) directly refers the reader to previous descriptions. A natural cloud, otherwise called a cloud, covers the sky before a thunderstorm. The feophanic cloud was also often just a cloud. Undoubtedly, from such a cloud, i.e. just clouds, God spoke to Job (“and God spoke to Job through the storm and the clouds” - 38:1; cf. 37:21). And other epiphanies that took place in the cloud were accompanied by a thunderstorm, whose source was none other than the cloud of epiphany itself. At the Epiphany of Sinai he will witness. Court. 5:4; Ps. 67:9. 10 ; Ezra 3:19 there was a thunderstorm. Ps. 17:13, 15; 28:3; 76:18, 19 show that, as the psalmist imagines, God comes to earth for His judgments in clouds, thunder and lightning. But just as much as the storm of theophany exceeded a natural, even the most powerful storm, so did the cloud of this storm, i.e. the theophanic cloud was supposed to surpass any natural cloud. A strong cloud is characterized by 1, its density and size, 2, proximity to the ground, 3, an abundance of lightning and thunder. Descriptions of theophany show what a high degree all these qualities reached in the theophanic cloud. Ave. Ezekiel, assuming the reader's familiarity with these descriptions, concluded all these signs in one definition for the word “cloud” - גדול, “great.” The stronger a thunderstorm comes from any cloud, the thicker and darker the cloud is. And from a natural cloud that resolves into a strong thunderstorm, it spreads, especially if it appears in the middle of a bright day, sometimes even darkness over the ground. One can imagine how dark the cloud of epiphany must have been to envelop the earth. If we look through descriptions of theophany one after another, the first thing we will find in each of these descriptions is an indication of darkness and, as it were, surprise at its density and hopelessness. “He tilted the heavens and descended, and darkness was under His feet, and covered Himself with darkness like a shadow, (and it is further indicated why this darkness was:) “thickening the waters of the clouds of heaven” (2 Sam. 22:10, 12; cf. Ps. 17:10, 12). “Clouds and darkness are all around Him” (Ps. 97:2). This darkness, אפלה, in such cases approaches real, complete darkness, חשך: St. Joel and Zephaniah call the day of the Lord a day of darkness and gloom (Joel 2:2, Zeph. 1:15) and, adding immediately after this “a day of clouds and fog” (Joel) or “mists” (Zeph.), show that this darkness comes from a thick cloud. Ave. Amos says, “I will walk among you, says the Lord; Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord: it is darkness and not light; he is darkness and there is no brightness in him” (5:7ff.). According to the description of the prophet Isaiah, on the Day of the Lord, even the stars and heavenly bodies do not give light from themselves: “the sun grows dark when it rises, and the moon does not shine with its light.” It was precisely this thick darkness that enveloped the surrounding area and the cloud that descended on Sinai. This darkness is not mentioned in Exodus, but it is very clearly pointed out twice in Deuteronomy. “You drew near and stood under the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heavens, (and there was) darkness, cloud and gloom (4:11, cf. 5:22, 23; words Heb. 12:18). Thus, at Sinai, from a huge, black cloud hanging over the mountain, almost night-time darkness covered the earth, and in this darkness the fire that burned the mountain sparkled and raged all the more terribly. A similar thing happens with all theophany, as one must conclude from the cited passages of the psalms and prophets. Calling his cloud great, gadol, the prophet Ezekiel first of all wants to point out its extraordinary density. A big, huge cloud and in our language equivalent to a dark cloud. The cloud in which God appeared to the prophet was, without a doubt, as dark as it always was when God appeared, just as it was dark and thick at Sinai. And, of course, it was accompanied by the same darkness. To top off the resemblance to the Sinai Epiphany, in this darkness and darkness a huge fire burned and shone terribly. But the definition of gadol, applied by the prophet to the cloud, does not indicate the thickness of the cloud only. That Ezekiel's cloud was a thick and gloomy cloud is certain for the reasons stated above. But if the prophet wanted to point out just one property of his cloud, he had a much more suitable word for this in his language, which, as an accurate writer, would not fail to use. This is the word כָּבֵד used of the cloud of Sinai legislation by Moses (Ex. 19:16). One could also say הענן עב, as in the same article. 9. Obviously, by calling his cloud gadol, the prophet did not mean only this property of it. The sky even during a natural thunderstorm seems lower, but during a very strong thunderstorm it is almost above the ground. There is something heavy and scary for a person in such a neighborhood, especially when this vault, bent over the very head of a person, shakes and trembles from the rumble of thunder. Having become accustomed to looking at the sky as the dwelling place of God, a person in the thunder then hears “the crashing of His tent” (Job 36:29). God, then, seems to tilt the sky in order to descend to earth (Ps. 17:10). The theophanic cloud did not hang only on the earth, but descended onto it completely, in the proper sense connecting heaven with earth. Such was the great cloud that the prophet Ezekiel saw. This is evident from the expressions in which the prophet describes his approach to him. We have already pointed out the strange designation by the prophet of the appearance and movement of this cloud with the verb בוא, which is equally applied to the wind and the cloud; בוא does not mean “to go” (which will be הלך), as this word is usually inaccurately conveyed in translations, but “to come” to someone and somewhere. In relation to whatever and in whatever connection בוא is used, it always retains this shade of its meaning. The prepositions ב – “in”, אל – “to”, or עד – “before” cannot but stand or be implied with it. About an ordinary cloud, just like about the wind, hardly anyone will express that it is coming towards him or towards him. Such a spreading mass like a cloud, and such an all-encompassing and indefinite phenomenon as the wind, obviously cannot come to anyone, and even let them notice how they are directly heading somewhere. Meanwhile, the prophet’s story about the appearance of wind and clouds before him can be translated into modern speech as follows: I look and see - a stormy wind and a cloud are coming towards me. The prophet could not attach the verb bo to his cloud in any other way than if it was walking and approaching him on the ground, as if some huge dense object was walking and approaching him. Then only the adjective gadol will be quite suitable for this cloud, the main meaning of which exactly corresponds to the Russian “huge”, i.e. striking in its external dimensions. Likewise, bo can be applied to the wind only when the wind can somehow leave its usual property of comprehensiveness and uncertainty within its boundaries and be enclosed in a closely limited, strictly defined and relatively small circle, beyond which its action does not extend at all. It is known that a similar phenomenon can and does happen with wind. And it happens precisely with the strongest and most terrible winds, which, as we saw, this wind was. Instead of a straight direction, the wind can receive a circular and rotational direction about one axis. Then, of necessity, it concentrates in one specific circle, acquiring here an unusually terrible power and completely not blowing outside this circle. A weak resemblance of this phenomenon, which is not characteristic of every area, but mainly of the seas and deserts, is a whirlwind. If such a wind finds a mobile and light substance at the place of its action, it lifts and spins it, making itself through this in the proper sense visible to the eye. In addition to the circular movement, it also has a forward movement and, therefore, we can rightfully say about it that it goes towards someone or towards someone. Such a wind never travels alone. In its terrible and destructive action, whether it walks on the waters of the sea or on the sand of the desert, it involves clouds of airy waters. So then the wind and the cloud go together. You can even say that the cloud is moving in such a wind. And it’s remarkable that the LXX says so here: according to their text, the cloud that came towards Ezekiel walked in the wind, “in him,” ἐν αὐτῷ. Understandable after all that has been said, such an addition could seem strange at first glance and could easily disappear from the Hebrew text, being preserved in the LXX. Cornille included בו in his edition of Heb. text of Ezekiel, noting that it is necessary: ​​the cloud is in a materially represented whirlwind. The combined movement of a cloud with the wind and in the wind is called a tornado. To say that God walked to the prophet in the cloud of a tornado can be done with absolutely the same security for the thought of the supernatural nature of the present theophany with which it is said that God walks in a storm or wind. Appearing on earth, God does not create new tools and environments for His appearance, but attracts natural agents of nature to His service, choosing the best and strongest of them. No matter how conveniently every feature and every shade of expression in the prophet’s story is explained by the assumption that he saw a tornado, one cannot defend this opinion with complete decisiveness, and in any case one cannot put this word in the very text of the book, as Cook’s English Bible does. The most we can say here is that the cloud of Ezekiel's vision should be thought of roughly as the cloud of a tornado. Like any cloud of theophany, it was undoubtedly on the earth, walked, moved and had not blurry, but limited dimensions: in appearance it was of enormous, extraordinary size. Only by imagining this cloud like this (and not considering it just a big cloud), one can find not strange and not incomprehensible, but quite natural the expressions in which the prophet describes its appearance and speaks about it: bo, godal, “and I saw”, the connection of the cloud with the wind and being “in it” (according to LXX). If it was a cloud, then it was a cloud unprecedented in its strength. It was so black that it made it almost completely dark. It was so large that it occupied the entire horizon. She hung so over the ground that she lay on the ground itself. And she was like that because God was in her. Although the cloud was part of many, if not all, theophanies (even the New Testament ones: during the transfiguration and ascension), nowhere does it have such significance and does not occupy such a predominant position as during the theophany of the Jews during their wanderings in the desert. Here God constantly walks with His people in the pillar of cloud. We have seen that the Khovar vision is closely related to those theophany and that its similarity with them is far from accidental. And the cloud of Ezekiel’s vision, no matter how little it was described by the prophet, as far as we found it possible to imagine it, did not resemble anything so much as the cloud in which the Lord walked through the desert with His people. That cloud also walked along the ground, was also visible to everyone, was of a certain size, and had the appearance of a terrifying bulk. It, like Ezekiel's cloud, had fire in it, visible at night. About the pillar of cloud that walked before Israel in the desert, Moses does not say that it was surrounded and carried by the wind. This pillar is generally described by him very briefly. But that this pillar could be transported from place to place only by the wind and, moreover, by a wind of extraordinary force, this seems to follow by itself. The prophets present to you the procession of the Lord in no other way than in the wind and storm along with the cloud. And they imagined it, of course, by the way, and first of all, according to the well-known example of the Lord’s procession through the desert before His people. And in what Moses tells from time to time about the pillar of cloud, there are some indications of a strong wind that raged around him, without going, however, too far from him. It is known that the division of the Red Sea, caused by the wind (“the Lord drove the sea with a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were parted” - Ex. 14:21), is made dependent on the pillar of cloud that went before Israel: the sea split in two when the pillar of cloud stood by the sea (v. 20). When the Egyptians approached this pillar significantly in pursuit of the Jews, whom it separated from them when crossing the Red Sea, the wheels of the Egyptian chariots stopped. Moses talks about it this way: “And in the morning watch the Lord looked upon the camp of the Egyptians from a pillar of fire and cloud and threw the camp of the Egyptians into confusion; and he took away the wheels of their chariots, so that they could hardly draw them (vv. 24–25). Since God usually acts on material objects through material agents, here too He could act simply by the force of the wind, which carried the pillar of cloud through the desert. Another feature distinguished the cloud observed by Ezekiel on Chebar from the ordinary one. All around him (לו סביב) there was radiance, brilliance, ונגה. One might think that it contains some such strong source of light that cannot hide behind the thick mass of the cloud and with its rays pierces (נגה pierce), breaks out of it (cf. nagah in 2 Samuel 22:29). Subsequently, it really turned out that in this cloud there was a whole sea of ​​​​fire and light. But for now the prophet sees only a cloud and a quiet radiance, a flickering (cf. nogah in Is. 62:1; Hab. 3:11) around him, a clear, calm shine, “of which the closest description can only be found in Art. 28" (Kr.). The remark about the cloud shining around only according to LXX directly follows the description of the cloud, and according to the Masoretic text it is preceded by the words מתלקחת אש - “fire shine”; in wt. text: “(I saw) a great cloud and the fire mithlaccahath and the radiance around it”; at 70: - “a great cloud is in it and light is around it and fire is shining.” Which reading is correct? When reading Masoret. The text results in an incorrect agreement of suffixes: “around him” in Hebrew there is a husband. gave birth to לו, therefore, לו refers to the cloud (ענן m.r.), and not to the fire אש, which f. r.; Meanwhile, according to the word arrangement, לו can only be attributed to esch - fire, while the next feminine suffix in ומתבה should be attributed to the masculine nogah. With the order of these expressions in 70, each suffix will be placed in the gender of the noun closest to it. Reading the Masorah. so they defend (Gitz.) with the following considerations: since the cloud borrows its shine from fire, it is natural to first talk about fire, and then about the shine from it on the cloud. But supporters of reading 70 (Cor. Ber. Cr.) rightly note that the prophet tells the story in the same way and in the order in which he observed the phenomenon; and the observer perceives first the brilliance, and then its cause; the speech here goes from external to internal: first the prophet sees a whirlwind, then a shining cloud, and finally the fire from which it shines. Moreover, as we will see later, the cloud does not borrow its light from the fire we are talking about now. To the Masor. the text could subsequently be rearranged under the influence of considerations similar to those indicated. So, one might think that 70 gives the correct arrangement of expressions here. But in the translation of these expressions 70 they seem to have made an inaccuracy: they also translate לו into Greek. αὐτοῦ m.r. or cf., meanwhile the suffix here refers to the noun. “cloud”, which is only in Hebrew. husband. r., and in Greek. wives gen.: therefore, it should have been translated κύκλῳ αὐτῆς, and not αὐτοῦ. Perhaps 70 attributed the radiance (nogah) not to the cloud, but to the wind (πνευματος, Triebs 24) or translated לו mechanically. The intense fear into which the prophet was led by the first signs of theophany must have turned into horror when he noticed that fire was rushing towards him. Fire itself, when it burns naturally and has a substance as its food, of course, does not represent anything terrible, although even then when it is large in size it can take on a terrifying appearance. But on Khobar on that memorable day for the prophet, everything was extraordinary. And the wind was unusual, and the cloud was one of a kind. Fire couldn't be ordinary either. One thing that was unusual was that this fire, like everything else, like the cloud and the wind, “walked”, moved towards the prophet with the wind and the cloud. At least the prophet attaches to it the same verb בוא and, therefore, gives reason to imagine its movement in exactly the same way as we imagined the movement of the wind and clouds. He rushed along the ground like these last ones. The prophet says nothing about the relation of this fire to the two former figures of vision - the wind and the cloud. Regarding the cloud, he adds (70 each) that it was in the wind. In relation to fire, the reader involuntarily expects a similar remark: “and fire in the cloud.” But the prophet has a short one: “and such and such a fire,” i.e. went to him - and that was it. Therefore, it is arbitrary on the part of the interpreters that they place this fire necessarily in the cloud and, for example, say that it formed the core of the cloud (“Kern” - Keil, Schroeder). The only thing that can be added with some justification to the prophet’s brief expression about fire is the former ἐν αὐτῷ by 70 - i.e. "in the wind" Fire could be in the wind in the sense that it could be carried by the wind. The whole horror of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the fire went completely independently, on its own, alone without anything. He occupied the same position in the structure of vision as the wind, like a cloud. These were three great whole visions, equal to each other. Each was equally large, and each did not interfere with the other by its existence. The fire was as great and terrible as the wind and the cloud. All three of them went against the prophet together, each terrible in its own right, and terrible in its combination. The reader expects from the prophet some information about this extraordinary fire. Satisfying this legitimate curiosity, the prophet defines his fire more precisely, but defines it in a word that exegesis has so far labored fruitlessly to explain. It was, says the prophet, fire מתלקחת. This word is found only once more in Holy Scripture and also in application to fire; it is the name given to the fire that, together with hail, the seventh plague of Egypt, spilled over the earth (Ex. 9:24). Without giving anything to explain this word, this passage is important for us in that it testifies to the possibility of the actual appearance of such fire as the prophet Ezekiel saw on Chebar. The first thing that comes to mind regarding this fire is that it was lightning. LXX also thought so, calling it πῦρ ἐξαστράπτων - “fire from lightning.” In Egypt, this fire appeared along with hail and thunder (they think that only thunder can be understood by those “voices” קולות Ex. 9:23, which occurred along with hail in Egypt, and only lightning under the fire that was then spreading in Egypt). But to denote lightning in the Hebrew language there is a special word, ברק, which is used all the time even in the psalms with their figurative language. There was no reason for Ezekiel, precise in his language, to obscure the list of phenomena that preceded the vision, which required special precision in its conciseness, to obscure by the use of such an unheard-of name of lightning. Moreover, there is no proof that the coloth "voices" in Ex. 9:23 There were thunders, and not any other noise or rumble. As little as the demolition of this place from Ex. 9:24, can provide the word production מתלקחת to explain the passage under discussion. This is Gitpael from לקח - to take. The meaning of Gitpael is reciprocal. But what meaning will the verb “take” have in its reciprocal meaning? Such a meaning for this verb is apparently impossible. The majority (including our Russian translation), following the Vulgate, understand this form from the verb lacach about the appearance, outlines of fire, the way it burns. It was, they say, a fire not spreading, but coagulating, curling, swirling (involvens, sese reciprocans; Keil and Geth.: zusammemgeballtes; Korn: waberndes: Shred.: sich gegenseitigfassendes; Bert.: zusammenhangendes). Rosenmüller says the fire was spreading throughout the cloud. But some find it necessary to see in this word an indication of the internal property of fire. Schroeder, translating this word sich gegenseitigfassendes - “mutually grasping”, “clinging to each other”, explains that the fire was not only a swirling ball of fire, but at the same time all sparkling with lightning, as if igniting lightning intertwining with each other (=Kr.). Ewald (followed by Smend) translates this word “incessant”: mithlaccachath according to it in Gitz. means “to give each other hands”, “to grab hold of each other”, about fire - “continuously arising here and there”, as in Ex. 9:24: for the restless, running here and there being of this fire is also a sign of the higher life in it; This is how the prophet himself explains it in v. 13. Gitzig considers this word to be synonymous with פחים Ps. 10:6 (“will rain down on sinners nets, fire and bogeymen”, Russian: “hot coals”) and considers both to be a poetic image of lightning: like lightning continuously spreading into the distance, lightning into the Arab. in language it is called a “chain” (the links of which form zigzags). All these explanations fundamentally sin against the meaning of the verb lacach. Although this verb means “to take”, “to take”, its meaning, like the meaning of all words in ancient languages, is not at all as flexible as the concept of “take” in modern languages. Its meaning is very narrow, like the narrow meaning of the Latin capio and the Greek λαμβάνω. In whatever connection the verb. lacach was not used, it means only to take and nothing more - to take in its own way, but of course in a material or spiritual sense: you can take, lacach, a stick (Ex. 9:7), take an inheritance (Num. 34:14), a country (take possession of it Judg. 11:18), a wife (Num. 12:1), a person from this world (Gen. 5:24); you can finally take instruction (accept it - Proverbs 24:32); you can even take the soul itself, i.e. captivate, captivate her (Prov. 11:30). To all this, as we see, in the proper sense the meaning “to take”, “to take” is applied. The passive voice does not change this basic meaning of lacach: in it this verb can mean the same thing, only “to be taken” “from something”, “somewhere” - and that’s all. But such artificial, distant meanings as the meaning of the Russian “to take” in the sense of arising or even in the sense of “to cling”, the verb lacach can never have in any voice, just as capio and λαμβάνω cannot have them. And in relation to fire, lacach can have only one meaning - to embrace the burning substance, to devour it (=אכל). This meaning is not lost in any voice of this verb. It is not lost in Gitpael either. On the contrary, it intensifies in him. It is known that Gitpael is formed from the voice Piel, and the meaning of Piel is more than just real, transitive: its meaning is causative, forced (to force one to do something). This shade of meaning cannot be lost in the voice Gitpael derived from Piel. It is also joined here by the concept of reciprocity and reciprocity, the participation of another person or object and the return of action to the actual object itself. This verb should have no different meaning here. The fire that Ezekiel saw could not help but burn something. A fire that would not burn anything is unthinkable. It goes without saying that it was burning with real fire. Since this fire walked towards the prophet, like the wind and the cloud, it burned everything that lay in its path. His whole road was burning with them. He took, embraced, lacach, everything that was in his path, and, consequently, the very path of the wind and clouds, since he walked with them: with his element he “together with them” (hence Gitpael) embraced their common path. It was, therefore, the same fiery river that flowed in Daniel’s vision before the Throne of God. It is clear why and where the fire came from in this case. Although it was real, real fire, just as the wind and the cloud (or cloud) were real, but, like these latter, it did not arise from a natural cause. Nobody lit it. It ignited by itself from the descent of God, and it burned the place through which God walked to the prophet. So Mount Sinai once burned because God descended on it, the path along which God passed before Elijah in Horeb, the thorn bush from which God made His revelation to Moses; fire and smoke passed between the cut parts of animals during the epiphany to Abraham (Gen. 15:17). In all these cases, fire appeared in a certain place because God came to this place. When the Jews called God “a consuming fire,” they, etc. meant this sign of His appearance. In such fire, as in wind, thunderstorm, or earthquake, the shock of nature at the appearance of God in it is manifested. In the air this shock is produced by a strong stormy wind; the earth shakes and shakes from the appearance of God; the waters are troubled and noisy (Hab. 3:10); flammable substances ignite and burn. If we compare all the descriptions of the appearances of God, real or only imagined (in the psalms and prophetic speeches), past and future (predicted), then everywhere we will find His fire among the necessary accessories of the appearance. Along with the wind, storm, thunderstorm and earthquake, fire cannot but accompany God in His march across the earth. “Our God comes, and not in silence: before Him is a consuming fire, and around Him is a mighty storm” (Ps. 49:3). “Fire goes before Him and burns His enemies all around” (Ps. 96:3) “Smoke arose from His anger, and from His mouth a consuming fire; hot coals fell from Him; He bowed down the heavens and came down” (Ps. 17:9, 10; cf. 2 Sam. 22:9, 10). It is known that the last coming of God to earth will be in “fiery fire” (2 Thess. 1:8). If God has never appeared on earth in such Glory as He will appear then, then all the usual signs of His appearance on earth at that coming will take on extraordinary, terrifying proportions. The fire that usually precedes the Lord will also take on this size. From him then the whole earth and all the works on it will burn up (2 Pet. 3:10). According to the prophet Joel, then there will be “blood and fire and smoking smoke” on the earth (Joel 2:30). Church tradition depicts this fire, no doubt based on Dan. 7:10, in the form of a river of fire flowing before the throne of the Terrible Judge. This river can be imagined in such a way that one after another everything on earth will ignite before the face of the Coming Lord. The name mithlaccachath suits such a fire. Such and such a fire was seen by St. Ezekiel. In the place where the cloud and the wind walked, or rather the Lord in the wind and the cloud, everything caught fire, ignited and burned. The procession of the Lord was truly “in flaming fire.” Appearing with strong winds and clouds, the fire seen by the prophet Ezekiel must have stood in some connection with them. So in Egypt, during executions, the mithlaccachath fire appears along with strong hail, which could have occurred from a strong cloud. In the psalms, next to the fire of theophany, the sound of the wind and a strong thunderstorm are mentioned. How to imagine this connection? Those winds that sometimes blow in the East, due to their murderous heat, are sometimes such that they simply seem to carry fire with them. At least their actions can only be compared with the actions of fire. It is known that the walls of houses crack, furniture bursts, cracks appear on the skin of the human body (in which the raging wind throws fine sand and this causes terrible torment). If it were possible to further increase the heat of a wind similar to the samum, then fire would have to arise from its breath. It would have to directly ignite objects. In view of some indications from the sacred books, it can be assumed that winds of such heat existed in the East at that time. The expressions that speak of their actions are too strong to be understood figuratively. The Prophet Joel describes the effect of the wind, which brought locusts on Judea: “before it the fire devours, behind it the flame burns, the fire has destroyed the pastures of the desert”; To say that due to drought the field not only burned, but also “ignited” is hardly possible in the most daring way. The psalmist says that the Lord rains fire and brimstone on sinners, and a scorching wind is their fate (Ps. 10:6); according to the usual structure of verse in the psalms (parallelism), the second thought can be considered another way of expressing the first: fire and brimstone appear in the hot wind and are brought by them. If sulfur had not been mentioned in the last place, we could understand fire figuratively; but the juxtaposition of the latter next to it seems to show that the psalmist had in mind real fire. There were probably cases where a hot wind brought fire directly with it. It is further known that God rained brimstone and fire from heaven on Sodom. You can also imagine hot sulfur falling from the sky and raining on the ground. But it is hardly possible to imagine that streams of pure fire poured onto the earth along with the sulfur. It already appeared on earth simultaneously with the fall of sulfur and, no doubt, from the same reason from which the sulfur fell. Since the fire was falling, i.e. appeared in Sodom along with sulfur, then of course it was ignited by the same wind that brought the sulfur cloud and probably heated the sulfur. He did this with his sultriness. Perhaps it was that רוח זלעפת “sultry wind” about which the psalmist says that it rains fire and brimstone on sinners. These comparisons shed some light on the fire seen by the prophet Ezekiel on Chebar. Wind, cloud and fire came at the prophet together; the prophet sees them simultaneously and thinks of them as one whole. If so, then they could not help but influence each other in one way or another. The fire had to impart its heat to the wind and cloud, so to speak, heat them up. Or, on the contrary, the wind could be so hot that it ignited a fire underneath it. If we accept the last assumption, then the obscure word mithlaccachath will receive a complete explanation for itself. Fire is so named because it embraced, lacach, everything “simultaneously with” (–מת) the action of the wind and cloud, and was kindled (p. 3.) with them. Let us remember that the pillar of cloud that walked before Israel in the desert had the appearance of fire at night. Consequently, there was, as it were, a hidden fire in him. It can be assumed that the sudden extermination “by fire from the Lord” of hundreds of rebellious people in the wilderness (Num. 11:1; 16:35, 45; cf. 25:3; cf. also Lev. 9:24; 10:2) was carried out through the fire that burned the pillar of fire at night. It is not for nothing that God, after the sin of worshiping the calf, suggested to the Jews that it would be better to send His angel with them: “I myself will not go among you, lest I destroy you on the way, because you are a stiff-necked people.” The pillar in which He walked was not only beneficent, but also formidable in its greatness. The procession of God in it before the people, as beneficial as it was for the Jews, could turn out to be disastrous for them, “when His wrath would instantly flare up.” At least once the people express such fear: “everyone who approaches the Tabernacle of the Lord (over which stood the pillar of fire and cloud) dies: will we not all have to die” (Num. 17:13). The fire that came in Ezekiel’s vision along with the wind and the cloud was supposed to illuminate the surroundings, and since it was shrouded in darkness from a thick hanging cloud, an extraordinary fire was supposed to burn and glow terribly in this darkness. Please contact us Καὶ ἐν τῷ μέσῳ αὐτοῦ ὡς ὅρασις ἠλέκτρου ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ φέγγος ἐν αὐτῷ And in the midst of it was like a vision of an electr in the midst of fire, and light in it. No matter how majestic and unusual everything the prophet had seen so far was, all of this was in essence one or another natural phenomenon, phenomena that, it is true, went beyond their natural limits, but still had the right to be called by their proper names - wind, cloud, fire. What the prophet now saw was no longer an earthly phenomenon. On earth, between earthly objects and phenomena, the prophet was able to indicate only some semblance of what he now saw. “From the middle of this there is, as it were, a kind of chaschmal,” this is how the prophet continues his description literally from Hebrew. Before proceeding to define this new element of vision, it is necessary, following the order of the text, to determine its relation to what the prophet had seen hitherto. The prophet denotes this relationship with the word מתוכה “from among her.” After what is said about the fire that the prophet saw and which he characterizes with the mysterious name mithlaccachath, it should be beyond doubt for us that the vision of the chaschmal could not have been among this fire. That fire engulfed the earth under the phenomenon moving across it; the light of chaschmal, as Art. shows. 27 God shone upon Him who sat above the firmament. So, the pronominal suffix in mitthocah is “in the middle of it,” although it is in gram. gender corresponds to the noun esch – fire, cannot refer to it. And in the Hebrew text as it stands, mitthocah is too far removed from esch for it to mean it. True, all the evidence is that we have the original and genuine arrangement of sentences here in LXX, and according to the word arrangement of the 4th art. in LXX, esch is close enough to mitthocah to warrant the suffix ah. But the very fact that the Masoretes found it possible to move esch to such a distance from mitthocah shows that they did not attribute the suffix in mitthocah to esch. What noun did they refer to and should it refer to? None. As we will see in v. 5, the feminine suffix with מתוך replaces something that does not exist in Hebrew. language, the neuter pronoun: “from the midst of this,” “from the midst of all this,” of everything the prophet had seen hitherto, the vision of chaschmal shone. Successfully omitting this suffix in the 5th century. (there mitthocah is translated by LXX simply “in the middle”, i.e. of course: everything seen before), LXX did not dare to do this (such a free translation) here and translated the suffix with the pronoun αὐτοῦ, referring it either to the nearest πῦρ or, perhaps, together with Targ. (= Cor.) to πνεῦμα. So, the very center of everything seen hitherto was something that looked like a chaschmal. The Prophet could not say that it had the likeness (דמות), or the real appearance (מראה) of chaschmal. It had עין chaschmal’ya, and not completely, but only as if (כ) hen. Being the same word with the word “eye,” which differs only in pronunciation (hain), עין is used of a small surface, of a shiny point: maybe hen of a precious stone Ezek. 1:16, shining metal 1:7, scabs of leprosy Lev. 13:2, sparkling in the cup of wine Proverbs. 23:31. The meaning of hen indicates the approximate meaning of the mysterious word חשמל. It must mean some small shiny object that sparkled and sparkled in the light and fire surrounding it. But what kind of subject it was, all the efforts of the interpreters to say anything ended in almost nothing. Such an object must be rare, and rarely does anyone manage to see it, if its very name is not used by any of the sacred writers except the prophet Ezekiel. The Prophet Ezekiel, more than others, had to visit a variety of places and countries and see such places, cities and things (Tire and its markets) that other sacred writers had only heard about. And from all his rich experience and observation, he could remember one thing that could give an idea of ​​​​what he now saw. Only in two other places is this word used by the prophet, and in both cases when describing the appearance of the One who appeared to him in a vision. Having the general likeness of man, who appeared to the prophet (God) all shone and shone like fire, and above the loins like chaschmal (1:27) and like זוהר, “radiance,” “luminary” (8:3; cf. Dan. 12:3). Thus, the radiance of the fire and the radiance of the luminaries seemed insufficient to the prophet so that they could form an idea of ​​​​the light that he saw. This light stood out and shone brightly in the field of the fire itself (“from the midst of the fire” 1:4). It, therefore, differed in something, in some shade from the light of fire, in something superior to the light of fire: the upper part of the image of the One who appeared shone with it, perhaps His very face and body (in contrast to the clothes, which were simply fiery). Through the word chaschmal the prophet thinks to give his readers some idea of ​​this light. Consequently, it was a subject more or less known to them. They wanted to formulate an idea about this subject based on the etymology of the word chaschmal, but this etymology itself is a mystery. Here are the main guesses about her. According to the explanation of Bokhart (Hieroz. p. II. 1. VI Sar. XVI after Rose), whose opinion Rosenmüller considers the most plausible. חשמל is a Chaldean word composed of נחש “copper” and מלל “unrefined gold (rude, as it is taken from a mine).” In its full form, this word would read נחשמלל. But the final ל falls out according to the arosora characteristic of each. language, as a double: the initial נ also falls out due to aphaeresis, as it is often absent not only in verbs, but also in names; so זר "crown" instead of nezer, נר "river" instead of negar, ציר "rod" instead of nazur, kulvon instead of nekulvon (a type of dactyl) and in Arabic Bucatnezar king instead of Nebucatnezar (Nebuchadnezzar). Likewise, chaschmal is pronounced instead of nechaschmal or even nechaschmalal. This name, like the Greek. τὸ χαλκοχρύσιον, meant a metal consisting of copper and gold, corresponding in price and color to gold, otherwise called “golden copper”, מזהב נחשת (Ezra 8:27), as opposed to silver copper, χαλκός λευκός, aes candidum. - But being still lower than gold, such a metal could hardly be brought into this vision as a comparison, where everything shone like the most precious stones. Others (Hitzig, Rev. Rosenmüller) make a slight amendment to this explanation. Considering chaschmal a type of copper, they are in accordance with nechoscheth calal art. 7. and Dan. 10:6 here they mean polished copper and the syllable מל is considered a contraction of the verb מלל, akin to קלל “to rub” and “to rub by friction,” i.e. "polish". Rosenmüller adds that the name of such copper in Art. 7. and in Daniel it is purely Jewish, and here – chaschmal is more Chaldean, moreover, probably again composed by Ezekiel himself, just as John the Theologian in the Apocalypse to designate the brilliance of the feet of Christ, such a brilliance that no one had ever seen and which therefore could not be called by any word in ordinary human language, to designate this brilliance he decided to compose a new word “chalkolivan” (John 1:15), forming it from Greek χαλκός and Heb. לבן "white". Regarding the last assumption. Schroeder and Ebrard (according to Shred.) rightly note that chalkolivan may simply mean Lebanese copper, as the word is translated in Peshito and the Ethiopian Bible. In general, the previous objection remains even stronger against this explanation of the word chaschmal. As for Apoc. 1:15, then we will subsequently see why the legs there are compared to copper (in terms of strength). Keil, Trochon and others produce chaschmal from the uncommon verb חשם probably (?) “to heat up” with an additional ל (=כרמל from כרם). chaschmal was supposed to mean hot metal. This meaning, they say, fits both Art. 27, where chaschmal is explained through mareh esch, and 8:2, where it corresponds to zohar - radiance. The explanation is arbitrary. Dietrich (Abhandl. für semit. Wortforsch. 291) and Smend compare this word with “chascham” - an Arabic adjective that means “thick, fat” - hence “brilliant” (sic!). Meyer (according to See) considers this word to be the most ancient formation of the word “gold”: כתם = כתמל = חתמל = השמל; the letters כ and ח, ת and ש sometimes merge into one another. Let us mention some ancient explanations of this word. Peshito in 1:4 omits this word as completely unknown, but in v. 27 and 8:2 put instead (quid pro quo. Geth.) adspectus divinus. That. Pescito considers this word full of mystery to designate God or an angel. The rabbis derived it from תש “speed” and מל “peace” (or “speech”, “silence”) and considered it the name of the angel - the teacher of Ezekiel (IIIr.). Some of the newer rabbis think that this is pure fire, without smoke; Rashi - that it was an angel who took the form of fire; Malbim (the above-mentioned work, where those two opinions come from) that this is the Spirit of God in the form of fire. Maldonat and Prad point out that if you read this word in reverse order of letters, you get the name of the Messiah: למשח (Sr.). Recent discoveries are beginning to shed faint light on the mysterious chaschmal of Ezekiel Ave. In the list of spoils of Thutmes III, taken from Nahar to the north. Syria (the list is placed on tablets found in the ruins of Karnak), mentions aschmer, aschmal (Ebers. Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgländichen Gesellschaft XXXI, 454, approx.). Reminds me of chaschmal and Assyrian. eschmaru, which means d.b. some kind of precious and shiny metal (Del. Baer. Lib. Ez. XVI. - Kr.). Eschmaru is placed next to the gold, silver, precious stones and royal regalia brought by Asurbaninal after the conquest of Susa from the treasures of this city (Knab.). All this allows us to say for now about the chaschmal only that it was some kind of large and rare jewel, not inferior to gold and precious stones. The important thing is that an object with this name was known to antiquity and was very much valued. What word production guided the 70 when translating chaschmal ἤλεκτρον? They probably understood this word as little as the Syriac translation, which completely omits it, or the Targum, which leaves it untranslated. There may be one probable reason that the 70 decided to translate this word with their ilectr. Not understanding the word chaschmal 70, however, like current interpreters, they rightly thought that this word meant some kind of metal and probably a metal of high value. On some grounds, which we will now talk about, they could believe that the light seen by the prophet in the fire and different from the red light of the fire was lightning-like light. But if we compare this light with the light emitted by any metal, then no comparison will be more accurate, truer or more suitable than the comparison with an electrum. The ancient ilectrum was a mixture of 3/4 or 4/5 gold with 1/4 or 1/5 silver. This alloy was very valuable in ancient times (Plinius, Hist. nat. 39, 4. Strabo 3, 146), almost more expensive than gold, probably due to the difficulty of preparing it. It was gold, the sharp yellow color of which was tempered by an admixture of silver; In the dazzling sparkle of gold, through this admixture, a quiet and gentle shine of silver was added, just as “as the unbearable radiance of the Divinity was tempered in Christ by uniting him with humanity” (Bl. Hier. Theod.). Shining in the fire with a whitish, yellowish-white light, its chaschmal brilliance should resemble the brilliance of lightning. And so they put LXX instead of chaschmal ἤλεκτρον, well calculating that even if they sin against the literal accuracy of the translation, they will at least correctly express the thought of the prophet, the essence of the matter. On what grounds did they think that the brilliance seen by St. Ezekiel should have resembled the brilliance of lightning? The Prophet Daniel speaks of the One who appeared to him on the bank of the Tigris, that His face was like the appearance of lightning. One could assume that this was the same one who appeared to Ezekiel on Chebar. And the radiance of chaschmal came precisely from the upper part of the human Image sitting on the throne, i.e. by the way, from the face and head. It goes without saying that in both the vision of Daniel and the vision of Ezekiel, the radiance, compared by one of them to lightning, and by the other to chaschmal, did not completely resemble either one or the other. Both the lightning and the chaschmal represented only a faint semblance of what they saw. This explains why Daniel and Ezekiel do not agree on the comparison. In general, celestial beings, when appearing to people, often turn out to be shining with such a light that those who have seen find it difficult to name this light. In almost every one of these cases a different comparison is given, apparently for the same subject. So John the Theologian says about the One who appeared to him that His face shone like the sun, shining in its power; in other respects, the One who appeared, similar to the Son of Man, is described as the Man seen by Daniel at the Tigris River. Even angels who appeared to people often shone with such light, and their clothes were somehow so unusually shiny and white that those who saw them could not find a comparison for this shine. The face and clothes of the Savior on Tabor also shone (Matthew 17:2: “His face shone like the sun”; Mark. 9:29: “His clothes became shining, very white as snow, as a bleacher on earth cannot bleach”). Naturally, Ezekiel also found it difficult to find a sufficient comparison for the light that shone before him on Chebar. The light he saw might be was of the same kind as seen by Daniel, John the Theologian. Perhaps the angels who appeared on earth partly shone with such a light. (Matthew 28:2). But, while others compared it with the well-known light of the sun, lightning, etc., familiar to everyone, Ezekiel found that the radiance of chaschmal, which he saw somewhere, was more consistent with that light and, as a very accurate writer, resorted to this comparison, and not to comparison with more well-known types of light. The prophet had at his disposal many types of radiance, brilliance in nature to compare with any of them of real radiance. But he bypasses these natural types of light and selects the extraordinary brilliance emitted by some rare object, the very name of which is so soon forgotten. If what had been seen so far on Khobar was in essence these or other natural phenomena, then the real light had already gone far beyond the limits of nature. It was a completely unearthly, unnatural light. He was that heavenly, “uncreated” light, the existence and contemplation of which by some saints the church defended in the dispute between the Barlaamites and the Palamites. You cannot see this light with your bodily eye. Few saw him and saw him not with sensory vision, but with that special, spiritual vision to which a person becomes capable in a special grace-filled state of sacred “frenzy” (ἔκστασις’a Acts 10:10; 11:5; Mark 16:8; Gen. 15:12). And the prophet Ezekiel saw this light already in a state of ecstasy. He makes this clear by the fact that when describing him for the first time he begins to use the particle כ, ὡς, “as”, “as if”. What he had seen so far were real objects of the real world. He saw the very wind, the very cloud, the very fire, and not “the appearance, the likeness of the wind,” not “like the wind,” “like a cloud.” But now he does not see the chaschmal itself, but only “a kind of chaschmal,” “the likeness of animals,” etc. According to the prophet's story, one can trace how he gradually came to a state of ecstasy. So he sees the radiance of chaschmal from the midst of the fire, which was real fire and which he could see with his bodily eye. But with the development of the vision, the situation surrounding the prophet changes completely. The world of vision takes the place of the external world. The prophet, in horror, sees before him only images of animals rushing here and there. Above him is no longer the ordinary sky of that area, but some special heavenly vault of extraordinary brilliance and beauty (“as if crystalline”) with a wonderful azure and the throne of God on it. To the remark about chaschmal the prophet adds “from the midst of the fire”: “as if the appearance of a chaschmal from the midst of the fire.” This increase can be explained in two ways. Following the Vulgate, which translates it: “id est de medio ignis,” these words are considered an explanation of מתוכה (from the middle of it), made by the prophet himself (Ros. et al.). But “a pleonasm unheard of in Ezekiel would have resulted if mitthocchah had received its explanation through mitthoc haesch” (Geph.). Therefore, they offer this understanding: the prophet saw not a simple chaschmal, but (assuming that it was metal) red-hot (Fr. Rozhd.). But noble metals melt in fire, not glow; and was the metal chaschmal? the possibility that it was a precious stone cannot be ruled out. The newest exegetes resort here to the usual asylum for them in all difficult cases - the assumption of gloss: according to Cor. Zig. Toi, Ber. this is the gloss to mitthocah; Kretschmar considers these words to be corrupted הענן מתוך “from the midst of the cloud” and they used to stand before esch mithlaccachath; but apart from the fact that such an arrangement is not confirmed by any codex, the mithlaccachath fire, as we have seen, was not in the cloud at all. These words receive the most natural meaning in the light, v. 27: according to this verse, the chaschmal shone precisely from the midst of the fire, only not the mithlaccachath fire, but another mass of fire, that mass of it, with which He who sat on the throne was dressed like a robe. The last words of the verse “and the light in it” are not found in any Hebrew. manuscripts, and from Greek. they are only in the code. Al. Blzh. Jerome marks them with an obel. And in the course of speech they are not a necessary addition. In editions of the Slavic Bible they should be placed in brackets, which they deserve more than “and their faces” in v. 11, as having only one vote for themselves. The appearance and meaning of this increase can be explained as follows. When the meaning of chaschmal was lost, it was completely unclear what the prophet wanted to express with his comparison. Meanwhile, from Art. 27, where this comparison occurs a second time and this mysterious word is used, it is clear that it must mean some kind of unbearably strong brilliance, stronger than fiery; and in 8:2, where chaschmal appears again, it is compared with the light of the dawn. These parallels made it possible to form a more precise concept of chaschmal than was possible in Art. 4. And in order to shed light on this word when it was first used, LXX or their editor could have introduced into this verse words parallel to Art. 27. “and the light in him,” more precisely: “to him” or “with him” (לוֹ), i.e.: “and chaschmal was something (strongly) luminous,” or even “full of light, woven from light and brilliance.” Mysterious animals. Art. 5 Home page דְּמוּת אָדָם לָהֵנָּה Καὶ ἐν τῷ μέσῳ ὡς ὁμοίωμα τεσσάρων ζῴων καὶ αὕτη ἡ ὅρασις αὐτῶν ὁμοίωμα ἀνθρώπου ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς And in the midst of it were the likeness of four living creatures; and this vision of them is like the likeness of a man in them. It was not without reason that the fiery cloud, carried by a stormy wind, was so faithfully and directly directed towards the prophet, as if it was moving towards him consciously. When the prophet began to peer into its thick, foggy mass, bathed in a terrible glow, four living figures looked out at him. The “great” cloud coming towards the prophet was thus, as it were, animated. It carried life within itself in the person of four living beings, who were enclosed in it so that they walked in it and with it. These living beings were shrouded in a cloud and surrounded by fire, with which the cloud burned and ignited everything around it. This is the attitude of the living beings he has now noticed to the complex whole that was coming towards him, i.e. to the wind, cloud and fire, the prophet expresses in his compressed language in such a way that living beings were seen “from the midst of it” i.e. “all this,” מִתּוֹכָהּ. This is the best way to resolve the long dispute among interpreters about the true meaning of the pronominal suffix in mitthocah. Since this suffix is ​​feminine. gender, then it is most natural to think that it refers to the nearest noun f. r., and this turns out to be esch - fire. But this assumption (about the meaning of this suffix), to which other interpreters and the blj. Jerome, has inconveniences. First of all, the prophet’s speech would then have an impossible structure. In the middle of the fire the prophet sees chaschmal and in the middle of it, i.e. fire, he sees four animals. It is impossible to talk about this as it is said here: the second “in the middle” turns out to be completely unnecessary and seems to have been placed to obscure the meaning. You should have simply said: “in the middle of the fire I saw a chaschmal and 4 animals.” In addition, the prophet’s further description of the 4 animals does not give reason to think that they were directly among the fire: on the contrary, the fire was among the animals, walking among them (v. 13). The inconvenience of such an understanding of mitthocah, an understanding that could not help but come to everyone’s mind first when reading this passage (since the general grammatical rule regarding pronouns is that they must be attributed to the nearest noun of the same gender), the inconvenience of this understanding was recognized even by ancient interpreters. They did not assign the pronominal suffix in mitthocah to esch, but tried to find a more suitable noun for it. The common opinion among ancient commentators regarding this suffix seems to be that it refers to chaschmal. Blzh. Jerome probably points to the explanation of this passage accepted in his time when he says: “among it,” what is meant is “ilektra,” (“but,” he adds, correcting this opinion, it is better to understand “fire”). This understanding is more fundamental than the first. It is true that the closest noun to mitthocah esch is “fire.” But this is, so to speak, only spatial proximity. Logically the closest noun is chaschmal. The previous sentence is not about fire, but about chaschmal; fire is a secondary concept: it is mentioned only because the chaschmal was surrounded by it, which attracted the surprised attention of the prophet. So, from the point of view of grammatical proximity, chaschmal can be the noun that refers to and which replaces the pronominal suffix of the preposition mitthoc “among”. Does the gender of this noun match the feminine gender of the suffix? The grammatical gender of the noun chaschmal is unknown, because in those three places the book. Ezekiel, where this word is used, which is not found anywhere else in the Bible, it is not in a construction that would determine its gender. But if, of the two Hebrew genders, it were necessary to find the more suitable and probable one for the word chaschmal, then one would have to stop at feminine. kind. For inanimate objects, especially those with a collective and general connotation, a connotation for which this gender is given in neuter languages, the Hebrew language prefers the feminine gender. Then, the vowels of this word - two patakhs - are light and fast vowels, like two segols, and words with such two vowels are more often than women. gender than masculine (erez - earth, nephesch - soul, chemesch - sun). But what speaks most decisively in favor of the feminine gender chaschmal is that in 8:2 it is written not chaschmal, but chaschmalah i.e. takes a specially female ending. So, from this side there is no obstacle to attributing the pronominal suffix in mitthocah to this noun, as pre-Jerome antiquity and later interpreters did. But there is an obstacle, and a very strong one, to this, from the other side. When assigning a suffix to this noun, interpreters could be guided by the indicated considerations, for which reason we dwelled on these considerations in such detail. But they did not delve into another kind of considerations, which are borrowed from the course of speech and the essence of the matter itself and which do not allow them to agree with such an understanding of mitthocah. At the end of his vision, the prophet once again mentions the chaschmal and there more precisely defines its place in the picture of the vision and its position in relation to animals. Like a chaschmal, the upper part of the image of Him who sat on the animals shone, which was separated from them by a huge rakiah “firmament”, a layer of sapphire and a throne. So, one could say about animals that they are under the chaschmal, and not among - mitthoc - it. Moreover, the prophet says about chaschmal that he saw only hen of him, i.e. that it occupied a relatively small strip, constituted, as it were, a brilliant point of vision, inside which, of course, 4 such huge figures as a lion or an ox could not fit. You need to think about the very composition of the preposition associated with the pronominal suffix so that it becomes clear what the suffix with it should refer to. These animals were visible “from” (מן) in the middle of something, because they occupied the core, the core of it. But neither chaschmal nor even fire could form the core of the animals: chaschmal was above them, and fire was under them and between them: as we will see later, everything they walked on burned for them. Of the objects and phenomena seen so far by the prophet, animals could most likely occupy the middle of the cloud and even the wind, if it had the form of a whirlwind circling the sand. But if this were so, then the prophet, in view of the great distance of these nouns, could not designate them with a pronominal suffix, but had to name them again, i.e. say: “and from the midst of the cloud (or whirlwind) I saw the likeness of 4 living creatures.” If we do not apply the preposition mitthocah to any of the phenomena listed so far, then it must be applied to all of them together. Without being able to place the animals in the middle of anything the prophet had hitherto seen, we can place them in the middle of everything he had hitherto seen. And of course this will be the most natural and only position that can be expected for them. The only question is whether the pronominal suffix of mitthocah allows such an understanding of it. This suffix is ​​feminine. But the feminine gender in Hebrew, where there is no neuter gender, often replaces the latter. The neuter gender of adjectives is expressed precisely by their feminine ending (“great” - גדולות Ps. 12:3, “misfortune”, glorious “evil” - רעה). The same use is not impossible in Hebrew for the feminine pronominal suffix (Gesenius and Kautzsch Gramm. Aufl. 26, 135r.). – So, מתוכה needs to be translated: “and among this,” i.e. "all of this." Such a translation and such an understanding (of the interpreters accepted only by Kretschmar) will not be an innovation. On the contrary, it is the most ancient translation and the most ancient understanding of this word. It is given by LXX. LXX, when translating this word, they omit the indicated pronominal suffix and instead of the Hebrew “in the middle of it” they put one “in the middle” ἐν μέσω. Without naming what living beings were seen in the midst of, such a translation makes it clear that these beings were in the midst of everything described earlier. On the part of the LXX, therefore, this is a bold translation, and not a discrepancy (as is usually thought): in the Hebrew manuscript that was used by the LXX, there must also have been mitthocah, which is also in the current Hebrew text; but under the pen of LXX it was rightfully and successfully replaced by one ἐν μέσω. Thus reading the Masorah. t. and 70 are both correct here 46 . But the first reading is a reading of the original, and the second is a skillful translation into Greek of the spirit and thoughts of this original. In Hebrew it was awkward to say simply mitthoc without ah, “him”; in Greek you can say this and this is the only way to convey a real Jewish expression. Instead of the omitted suffix of the preposition “among,” text 70 further has an extra word against the Masoretic text. To the Masor. t.: and “among this is the likeness of four animals”; at 70: “and in the middle like (ὡς) the likeness of 4 animals.” The redundant ὡς must be a translation of the Hebrew כ, which in this assumption is the current Masor. text does not have. Did such a particle כ stand before the word דמות “likeness” in the Hebrew manuscript that the 70 had before them, or did the 70 change their usual accuracy here in the translation of the book of Ezekiel and insert ὡς? Since the matter here is about the letter of the word of God, one iota of which should not be destroyed, we cannot avoid this question, which is not left without solution even by interpreters with a more modest opinion about the Bible. And this is all the more so since this particle is not completely indifferent to the meaning. Undoubtedly, this particle strengthens the thought contained in the entire expression. According to 70, the creatures seen by the prophet were more distantly similar to animals than according to the Masorah. text: “as if likeness” is further from its prototype than just “likeness”. So, by omitting this particle, the Masoretes would weaken the thought of the prophet; would reduce the abyss separating real animals from cherubim, which only had the appearance of animals. Could they (i.e., in general, the entire educated antiquity that read the prophet) do this? Rather, this antiquity could do the opposite, i.e. widen this gap. And it is easy to see what could have authorized the translators to add a comparative particle here. In the previous line of text, after the same mitthocah that begins the present sentence, there is a particle כ: it says: “as if a kind, kehen, chaschmal’ya”, and not just “a kind”; simple symmetry caused an increase in ὡς here too. If 70 made this addition, then they hardly looked enough into the depths of prophetic thought. That which had the appearance of a chaschmal was immeasurably further away from its likeness than that which had the image of animals, and this could not be expressed better than without adding a weakening particle in the second comparison. Moreover, the Hebrew demuth can mean such a distant similarity (as we will see now) that with it the particle “as if” is superfluous; it is contained in the word “demuth” itself; by kr.m. in Ezekiel it does not occur with this particle, whereas עין and מראה more than once (vv. 26–27). So, despite the fact that Peshito (which, let us remember, is based on the Hebrew text, the oldest Masoretic) also has this particle, there is reason to consider it as an addition to translators. And we have seen more than once over the course of the few verses analyzed that the desire for literal accuracy did not prevent 70 from adding the particle ו in places where it was clearly absent from the text, where it even interfered with the meaning (v. 3). The additions of these 70 were guided by the requirement of external correspondence: in the second half of the 1st verse they added ו, because it begins the first half of this verse; in 3 tbsp. because with them - ו - all further verses begin. Doesn’t all this give the right to suspect in 70 and in this case the insertion of a comparative particle on the grounds that the neighboring sentence has it in the same connection? Such an insertion 70 could have been prompted by the fact that they did not consider the Greek ὁμοίωμα to be a sufficiently accurate expression of the Hebrew demuth. Indeed, demuth can mean a more distant similarity than ὁμοίωμα, which expresses almost complete equality. Ως could only have the purpose of weakening ὁμοίωμα and reducing it to that broad and vague concept of similarity that lies in the Hebrew demuth. The figures noticed by the prophet among the cloud, fire and chaschmal represented, he says, the likeness of demuth (in the pronunciation of modern references dmush) animals. Like most Hebrew words, especially those used to denote abstract concepts, demuth does not find a completely corresponding word in new languages. Western biblical scholars do not dare to translate it into a noun, but convey it with descriptive expressions - “something like”, “something like” (Vink. 348, Cor. Ber.), “something similar” (Krech.). It can mean the most distant, vague similarity, a similarity bordering on the opposite. Suffice it to say that it is demuth that is used about man’s likeness to God (in contrast to the image in which man was created. Gen. 1:26), about the likeness of a son to his father (Gen. 5:3); it is even possible to talk about the similarity of pagan gods to God (Is. 40:18, 19); a drawing of something, a drawing is also demuth (2 Kings 16:10); and sound may have its demuth (Isa. 13:4). In general, this word does not indicate how far the similarity of the compared objects extends. In Ezekiel it rather means distant resemblance. To denote a closer similarity, the prophet had other words at his disposal: מראה, עין “look,” to which he often resorts. He apparently uses Demuth about parts of the vision that are less noticeable and clear, which at the same time turn out to be the most important, about the faces of animals, about wheels, about the throne and the One sitting on it. It is remarkable that St. Daniel simply says about the animals that appeared to him that he “saw animals,” that “animals appeared to him” (Dan. 7:3 et c.; 8:3, 4), without adding “likeness.” Although what appeared to the prophet Daniel was, of course, just as little animal as what Ezekiel saw, what was shown to Daniel was, although mysterious forces, but forces of a lower order and therefore could be more accessible to the prophetic eye. So, how far the similarity between the creatures seen by the prophet Ezekiel and animals extended, the word demuth does not allow us to say. If the figures seen by the prophet were barely distinguishable, if they had vague outlines (contours, silhouettes) barely visible, the prophet could also say that he saw demuth animals. And there is reason to think that at least during the initial appearance of animals, which is what we are talking about here, they could have been barely noticeable to the prophet. The Prophet is now observing them when they have just appeared on the horizon. What, if not demuth, could the prophet see in such a distance, in the fog of clouds? To what extent the figures of animals were unclear to him at first is shown by the fact that up to the 10th century. he cannot determine what kind of animals they were. We noticed that the word demuth is often found in Ezekiel - up to 15 times (Cor.), and rarely before it 47. It is as if our prophet found it very suitable for describing his visions for its breadth and uncertainty, allowing it to be applied to the most distant resemblance. The church fathers find this word very appropriate here, in describing the most mysterious of the Old Testament visions. According to them, this word indicates that in visions “the divine prophets saw not the very nature of the invisible, but a likeness, a reflection shown by the Generosity as needed” (Blessed Theod.). “similitudo, non naturae” (Bl. Jer.), St. Ephraim the Syrian says about the vision of Ezekiel: “The Holy Spirit showed the prophet a chariot, which was driven by cherubim, who appeared not in their own form, but in the form of birds and animals, revered among us as the most noble” (on Art. 9). There were four mysterious animals that appeared to St. Ezekiel. We are obviously dealing with the symbolism of numbers. The Jews had several symbolic numbers. The most important and ancient were 7 and 12. Less often and later appears with the symbolic meaning of 4. All other symbolic numbers can be considered derived from these (70, 8, 14, 140, 40; the meaning of 3 was still hidden). Needless to say, 4 was chosen here for a reason. This is proven by the persistence and consistency with which the number 4 is carried out throughout this vision: 4 not only animals, 4 and faces in each of the animals, 4 and wings, 4 wheels. Nowhere else in the Old Testament is such significance given to the number 4. But on the other hand, this is not the only place in the Old Testament where the number 4 is introduced with symbolic meaning. The most important of the other passages is Daniel’s vision of the 4 beasts, with which Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of a four-part image in a dream was similar. Both visions meant the continuity of the four great kingdoms on earth. Other places where the number 4 appears are not so important, but they can shed some light on the symbolism of this number and its basis. So, according to the prophet Ezekiel, if God wants to destroy a nation, he sends 4 plagues or punishments to it (14:21; cf. 5:3, 12: the latter only 70). According to the biblical view, there are generally 4 winds on earth. The wind can come to a certain place from 4 sides (countries of the world), and it is thought of with a certain disastrous or beneficial content. And that spirit that gave life to the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision came from the 4 winds (37:9). The appearance of the beasts in Daniel's vision was preceded by the struggle of the 4 winds on the sea (7:2). The number 4 is clearly a symbol of completeness, but obviously not the same as 7 and 12. The listed cases of the use of this number in symbolic meaning differ markedly from the cases of the same use of those two numbers. We will not talk about the 12th number of Israel (according to the rabbis) here. As for 7, this is the fullness of time. The 4th is the number of spatial completeness, which covers the entire earth, comprehensiveness, universality, just as the kingdoms shown in Daniel’s vision were universal, or at least claimed to be universal. The given passages indicate where the number 4 borrows its meaning - from the 4 cardinal points or, as the Jew calls them, from the 4 winds of heaven. Western biblical scholars call this number the number of the world, in contrast to 3, the number of the deity. But the symbolism of 3 could not be known to a Jew. Another reason given for this value of four is also doubtful. 4, they say (Behr, Symbolik d. Mos. Kultus 1, 341), the number of cosmic elements: The Bible nowhere counts 4 elements of the world. Being the number of spatial completeness, 4 is therefore also a symbol of completeness, completion, filling, exhaustion, as 7 is of eternity, infinity. As such, both numbers are applied to the calculation of the direct servants of God, those closest to the throne of God - the cherubim and the highest archangels - servants, of course not the same in service, which difference is expressed between their other number. Like any symbolic indication, the one contained in these numbers (4 cherubim and 7 archangels) must remain a mystery, about which it is hardly possible to say anything more than such comparisons and comparisons. The area of ​​immediate service to God is, as it were, divided between the highest heavenly powers so that some are assigned a more spatial sphere of this service, thanks to which they are, as it were, conductors and servants of God’s omnipresence, while others have a temporary sphere - they carry out the action of providence in time. Noteworthy is the small number of these closest servants of the throne of God, in contrast to the thousands of thousands and thousands of angels. The prophet calls the creatures that appeared to him חיות – chajjoth. Biblical scholars differ in the translation of this word here: some translate “animals,” others “living creatures.” Interpreters of the orthodox school do not dare to translate “animals” out of reverence for those who appeared, who, as the prophet later learned (10:20), were cherubim. But even interpreters of the rationalist trend, almost all of the newest ones (Gietz. See Cor. Ber. Kr.), prefer to translate “living beings” or simply “creatures” (Kurtz 1. p.: “and not an inanimate thing”). Both translations can be said to be correct, because חיה can mean both a living creature and specifically animals. But there is more reason to think that the prophet used this word here in its second, special meaning. If this word here meant “living beings,” then the word demuth “likeness” would be redundant and even meaningless. The Prophet could and should have said directly that he saw living beings. Cherubim are living beings, and the prophet saw cherubim. Why couldn’t he call what he saw simply living beings, but only their likeness? They showed the most real life in front of him - they walked, flew, looked. They didn’t just seem alive, they weren’t “as if” (that’s how one can translate (demuth) alive, but they were actually alive. And why could not and should not the prophet say here that they resembled animals, when he further indicates in detail how they resembled animals and what kind of animals they resembled (lion, ox and eagle)? Moreover, חיה – in general very rarely has the meaning “living being”, and only in poetic language (Ezek. 7:13; Job 36:14). And in the plural it is always used (Ps. 103:25; Isa. 35:9; 46:1; Dan. 8:4) and is used specifically about animals, both domestic and wild. And although for the latter there is a special name in the Hebrew language בהמה, these names are also not strictly different, like the Greek ζῶον and θηρίον (cf. Dan. 7:2, where the lion, bear and leopard are called חיון). And the ancient translations have Ezek. 1:5 “animals” (ζῶα, animalia, not animantia). The Russian translation also did not hesitate to put “animals” (the famous “animal” may also have a general meaning: Ps. 144:16). In favor of the understanding of chajjoth in Ezek. 1:5 in the sense of “living creatures” present such arguments. They say that in 12 and 20 Art. the prophet himself gives the basis for calling the creatures that appeared to him “living creatures”: living, chajjoth made them ruach hachajjah, the “spirit of life” that was in them and the wheels. They say that the name “living beings” could primarily be adopted by the cherubim on the grounds that they guarded access to the tree of life (Geth. et al.). But all this does not prove that the cherubim that appeared to the prophet Ezekiel could not have the likeness of real animals and that the prophet could not say about this in v. 5. They also say (Fr. Ch. 437) that in Apocalypse 4:7 the third creature, which according to the Apostle John was like a man, is also called ζῶον. And in rabbinical literature the name chajjoth is found quite often in application to angels: Ode (Comment. de angelis in Fr. Gl.) cites many passages from later Jewish commentaries in which angels are designated as chajjoth. And these arguments do not prove that in Ezek. 1:5. chajjoth does not mean simply "animals". Although one of the cherubs in the Apocalypse did not have animal features in its image, ap. John could at the same time attach to it the name that his great predecessor attached to the cherubim that appeared. As for Jewish literature, in naming the angels chajjoth, it was based precisely on such an inaccurate (and timid) understanding of this word in the vision of Ezekiel. Perhaps the prophet himself, no less than his translators, was embarrassed by the fact that in the immediate vicinity of God, whose presence in the wind, cloud and fire approaching him, he could no longer help but feel that in the immediate vicinity of God he saw animals. Although the prophet only later, when repeating this vision in the church, learned that these were cherubim, and learned, perhaps, from the fact that God Himself called these animals cherubim before him (10:2), but even now the prophet could not help but realize that he was seeing before him the highest of the created celestial beings. And these creatures look like animals! It was clear to the prophet that this appearance could not be their own species, which they, as incorporeal beings, did not have at all, but still, not without reason and necessity, they had to take this particular appearance. The image of animals for the cherubim could have been chosen instead of the human one, usually chosen for the appearance of angels, because of something that would constitute an advantage or advantageous difference between the animal and the person. Although everything that an animal has, a person also has, if not in exactly the same form, nevertheless, at first glance, animals contain a lot of things that a person lacks and that he envies (sensual acuity, wings, etc.). The first place among such advantageous differences between an animal and a person is occupied by the quality that the folk wisdom of many nations expressed in the very name “animal”. An animal must have a more complete, strong and concentrated sense of life itself, of existence itself, than a person, in whom this feeling is weakened by consciousness: occupied with the surrounding world, which is always present in all its immense size in our consciousness, a person cannot have such a direct and close feeling of his life as an animal; a person is more aware and thinks than he lives. From this point of view, nothing can so fully personify life and the power of life as an animal, in which all consciousness is so limited by the feeling of its own life and its fullness that it has no concern for the surrounding world. As such the most complete personification, a symbol of life, animals were chosen for the appearance of cherubim, the most complete carriers of created life. The life of an animal attracts our attention all the more to itself and seems to be the better symbol of any mysterious life because it is more mysterious to us than our life. – Therefore, serving as a symbol of a full and strong life, animals can serve as a good symbol of a mysterious life. Hence the constant desire of paganism to make animals the personification of the Divine with its life unknown to us. This desire in paganism crossed boundaries and fell into the criminal extreme of deification of animals. But there can be nothing illegal in the very desire to look for a symbol in the animal world to represent the invisible world. Revelation often resorts to such symbols, presenting the Messiah in the form of a lamb or a copper serpent, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. It is not surprising if, to represent the most mysterious life of the highest and closest spirits to God, the mysterious life of animals, full of secrets, was chosen preferably over the more or less familiar and open to us human life. The creatures the prophet saw did not resemble animals at all. “And this was the appearance of מראה (mar’eh), them: the likeness of a man in them.” The prophet wants to say that the animals he saw also had something human. The dimensions and boundaries of this human “likeness” in animals must be entirely determined in the speech of the prophet by the meaning of the word “mar’eh”. It was the “mar’eh” of animals that contained the likeness of man. Like demuth, mar'eh is also not easily expressed in other languages. The shades of its meaning are very diverse, and, although any word in any given connection can be used only in one meaning, it cannot be said that its other meanings are not always partly in mind. Mar'eh means sight itself (Gen. 2:9; Isa. 11:8). vision, both physical (Eccl. 6:9) and spiritual (prophetic contemplation Ex. 3:3, etc.), and then what is accessible is subject to vision - appearance, the appearance of objects (Lev. 13:12); in relation to the human body, mar'eh is used in this latter sense, when it speaks of a person’s beautiful appearance (Gen. 24:16 - Rebekah), and from this appearance, as it were, the person’s figure and structure, which is already designated by the word תאר Gen., is excluded for special judgment and evaluation. 29:17 – about Rachel; 39:6 – about Joseph: “handsome in form (thoar) and handsome in appearance (mar’eh),” in other words, “well-built and handsome in general.” Consequently, the mar'eh of an object is the most general impression of it on the viewer, such an impression where individual particulars are passed without attention, are not noticed, an impression that only makes it possible to recognize this object for itself, not to confuse it with another: Ezek. 1:26 ; Dan. 10:18. Let's move on to the next word. After מראיהן, by the nature of the Hebrew language, one would expect a repetition of this word with the closest definition, as we see in v. 7. It says: “and their (animals’) legs are straight.” Here one would expect: “their appearance is the appearance (mar’eh) of a person.” Instead we read: “and this is their appearance—the likeness (demuth) of a man.” Mar'eh in the predicate has been replaced by the word “demuth” - similarity. As if with the intention of showing that the creatures resembled humans as much as animals, the prophet again introduces the concept of “demuth” into this sentence: “and such was their appearance - the likeness (demuth) of man in them.” The Prophet clearly wants to say that the creatures that appeared to him were as similar to animals as to humans 48 . Thus, verse 5, as one would expect from a verse that opens with a description of the creatures seen by the prophet, expresses only the most general impression received from these creatures and, without touching on any particulars in their appearance and appearance, which the prophet may not have yet seen. The verse wants to say that the creatures that appeared to the prophet were similar to animals and to humans; they were either animals or humans. Consequently, they are unfairly looking for in Art. 5. indications of certain particulars in the figure of the creatures that appeared. So they say that the expression of the prophet: “their appearance was like a man” obliges everything in the figure of these creatures to be thought human, excluding what is further listed by the prophet (wings, legs). The Prophet, they say, further lists in detail what deviates from the human figure in the animals he saw, a trace. everything else that is not mentioned later, that it had a different form, must be thought of as in a person (Kr. == Gitz. See Fr. Rozhd.). Therefore, for example the body of the creatures should be represented as vertical, not horizontal (Rose. Ber.), the body unfeathered and not hairy (Gitz.). This verse does not say anything like that. Seeing such indications in it, they forget the meaning of the word mar'eh (attributing to it, for example, the concept of color in an object) and the first half of the verse, which attribute to mysterious creatures as much similarity to animals as the second half of similarity to humans. Finding such thoughts in this verse, they want to force the prophet to answer those questions to which he further has no answer, and there is no answer, because there could not be one. They forget that we are dealing here with vision, and not with bodily vision. Seeing many details in the figure of the creatures that appeared to him, the prophet could not see their color, the surface of their body, just as he did not see, for example. material and cladding in the mysterious church are 40–48 chapters, seeing only its size. As for the position of the body of the mysterious creatures, since they were as similar to animals as to humans, their body could be both vertical and horizontal. How the combination of such two positions is possible is shown by the winged figures of lions and oxen with a human body discovered in Assyro-Babylonia. Let us point out other incorrect explanations of this verse and individual words in it. “There are those,” says Mald., who consider 4 animals to be one animal, only having the appearance of four,” and the words “the likeness of four animals” are translated as “like a four-component being” (Herder according to Roz.). Some basis for such an opinion could be given by the fact that the prophet sometimes calls all the animals that appeared to him simply “animal” in the singular (1:22; 10:20) and that in 10:14 one person is already indicated for each cherub. This is not the place to talk about the latter circumstance; As for the singular number in the designation of all animals, then, according to the accepted explanation, this singular number is collective and is applied to the four animals, because they constituted a single and inseparable whole, animated together with the wheels by one Spirit. Throughout the description, the prophet clearly distinguishes one animal from another, definitely saying that, for example, each animal had wings (v. 6), indicating in what position the wings of one animal were in relation to the wings of another (vv. 9 and 11), etc. Toi finds it inappropriate in this verse to talk about the human-likeness of animals and in the expression: “such was their appearance - they had the likeness of a human being” corrects אדם “man” to אחד “one”, which is why it turns out: “and their appearance was one.” Cornille draws attention to the difference in the last word of this verse, “with them,” between the Masor. t. and 70. In the Masorah. להנה at 70 – ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς; according to Cor. ἐπί cannot be a translation of the Hebrew preposition ל, but in 70 always serves as a translation of the preposition על “on”, “above”. On this basis, Cornille thinks that in the Hebrew manuscript, which was used by 70, instead of lahennah - עלהן halehen. Such an expression, according to Cornille, is more appropriate here, because the animals of the prophet have a human image only prae se ferunt, as accidens (that is, they have a human image among other persons). All this could have been so if the prophet had spoken here exclusively about the human face that animals had along with others. But we saw that the prophet speaks here about the general impression of animals (remember what was said about mar’eh), that they resembled humans as much as animals: and in this case, they bore the human appearance not prae se as accidens, but in (ל) se, as essentiale. Moreover, Cornille does not indicate how hallehen could be corrupted into lehennah. We have finished verse 5 and we can again state that the sad fate to which all the hitherto considered verses of the 1st chapter suffered in the explanation, this verse did not escape either: positively, not a single word escaped erroneous interpretations and, one might say, not a single one found a completely accurate understanding. And the consequence of this was that the whole verse was given a completely different meaning than it should have had in the mouth of the prophet. The prophet had to express here his first and general impression of the mysterious creatures that appeared to him. These creatures were both animals and people. The impression was amazing and it was impossible not to express it before starting a partial description. And in this verse they expect specifics from the prophet! Sacred horror is felt in the lines of the prophet, so understood. And how could one not be horrified at the sight of such animals that were together with people? Horror was essentially necessary here: the prophet was in contact with the nearest sphere of the Divine. If angels could not be visible to man without a dangerous shock to his entire being, then what must human nature have experienced when the higher angelic spheres were shown to it? Please contact us לָהֶם Καὶ τέσσαρα πρόσωπα τῷ ἑνί καὶ τέσσαρες πτέρυγες τῷ ἑνί And there are four faces to one, and four faces to one. Everything about the creatures that appeared to the prophet Ezekiel was unusual and strange. It was strange, already, that these creatures, on which God Himself sat, had an animal appearance. What was even more surprising was that these animals also wore a human form. But what the prophet noticed now surpassed in its extraordinaryness, one might say, everything seen hitherto by any of the prophets: the creatures that appeared had four faces. The face of a person and a living creature in general is the most important part of the body, the one that most distinguishes each creature from other creatures - a part so significant that in many languages ​​the face serves as a synonym for the creature itself; The Hebrew language is also not alien to such use of the word “face,” as shown by expressions like the following: “I will entreat your face” (Ps. 44:13); when a Jew wanted to designate the very being of God, God, as a living person, he spoke of “the face of God” (Ps. 16:15). So, to have four faces meant, first of all, to rise unattainably above the limited human personality 49 . With that singularity, which should serve as a distinctive feature of each personality and each consciousness, the beings that appeared to the prophet, as he should have seen, united in some incomprehensible way the plurality in their personality. Before that, they were different from all life on earth. The face serves as the type of man himself and his entire being because it is considered the focus and seat of everything that is highest and noble in man, the highest and best part of his nature. And in this regard, the presence of 4 faces in animals was significant. Thanks to so many faces, there could be no distinction between sides - there could be no front, back or sides. This meaning in the four faces of the cherubim is indicated by St. Macarius of Egypt (OS): “not a single animal could be distinguished between the front and the back.” But this does not exhaust the significance of the 4 faces of the creatures seen by St. Ezekiel. Thanks to so many faces, they could look in all directions at the same time and therefore always see everything; this indicates the special height of their knowledge, close to the omniscience of God 50. Thanks to this feature, animals can walk without turning in any of the 4 directions. This gave them exceptional power over spatial restrictions. While earthly creatures are at every given moment of their movement in possession of one side of space to which their face is turned, mysterious animals were constantly in the same possession of all 4 cardinal points. This signified their greater freedom, compared to other living beings, from spatial boundaries, close to the omnipresence of God. The prophet himself persistently points out this meaning of the four faces of the mysterious animals, repeating several times that the four faces of the animals gave them the opportunity to walk everywhere without turning around. For all these purposes, identical faces for all four sides of the animal would suffice. Therefore Art. 6 does not yet indicate which person was on each side. Having thought from a general perspective about this most important feature of animals (which is not for nothing given first place in the prophet’s description), let’s see how the very letter of the original speaks about it. “And one has four faces” (לאחת). This is how the prophet expresses the concept of “everyone.” In the prophet Isaiah it is more fully expressed; about seraphim he says: “six wings, one has six wings,” i.e. “The one has six wings and the other six” (6:2). It is assumed (Cor.) that Ezekiel originally had such a complete expression (“four faces for one and four faces for the other”), but later it was shortened, the second half was thrown out 51. But one might think that by the time of Ezekiel, the ancient long-winded expression to denote the understanding of “everyone” began to be generally used in such an abbreviation, which in no way obscured its meaning 52 . Face in Hebrew is פָנִים. This plurale tantum has here, as in Gen. 40:7, plural meaning. What does the prophet consider a face when he speaks of 4 faces for each “animal”? This question arises in view of the fact that the Hebrew panim is used in addition to its corresponding meaning, the meaning of a person, i.e. the front of the head, in the wider sense. It can mean the surface and front side of something, for example, in Hebrew you can say “the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6), field (Lev. 14:53), clothing (Job 41:5), tent (Ex. 26:9), troop (Joel 2:20), weapons (Eccl. 10:10); the appearance of livestock, for example, is also their face - Proverbs. 27:23. Most interpreters of the word panim in v. 6. give their own meaning and claim that each animal in the prophet’s vision had only a head with four faces 53. But some (Grotius Annotationes in Vet. Test. Hal. 1776, II, Knab., etc.) here give panim a broader meaning, even the broadest of its meanings - namely the meaning of appearance, appearance. And the expression of the prophet that the creatures he saw had 4 faces, they say, must be understood in such a way that these creatures had the forms of four animals, represented a combination of body parts of various animals, and when in Art. 10 says that the animals had the faces of a man, an ox, a lion and an eagle, then this should be understood to mean that they had a human head, the legs of an ox, the mane of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. The interpreters here were forced to such an understanding of the word panim mainly by the consideration that with the usual understanding of this word, animals would have a monstrous appearance: they would resemble multi-headed mythological creatures. Of course, when interpreting, such considerations should not take place: in the text being explained, the interpreter must look for what the author wanted to say in it, and not what the interpreter would like the author to say. And even with the usual meaning of the word panim, as we will see later, it is possible to avoid monstrosity in the form of animals. In addition, the proposed understanding of panim sins against the philology of this word. It is true that panim can mean the exterior, the surface of an object, but it means its entire exterior, at least its entire front part, and not an arbitrarily taken part of it; therefore, the legs of an ox, the mane of a lion, the wings of an eagle cannot in any way be called panim of these animals. Finally, this meaning here of the word panim is not justified by its use in St. Ezekiel, in particular by its use in this chapter, in the adjacent verses to the 6th. There is no doubt, for example, that in Art. 9 and 12 of the first chapter, where the prophet speaks about the movement of animals (that they each walked in the direction of their face), panim has its usual meaning of face. On the other hand, it cannot be proven that panim has in Art. 6 and the narrowest of its meanings, the meaning of the front of the head. When a Jew said that someone was talking with someone face to face (Gen. 32:30; Deut. 5:4), or someone “turned his face to go somewhere or do that” (Jer. 44:12; 2 Chron. 32:2), then he hardly understood panim in the sense of the front part of the head only. In the same way, here it is difficult to draw a line in the figure of the creatures seen by the prophet to which he considers their faces. By panim we can generally mean the front part of the body. The animals seen by the prophet had four faces on their bodies. Neither side was their back. This meaning here panim is confirmed by the further description of animals. As we learn from the prophet later (vv. 9 and 12), the four-person structure of animals was designed so that the animals were able to walk in any direction without turning around. This goal could be achieved only if the animals on each of the 4 sides had not only a face in the proper sense, but also wings and legs. This is how Macarius V. understood the prophet from the ancient interpreters here, as his above words show: “not a single animal could be seen where the front or back side was.” “And each one has four wings,” the prophet continues his description. Next to that main and full of unusually important meaning and significance feature of the creatures he saw, which was represented by four faces, the prophet puts another feature of them, to which such proximity is apparently also given considerable importance. This feature is that the mysterious creatures were winged. Wings, according to the biblical view (expressed by the Writer of Genesis), constitute such a difference between birds that allots them a special sphere of habitat, a sphere elevated above the earth, designated for humans and animals, and the water, designated for fish, the firmament of heaven. Therefore, the biblical language assigns to birds the high epithet of “heavenly” (Gen. 1:26; Ps. 8:9, etc.). The wings of seraphim and cherubim should indicate, first of all, their sphere of habitat. It should be noted that, although our angels are usually depicted as winged, neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament describes a single appearance of an angel in which he would acquire wings. Wings in Holy Scripture are everywhere an attribute only of the highest ranks of angels, who are so superior to other angels that they are nowhere given the name “angels” - cherubim and seraphim. But for these higher angelic ranks, when they appear, their wings constitute their most essential accessory. When the cherubim of the tabernacle and church are described, nothing is said about their appearance (so that in exegesis there is still a dispute about what image they had, human or other), but the wings are spoken of in the greatest detail. St. Isaiah also says nothing about the seraphim except that they had wings, and again these wings alone are described in great detail. It seems that the wings of cherubs and seraphim are everything. Etc. Ezekiel does not dwell on anything in his cherubim in such detail as on the wings. He begins his description of the cherubim with them and returns to them three times during the description. It can be said, therefore, that St. Ezekiel, like Isaiah, attaches the main importance to this belonging of the creatures that appeared to him, considers it their most essential belonging. The wings of the creatures that appeared to the prophet were supposed to direct his thought to their sphere of habitat. This sphere is heaven, a sphere shared by cherubim with other angels, but it belongs to the cherubim (as well as to the seraphim) to a greater extent than to the angels. This is their real, own sphere, like the sphere of birds - air and fish - water. Their wings are intended to show that they are inseparable from this sphere and are not conceivable without it, that the earth is a completely alien sphere to them, into which they can only temporarily descend, while other angels have a closer relationship to the earth. Wings are used for flight. Flying is the easiest and fastest way to travel. The assimilation of wings to cherubim and seraphim should mean, like their four faces, their lesser dependence in comparison with people and angels on spatial boundaries. Serving a bird for flight, the wing, in the minds of the ancient Hebrew, has another equally, if not more important, use. From this other use the wing gets its name in Hebrew (as in Russian). The Hebrew כנף comes, like the Russian wing, from the root to cover (in other languages, for example in Greek, from “to fly”). It serves as a cover from external influences for the body of both the bird itself and especially its chicks. The Bible loves to dwell on this last purpose of wings (Ruth 2:12; Ps. 62:8; 16:8; 90:4). And the cherubim’s wings should have had this, in the biblical view, essential and main purpose. The Prophet later says that the cherubim covered their bodies with two of the wings they had. The other two wings, which were constantly outstretched, also served as covering organs. We saw what and Who they were covering for. The cherubim that appeared to the prophet Ezekiel had four wings. Such a number of wings could not help but attract the attention of the prophet for many reasons. First of all, it was significant in its discrepancy with the usual number of wings among earthly creatures that have them. The mysterious creatures that appeared to Ezekiel have wings twice the size of birds. This circumstance was supposed to indicate the special elevation of their habitat. To indicate a simply celestial sphere of habitation, 2 wings would be enough. Such a number of wings was also unusual in comparison with the image of the previous appearance and presentation of cherubim and seraphim. The cherubim of the tabernacle and the church each had 2 wings, and the seraphim in Isaiah had 6. According to the generally accepted explanation, the cherubim of the tabernacle do not have another pair of wings, since their sole purpose is to overshadow the ark, and not, like Ezekiel, to move the Glory of God. On the other hand, the cherubim of St. Ezekiel, being under the throne of God as its bearers, had no need to cover their faces like seraphim from the unbearable radiance of the glory of God. At ap. John in the Apocalypse, the cherubim, being not under the throne of God, but around it, already have 6 wings. The number of wings of the cherubim of St. Ezekiel corresponded to the number of faces. Interpreters wonder how the wings were positioned in relation to the faces. It is possible to imagine the matter in such a way that just as animals had 4 faces and wings, the wings were divided between four faces; Each face had a wing. The inconvenience of such a concept immediately makes itself felt: wings are paired organs of the body and in relation to the animal’s face they should be on both sides of it; therefore, each person must have two wings with him in order for them to deserve this name. It is also possible to imagine the matter in such a way that the four wings were distributed only between two persons, for example, a human and an eagle; then these two faces would each have a pair of wings, and the other two faces would be devoid of wings. This way of solving the issue is also inconvenient. First of all, the prophet should have said something about such an uneven distribution of wings between faces, since this method of distribution is far from obvious in itself and gives rise to a new question: which faces exactly had wings? Then a pair of wings in mysterious animals, intended to cover the body, with such a way of presentation would not fully satisfy its purpose: it would properly cover only the part of the body with the face on which it was located. The decisive impossibility of harmlessly dividing 4 wings between four persons forces some interpreters to increase the number of wings of mysterious animals shown by the prophet, and the increase is done by different numbers. Some consider it sufficient to add only the same number of wings to the number of wings indicated by the prophet. If we imagine that animals would have 4 wings each on their two opposite faces, then the other two faces could, so to speak, borrow wings from those faces and also have 4 wings at their disposal: 2 adjacent to it from one face and two from the other. It is easy to see that this way of distributing the wings sins against the concept of a wing. The wing can only act in one direction - in the direction the bird's face is facing. Others, rightly reasoning that if you decide to increase the number of wings indicated by the prophet, then there is no need to be embarrassed by the numbers, they give each person 4 separate wings, due to which the total number of wings for each animal increases to 16 (Mald. Hebrans). By following this slippery slope, it is possible to increase the number of wings in animals even more. So Targum and Rashi count 64 wings for each animal. We would not have a high opinion of the writing talent of the prophet Ezekiel if we assumed an intentional or unintentional gap in this point of his description. If the prophet speaks of 4 wings for each animal, then there is no doubt that they no longer had them, or rather, he no longer saw them. If he does not indicate how the wings were distributed in relation to the 4 persons, it is of course because he could not indicate how they were distributed. And that he might not know and not see this distribution, there will be nothing incredible if we remember what interpreters constantly forget when explaining the 1st chapter of Ezekiel, i.e. that she describes a mysterious vision, and not a scene from earthly life. Is it possible to admit that these mysterious images, the mere sight of which should have caused the prophet to tremble, could have been examined by the prophet with the same thoroughness with which we examine material objects? For the shocked soul of the prophet, these images must have represented a series of striking impressions, each of which was so strong that its connection with the previous one and with the overall picture was lost. They crowded each other, taking one place of the other. When the prophet saw the mysterious animals, how could the stormy wind, cloud and fire in which they walked exist for him? That is why he so vaguely defines the position of animals in relation to everything he has seen so far. That is why he further speaks so vaguely about the position of the wheels in relation to animals. Such a stunning picture as that seen by the prophet could not help but be a somewhat incoherent series of impressions, each of which was too strong to even notice their mutual connection. There is no doubt that the prophet did not see animals with more than 4 wings. But it is also certain that these wings were on each side of the animals. We have seen that the prophet's remark about the 4 faces of animals should be understood to mean that each animal had four faces. But the side would not be in the proper sense front or front if the four wings that each animal has were not visible on it en face. They should have been so visible on each side. How many wings each animal had to have for this, one can know just as little as what kind of structure the animal’s body had to have in order for it to have four faces at the same time, and at the same time such different sides. Either question would even be naive. The creatures that Ezekiel saw actually had neither wings nor bodies. They had them only in contemplation, the vision of the prophet, who saw only one side of the animal at a time and did not know what was happening on the other. Regarding the wings, such a view is confirmed in the text itself: about the wings it is said that each “of them” had four of them 54 להם lahem, a suffix that, especially in view of its grammatical gender, masculine, is naturally attributed to the nearest noun and, moreover, m.r. פנים than to the future and besides. r. חיות. More on this later. Further it is directly stated that the animals had four faces so that they could go in any of the four directions without turning around. This goal could only be achieved if the wings and legs of the animals were located in the same way on each side, i.e. when each of their sides would have exactly as many wings and legs and in exactly the same order and arrangement as the front side of an ordinary animal has. The Hebrew text of the second half of verse 6 raises some eyebrows. כנפים – “wings” is in duality. number, although after “4” it should have been given a plural. h.; dual the number here, as in Isaiah 6:2, is justified in the fact that the wings are thought of as arranged in pairs (Kr.). At the end of the verse, the Hebrew text has an extra word compared to the LXX להם (according to some manuscript להמה). This addition is not found in any Hebrew manuscript, No. 191 in Ken. On the other hand, it is in some Greek codes: Marshallian, Cisian, Syrian hexapla; but the asterisk under which it stands here suggests that it was borrowed from the Hebrew text. With this addition, verse 6 will have a trace. such a view: “and each of them has four faces, and each of them has four wings,” or how best to translate the last words in Russian: “each of them,” especially since in 2 manuscripts Ken. and several de Rossi here the preposition is מן, not ל (and this is the reading de Rossi prefers). Why attribute this “to them”? Most interpreters refer to the noun as “animals”; the prophet says that each of them, i.e. animals had 4 faces and 4 wings. Pescito, apparently reading this addition and translating the verse freely, applies the pronoun also to animals: “and each has four faces (instead of “one”, as in the original text) and each has four wings.” An obstacle to attributing this pronoun to the noun “animals” cannot be the masculine gender of the suffix הם (chajjoth female): 1) in many Hebrew manuscripts here the feminine gender is מהן, להן or להנה; 2) if we recognize the masculine gender as the true reading, then even in this case lahem can refer to the feminine. chajjoth. It should be noted that the pronominal suffixes relating to chajjoth in Chapter 1. are placed in Ezekiel indifferently in w. r. and husband and in women genus is much more common 55. The reasons for this confusion of genera in Chapter 1. Ezek. various are indicated. They say that, although St. Ezekiel does not call the animals he saw cherubim in the 1st chapter and apparently even wants this to remain unknown to the reader, the consciousness of the prophet cannot rid himself of the thought that these were cherubim and, as a result, he cannot steadfastly adhere to speech about animals of the feminine gender, despite the grammatical gender of chajjoth: the prophet’s language involuntarily strays into the masculine gender (Kr.). Others dare to assume that by alternating the masculine and feminine gender in relation to the cherubim, the prophet wanted to indicate their sexlessness (Ber. et al.). The most likely explanation of some of the newest exegetes is that the difference in gender in suffixes is attributed to the influence of the Aramaic language (Diehle, Das. pron. pers. Suff. 2 and 3 Pers. pl. des Hebr. in. d. alttest. Ueberlief. 44): this language distinguishes between the masculine and feminine suffix with 2 and 3 personal pronouns plural. does not carry out numbers, at least not strictly (Kr.). So, as we see, from the grammatical gender of the suffix there are no obstacles to classify it as “chajjoth” “animals”. But some interpreters (Mald., Hebrans) prefer to attribute it not to chajjoth, but to the nearest masculine noun. kind of panim: “and one has 4 faces, and one of them has 4 wings, i.e. from persons"; The 4 wings will not belong to each of the animals, but to each of the faces of the animals. Thus, this understanding of lahem favors the view that animals were equipped not with 4 wings, but with 16. It should be noted that this understanding of lahem is caused by these interpreters’ desire to get out of the difficulties associated with the uniform distribution of wings between the four faces of animals. We have seen that these difficulties are imaginary; with proper understanding of the prophet in a given place, they fall. Therefore, as a biased understanding, lahem speaks against itself. But grammatically it is not at all reprehensible: the grammatical form of lahem allows it to be classified as panim, and the course of speech is very favorable for such a dependence. If lahem referred to chajjoth, the speech here would be compressed to the point of obscurity and ambiguity, a defect alien to Ezekiel more than to anyone else. וְרַגְלֵיהֶם רֶג means עֵגֶל וְנֹצְצִים כְּעֵין נְחֹשֶׁת קָלָל Καὶ τὰ σκέλη αὐτῶν ὀρθά καὶ πτερωτοὶ οἱ πόδες αὐτῶν καὶ ? And their legs are right, and their legs are feathered, and the sparks are like shining copper, and their wings are light. The Prophet gave us an idea of ​​the general appearance of the mysterious creatures that appeared to him. These were animals with 4 faces and 4 wings. Now he begins to describe the creatures in detail. He begins this description with his feet. A living figure is usually described from the head. The prophet had to deviate from this usual course of description not without reason. Obviously, the legs of the creatures that appeared to him somehow attracted special attention. Although comparatively a lot of space is devoted to the description of the legs, after reading this description, it is still not clear what exactly struck the prophet about the legs of the animals. It is true that there were several remarkable features in the structure of these legs (they were “straight”; their feet were like those of a calf; they sparkled like a special kind of copper). But these features are only remarkable, but not amazing. They could and should have been talked about later. The Prophet has not yet said anything about the faces of animals, and the reader is looking forward to it. It is strange to talk about the legs of an animal without naming the animal itself. As is typical of ancient writers, the prophet does not like and does not want to express either his impressions or his conclusions about what he saw. With the impartiality of an observer, he describes everything he saw, leaving the reader to discuss what he tells and judge the impression made on the prophet. It is really worth thinking about the prophet’s apparently fragmentary remarks about the legs of animals in order to understand why they struck him. The first thing that can attract attention and strike someone's legs is the speed of their walking. The leg is primarily a tool of movement. But it is not visible from anywhere that the legs of the animals seen by Ezekiel attracted his attention from this side. Although the movement of animals is subsequently often spoken of and this movement apparently seems to be very fast (v. 14), it is not said that its speed depended on the legs. Real animals had much better and stronger means of transportation than legs - wings and wheels (we will learn later how the latter could serve them for movement). With such means of transportation, legs and the speed of walking that the best legs can achieve were unnecessary for movement. Interpreters may be right in thinking that the mysterious animals hardly walked on their own legs. They served the animal mainly for standing. The goal, at first glance, is too modest to require any great expenditure of strength and any special structure of the legs. You can stand with equal comfort on human feet as on the feet of any animal - an ox, a lion. Only in one case does standing require legs of a special quality and special structure. But this case applies to the “legs” of inanimate objects rather than to the legs of living beings. This is precisely when some enormous weight is supported through the legs (legs). The weight lying on a certain object is transferred to its support points on the ground, and the greater this weight, the stronger the support (legs) of the object should be. The legs of every living creature, while supporting the weight of its body, of course could not withstand too much extraneous weight placed on this creature. Under the weight, the legs of humans and animals give way. For too heavy a load, a person (for example) would really need the legs of some particularly strong-legged animal, for example. ox. If the humanoid animals in the vision of St. Ezekiel are given legs that are not human, but some other, then it is obvious that for these animals human legs were not strong enough. Since their legs were intended not so much for walking as for standing, it is obvious that these animals needed especially strong legs for stability. Was there some great burden upon these animals that required such strong legs? What kind of weight could lie on the mysterious animals that it demanded from their feet inhuman and unearthly strength? On the animals lay a truly enormous, unimaginable burden, namely כבוד־יהוה, “the glory (literally: “heaviness”) of Jehovah.” Sensually, this heaviness appeared to the prophet in the form of a whole magnificent firmament, probably equal in volume to the heavenly firmament, above (or “on”) the heads of animals with the throne of God on it and with Him sitting on the throne. If we, bearing in mind all that has been said, begin to read the description of the legs of mysterious animals, then fragmentary indications in this description of the various properties of the legs of animals will appear to us in the closest connection with each other, and some remarks about these legs will receive a completely unexpected meaning. “And their legs,” the prophet begins his description, “their legs are straight.” In this peculiar expression they see a nominative independent phrase: “as for their legs, they were straight” (Roz., Keil, Fr. Rozhd.), a complete analogy for which is difficult to find in the Bible (except Ezek. 1: 9 and 11 according to the mass., which is controversial there). LXX have once the noun “leg”: but if there is a turnover here, then they could freely translate it, as it is not completely conveyable in Greek. Strange is the singular “straight leg” after the immediately preceding plural. the numbers "their feet." This is the unit. In any case, it cannot have the meaning that each animal had one leg (“so that they would appear sexless.” See Ber. Kr.). On the other hand, one cannot insist (Keil, Gitz.) that animals had two legs based on their common human appearance: 1) their appearance was as animal as human; 2) there is no need to ask the prophet about what he himself does not say. If he does not talk about the number of legs of animals, then he either did not know this number himself, or it was not important. This is also unlikely to be the case. h. wants to show that all the legs were the same (Mald.): this went without saying, because the animals were the same. More like units. Part here warns of the prophet’s intention to engage in a detailed description of the leg: the prophet wants the leg to become in itself the subject of attention on the part of the reader, as it immediately attracted his attention. Unit h. detaches thought from the whole and isolates it on this one object. But it was possible to move to such a unique thing from describing the whole through the plural. Part regelehem. In what sense does the prophet call the legs of the mysterious animals straight? The sense in which this remark about legs would stand in the closest connection with the immediately preceding remark about the wings of animals would be this: “animals had wings, but their legs were straight, and not curved, like those of birds.” The bird's light, slender legs, barely touching the ground, were not enough for these winged animals. Those animals stood not airily, not always ready to flutter and fly, as a bird usually stands. And without seeing the animals carry anything, the prophet could see that they stood heavily on their feet and that the structure of their legs was designed for this. Less natural is the generally accepted understanding of the expression: “their legs were straight,” by which the prophet here wants to say that the legs of the animals did not have knee bends (from the new ones, see Bert.o. Rozhd.), and even no vertebrae and joints, which is why they were completely cylindrical in shape (Mald.). LXX was apparently inclined towards this understanding: in this expression they replaced “leg” with the word “shin (part instead of the whole): “their shins are straight,” obviously referring the straightness of the leg to its shin. Against this understanding, it can be objected that if the expression of the prophet had such a meaning, it would hardly have had the same precision as the language of our prophet. In the Hebrew language there was a name for tribe, and the prophet would have expressed it more precisely by saying, for example: “and there were no knees on their feet.” Therefore, others, with the same absolute right, assimilate to this expression the meaning that the legs of animals were not horizontal at the bottom, like those of humans, but vertical (Ros. Cor. Kr.). Finally, this remark could have another meaning. And not expecting that winged animals would have the legs of a bird, the prophet could have been struck by the straightness of their legs, if this straightness was in any way superior to the usual straightness of the animal’s legs. If we compare the standing position of human legs and the legs of four-legged animals, we will notice a difference between them that cannot be expressed otherwise than by calling the latter, in contrast to the former, straight. The man stands somehow lightly on his feet, the animal is somewhat heavy. His legs, and specifically his front legs, are in noticeable tension while standing. If this animal is a beast of burden and is pulling a load, then the tension in the front legs reaches such a degree that it is not only immediately noticeable, but also somewhat heavy for the viewer: as if you see how each vein in the leg of a working animal (draft horse, ox) is stretched and straightened. In Hebrew, this state of the leg could be expressed by the adjective ישר, which relatively rarely means only straightness, as an external property of objects, but contains the concept of something internal, a deeper property in an object, in a person and in its activity, (=ὀρθός - straight, fair). In a sense obviously similar to the present, jaschar is used by the prophet further (v. 23) about the wings of animals: the wings of animals stretched out during flight were also ישרות “straight” and precisely straight outstretched, i.e. stretched out, stretched to straightness, tensely stretched out. And it is indeed significant that the same jaschar, in addition to the legs, is used about wings in verse 23, where they correctly explain (Ros.) it: “in erectum extensae” - upright wings”; Wed the contrast in Art. 24 and 25 wings drooping” (Geph.). It is quite possible that the prophet combined different meanings in the word jaschar - concrete and abstract, for which reason he uses this broad concept (cf. gadol in v. 4). Mysterious animals, having everything extraordinary and perfect, combining in their figure the advantages of all physiques, could not have such imperfect methods of movement as earthly creatures have in the form of their imperfect legs. The fragile structure of all the joints that make up the legs of humans and animals was unnecessary for those creatures that could move without walking in the proper sense, which had such powerful tools of movement as wings and wheels. Therefore, their legs could have the advantage of perfect straightness, which gave them special strength and firmness of support. Their legs did not bend or bow, raising their thoughts with this quality to the spiritual fortitude and power of their high owners. This was the first property of these wonderful legs. The Prophet now indicates another property of them. But the appearance of the text in this place puts the reader in a difficulty that can hardly be overcome by the strongest philological insight. Existing texts and translations present a remark on this second property of the legs described in three or four completely different forms. According to one edition, the prophet says that the legs of animals had the foot (hoof) of a calf; according to another, that they had a round foot; according to the third, that their legs were equipped with wings or feathers. In the Masoretic text this controversial passage reads: “and the sole of their feet is like the sole of the foot of a calf.” What is translated here with approximate accuracy “foot”, כף, in Hebrew generally means the lower part of the arm and leg, the palm (more often) as well as the foot (Deut. 2:5; 2 Kings 19:24), and in the further sense generally the hand of a person (Hag. 1:11) or the paw of an animal (Gen. 8:9). But it is never used to refer to the hoof of an animal and is even opposed to a hoof; it denotes the ends of those legs that do not end in a hoof (Lev. 11:27). For the concept of “hoof” in the Hebrew language there is a special word פרסה. The use of the word כף here about the lower part of the calf’s leg is unexpected, but quite understandable: the prophet did not forget whose legs he was talking about, and although they ended in the lower part like the legs of a calf, he did not dare to use the word parsah here. Be that as it may, the Masoretic text attributes to the mysterious animals a leg similar in its lower part, where its caph should be, to the leg of a calf. For now, let us accept the Masoretic reading on faith and discuss the thought attributed to the prophet by this reading. The legs of the mysterious creatures seem to the prophet to be similar in their feet to the legs of a calf. If the creatures that appeared to the prophet in their general appearance resembled, as he had already said, animals, chajjoth, if in them he even discerned the faces of one or another animal, then there was nothing unexpected in the fact that their legs resembled the legs of some animal. In this part of their body, the lower part, one would rather expect animal forms than in a part as noble as the face. So, among the mysterious creatures of the prophet it was quite possible that there was such a particularity in the structure of their legs that their legs had (we will express it with the caution of the prophet) the “foot” of a calf. Now the question is, what is the meaning or what need was there for the mysterious animals to have such a foot. It would not be so surprising if the “foot” of an ox appeared here: animals have the faces of an ox and, intended to bear the Glory (Kebod) of God, need especially powerful legs. But for some reason they have the light and fragile legs of a calf. Of course, like everything else in this exceptionally mysterious vision, this particular detail must remain a mystery. But something can be given to clarify this riddle. First of all, we must not forget that the mysterious creatures do not have a leg at all, but only a calf’s foot. The prophet had already described their leg in general: it obviously did not resemble any leg known to him - it was as little like a human leg as it was like the leg of any animal, and it struck him especially with its straightness. Now he is talking about the foot of this amazing leg. The prophet's attention is now... directed at such the slightest detail in the appearance of mysterious creatures, the like of which he had never before or since - during the entire vision - had occasion to stop his attention. In fact, what can be more inconspicuously, more invisibly imagined in the figure of a living creature, like his foot? And it is especially strange to hear a description of the foot in this case, when we are not told anything about the face. The prophet, as it were, begins his description of the creatures he saw with their feet. And with this lowest and most secondary part of their figure, the creatures that appeared to the prophet resemble a calf. Prophet m.b. does not yet see the faces of these creatures, does not see other details of their figure. He sees or looks for now at their feet, and with their feet they resemble a calf. No matter how insignificant such a similarity is, it is still a similarity. And the main thing is that this is the first similarity, the first feature of similarity with earthly creatures, discovered by the prophet in these highest heavenly beings. The first thing the prophet noticed in these creatures similar to the earth was their similarity to a calf. Obviously, it was necessary that some feature of resemblance to a calf should be added to the magnificent combination of various bodily forms that the prophet’s visitors, terrible in their mystery, represented. It was necessary for the cherubim to resemble a calf in appearance, and in some respects they resembled them first of all, they resembled them in that first of all the prophet could and did notice in them. If the prophet had not dared to raise his gaze beyond the feet of the cherubim and look at their very faces (which could have happened at first, because he talks about faces so late), then in his mind they would have remained in the form of calves. The question now comes down to why this idea should have entered into the imagination of the Cherubim; why did they have to receive such an unnoticeable likeness? This similarity is all the more significant because, in addition to the indicated feature, the cherubs had even more in common with the appearance of the same animals: they had the faces of an ox. And in the vision of the ap. John, one of the cherubim takes on the full likeness of a calf. That. this similarity turns out to be most suitable for cherubs. And when St. Ezekiel sees the cherubim another time, wearing the same appearance as now, then when describing their appearance, in the expression that they had the faces of an ox, he replaces this last word with the word “cherub” (10:14). It is known what it is, i.e. What is the meaning of the calf in the Bible and the Old Testament? After the lamb, it is the first sacrificial animal. This is a sacrificial animal, so to speak ad honorem, a sacrifice of special honor, which only the high priest and the whole community could offer for themselves, moreover, in cases of exceptional importance - for involuntary sin (Lev. 4; for individuals, the sacrifice for sin is a ram), or when both have the right and need for special closeness to God - on the day of purification - (Lev. 16). This is a trace. a sacrifice of bold approach to God, a special exaltation to Him, which can be achieved only by one of the people or by the whole people as one. Through this sacrifice, a person enters that sphere of the good discovery of the Divine, into which an individual, ordinary person cannot penetrate. Even the entire community of the sons of Israel, which is given the opportunity to atone for its sins, like the high priest, with a calf (Lev. 4:14), when (precisely on the day of atonement) the high priest atones for its sins with this sacrifice and enters into terrible closeness to God, already offers a goat for sin (Lev. 5:15). Tempered and ascending with the smoke of its burning to the sky, the calf, one of the sacrificial animals, seems to represent the chosen one of God before the very throne of God (in the highest heavenly sphere, that is, exactly where the sphere of action of the cherubim begins). The Jew represented the sacrifice of a happy, gracious future in the form of calves (Ps. 50:21). Let us also remember: “And God will be more pleased with a young calf that wears out its horns and wears its nose” (Ps. 68:32). Of course, all these are just analogies and comparisons, but they can explain the considered feature of the cherubs. will be able to give greater satisfaction than the generally accepted explanation in modern exegesis. This explanation is known and has become common place in all comments. The foot of the calf, they say, was needed by the cherubs for its round shape, thanks to which it always faces in all directions, whereas the human foot only faces one; such a foot made it possible for the cherubs to move in all directions without turning in one direction or another. But if we talk about the convenience of moving in different directions, then the human foot, although facing one direction, should take first place: it is easier for a person to walk sideways and backwards than for an animal. It also cannot be said that the human foot is not suitable here because of the unnatural position it would take when moving in different directions without turning around. Every foot would be in the same position when moving in all directions, and in addition to the foot, the face, wings, etc. In a vision full of the supernatural, there could be no concern for naturalness. If a round shape was required here for such reasons, then on what basis should the hoof of a calf (moreover, a calf, and not an ox) be given preference over the mass of other homogeneous hooves? We see that the Masoretic reading of the present sentence contains a thought that exudes mystery and grandeur. Now we need to parse all the external (textual) evidence for and against this reading and put it on the scales with the other two readings of this passage. Already the very venerable, apostolic century, Jewish antiquity did not read the word “calf” here. The Targum renders עגל through מלגלגן, round, like Aqila: ὠς ἴχνος στρόγγυλον. Obviously, they vocalized this word not hegel but hagol 56. But other translations of the same almost antiquity - Symmachus and Peshito - read here “Taurus” (Sim. μύσχου, Pes. vitulorum); Vulg. also vituli. The remark of the prophet in the understanding of the Targum and Aquila, which most of the newest exegetes follow, has the meaning that the legs of the mysterious animals were covered with a rounded foot. Such a deviation from the Masoretic reading is justified (Fr. Rozhd. Kr.) by the fact that the proposed reading gives essentially the same idea as the Masoretic. text: a round foot is a foot like a calf’s foot, which is not elongated like a human’s, but is rounded on all sides. Meanwhile, they say that this reading has one important advantage over the Masoretic, an advantage that was recognized by the ancient translators, who, not without reason, disagreed with the Masoretic here. About the cherubim, the closest servants of God, St. Ezekiel, they think, could not use such a comparison, a comparison with the calf, which played such a significant role in the idolatry of the Jews. Valid in 10th century. The prophet draws for comparison an ox (שור), and not a calf. But Lev. 9:2ff., Micah. 6:6 and many more others show that the name hegel “did not bear the stamp of rejection at all” (Fr. Rozhd.): and in Ps. 105:20 schor is used of idols, as a synonym for hegel. “So St. Ezekiel had no need at all to avoid the word hegel when describing the cherubim.” Meanwhile, it is quite possible that the later Jews, the compilers of the Targum (or similar compilers), who tried to purify the Bible. i.e. from expressions that are tempting for their Talmudic conscience, they replaced hegel here with hagol “round”. It can also be noted (Kr.) that the calf is never found in Ezekiel, as an idolatrous animal. Purely philological data is added to all this data against the reading being analyzed. First of all, if עגל were understood in the sense of “round,” there would be no grammatical agreement between this word and the definition – כף “foot.” Caph w. r., and hagol would stand in m.r. Therefore, the defenders of this reading are forced to assume (Cor. Kr.) that in the original text it was not עגל, but עגלה “round”, i.e. forced to amend the text. Then the construction of the sentence with such a reading would turn out to be impossible. The sentence would then look like this: “and the sole of their feet is as round as the sole of a foot.” Why is there a “how” here? Why the second “foot”? One should simply say: “The sole of their feet is round,” or “And the sole of their feet is round.” כ “how” leads to the expectation of comparison, and comparison is possible with a specific single foot. If we assume that כ “as” is subsequently introduced into the text when עגל is read as hegel “calf,” then the matter also gains little. Then in the phrase one could see a nominative independent phrase: “and the sole of their feet (“as” is crossed out) is a round foot,” i.e. “As for the foot, it was round.” But not to mention the rarity and some doubtfulness of the very existence of such a phrase (the places where it is indicated by grammarians allow for a different explanation), this phrase, as designed for the majesty of speech, was still appropriate at the beginning of this verse, when the speech about the legs began, but repeating it in the same line about the feet would contradict the most modest requirements of literary beauty and moderation. There remains a third reading of this passage, given by LXX. The thought put into the mouth of the prophet by this reading is apparently completely different from the thought given by the Masor. etc. and other specified understanding of the present place. The long Hebrew sentence about feet LXX is rendered in three words: καὶ πτερωτοὶ οἱ πόδες αὐτῶν. Πτερωτός - means winged, with wings (aligerus), or feathered, feathered (pennatus). It is quite possible to imagine that the mysterious animals had such legs as are given to them by reading 70, moreover, in both senses πτερωτός. There would be nothing incongruous if the legs of mysterious animals were equipped with wings. The wings on their legs would symbolize the speed of their running. These wings were supposed to say that the animals did not run on their feet, but flew in the truest sense of the word. Against such a presentation of the matter, one could perhaps argue that the animals were equipped with wings in the usual place of the latter - at the shoulders (this location of the 4 wings, which is spoken of in Article 6, follows both from the fact that the prophet did not say anything about it, so it was usual, and from the fact that the animals’ hands were under the wings); This means that there was no need for wings on the legs (Latin Mercury has wings only on the legs). It is possible that πτερωτός here also has the second of its meanings – “feathered”. This is the significance the blj gives it here. Jerome and the Slavic translation. Containing in their appearance such features of birds as wings and an eagle face, the mysterious animals could also have the legs of birds, i.e. feathered. This would give lightness to their feet. The feathered cover on the body of birds has the purpose of making this body light; it makes it possible for this guy's body to fly in the air, despite its relative heaviness. The feathering of the legs of mysterious animals could have the same purpose. But on the other hand, one cannot help but notice that the specified goal by feathering only the legs would be achieved to the most insignificant extent. For a guy in the air, feathering is needed on the torso, not just the legs. So, reading 70 already from his inner side, from the side of his thoughts, allows for some objections. In addition, from the textual side it cannot prove its superiority over the Masoretic reading. Accepting it, it is impossible to explain the emergence of the Masoretes. reading, while from the Masoretic reading it is easier to explain the origin of reading 70. First of all, the Masoretic reading is twice as long as 70. And omissions in the sacred text are more possible than additions. It is easier to assume that they tried to remove the comparison of the cherubim with the calf from the text in view of the initial meaning that the calf was destined to have in the history of Israel than to insert such a comparison. If the medieval rabbi (Rashi) is embarrassed by such a comparison and if the newest critics of biblical tech. (Cor. Miller) consider it incredible in the mouth of the prophet, then the greater doubts it could give rise to in the century of the LXX, in that virgin-fresh period of zeal for Jehovah and hatred of everything pagan. In general, the emergence of such a reading, which is given by 70, from the Masoretic reading is clearer than the reverse course of the matter. This is usually how the emergence of this discrepancy is explained. To get your reading, 70 – and it was necessary to allow a slight change in one Hebrew word: כף “heel” should be read as כנף “wing”, i.e. insert one small letter into this word. “Feathered”, “feathered” in Hebrew can only be expressed by the noun “wing” canaph (Gen. 1:21). In this use, the word canaph does not change its meaning of “wing”, does not become an adjective, but allows translation through an adjective: “a feathered bird” in Hebrew is expressed as “a bird of wings”, everything feathered is “every wing” (Gen. 7:14). And in our place the Hebrew expression, which must be assumed behind reading 70, should have been literally translated: “and the wing of their foot.” It is immediately clear that if in the first row of cases - from the book. Being - the noun canaph is conveniently translated as an adjective, but in the present case such a meaning is not so natural and the whole sentence turns out to be far from clear: the question is in what sense the animal’s leg was a “wing”, i.e. was like a wing, a question to which the commentators of text 70 indeed, as we have seen, give two completely different answers (aligerus and pennatus). Therefore, one cannot help but admit that if reading 70 here were correct, the prophet could be reproached for his inability or unwillingness to express himself more clearly; the prophet would have been clearer if he had said: “and fluff” (נועה Lev. 1:16; Ezek. 17:1) or: “wings (kenaphoth) on (ל) their feet.” So, there is very little probability that the phrase suggested by reading 70 in this place could have come from the pen of a prophet. To withstand competition with the Masor. current, text 70 at this point must provide something to replace the second half of this Masor sentence it omits. t.: “like the foot of a calf’s foot.” 70, they believe, and give the equivalent of this phrase, but give it a line later. This last circumstance does not interfere with anything: the translator has always been recognized as having the right to metathesis (rearrangement of expression). Assuming metathesis here, one finds in 70 later, an expression corresponding to the omitted second half of the Masoretic sentence. These are precisely the last words of Art. 7. at 70 καὶ ἐλαφραὶ αἱ πτέρυγες αὐτῶν (“and the lightness of their wings”). This sentence, they think (Roz. et al.), could arise from the Masoretic kecaph regel hegel as follows: ככף (“like a foot”) 70 could be read as כנף “wing”, and עגל given the meaning “to hurry”, “to be quick”, but regel was omitted, since it, repeated here for the third time in one line, could seem suspicious. It is obvious to everyone that the missing half of the Masoretic sentence is far from completely covered by this expression 70. Besides the fact that 70 does not have a second regel (“foot”), their word arrangement is not the same as that of the Masoretes: caph, read as canaph, is put in place of hgl, and the translation of 70 in the book of Ezekiel does not allow such unnecessary deviations from the original. Likewise, it is not clear why metathesis was needed here, which a translator like 70 in the book of Ezekiel needs a lot to decide on. Then, only a reader whose thoughts were far from what he was reading could read canaph as caph. As for the redundant phrase 70 at the end of verse 7, “and she killed them lightly,” we will later see that it claims difficult to refute rights to authenticity. Thus the fact remains in full force that the 70 give a completely different meaning than the Masoretes to the second sentence of verse 7 and shorten this sentence by half. Instead of wt. “and the sole of their feet is like the sole of the foot of a calf” they give a short πτερωτοὶ οἱ πόδες αὐτῶν, completely omitting the concepts of both foot and calf. Instead of looking for an equivalent to the second half of the Masorah. 70’s sentences are somewhere further, it is better with Triebs to allow a free translation here from 70’s side: “what the ancient translations want 70, since πτερωτοὶ οἱ πόδες should generally mean “mobile”, “fast legs”; well-known root hgl, in Syriac e.g. language, has the meaning of “to hurry,” “to be fast,” and the name Taurus is consonant with it” (p. 29). According to 70, the comparison of the prophet was intended to indicate the speed of the feet. And so 70, finding, for well-known reasons, a comparison with a calf inconvenient and unlikely for a prophet, they could decide here to freely convey the thoughts of the prophet. They could convey the concept of “fast” through πτερωτός in order to strengthen and poetically decorate the thought. This is the most likely explanation for the present discrepancy in 70. True, this explanation assumes in this place that 70, so accurate in the translation of Ezekiel, has great freedom of translation. But in the book of Ezekiel one can point out from the side 70 another example of inaccuracy in translation, also intentional and even greater. This is 21:3, 4 where ורשע עדיק “the righteous and the wicked” are translated ἄνομον καί ἄδικον. The translators found it incredible that this passage meant that God, for the wickedness of the land of Israel, would destroy both the righteous and the wicked in it. (The Targum here also softens the prophet’s thought instead of: “I will destroy the righteous and the wicked” - “I will deport your righteous and destroy your sinners”). After such a departure from the text, one can quite expect freedom in the translation of the passage being analyzed. The whole history of the translation and explanation of this long-suffering passage in relation to the text is instructive in the sense that it acquaints us with the dramatic struggle that the one word he used (“calf”) caused in the minds of Ezekiel’s reverent readers. We see that even in the 70s this word produced temptation. One can even agree with Muller that the prophet himself could not help but be aware of some danger and inconvenience here from such a comparison, as shown by the fact that when repeating the vision he does not indicate what the third person of the cherubim looked like: 10:14 (Mul. 19). But he makes this comparison here with divinely inspired courage, because he could not keep silent about what he saw with his own eyes and what was shown to him by God. And it was shown to him this way, without a doubt, because it could not have been shown otherwise. For reasons beyond our comprehension, the calf had to enter into the image of the cherubim, albeit with its feet, just as it entered the liturgical ritual to such a wide and honorable extent. The legs of the mysterious animals also had one more (third) feature. This peculiarity, as far as the prophet can be understood here and as almost all interpreters understand him, was that the legs of the animals sparkled like copper of some special kind. Before taking on the difficult task of parsing the original text, as usual, let us delve into the thought of the passage. What meaning could this new property of mysterious animals have? Why should their legs sparkle? To that sea of ​​light and fire that surrounded the cherubim, who had fire under them (v. 4), among themselves (v. 13) and the unbearable radiance of the Divine above their heads (v. 27), the intermittent, fickle and generally weak light of the spark could not add anything. Obviously, the spark is not brought here for a lighting effect. Sparks are produced by known objects when they are acted upon by other objects. With a spark, the former respond to the alien strong influence of the latter. If the legs of mysterious animals shoot sparks, then this can only be a sign that they are subject to alien influence. What kind and where this influence comes from is clear. Animals go to the prophet. But in order to get closer to the prophet, they need to be on the ground, step, walk on it, at least fly over it, in a word, enter its sphere. But this sphere, of course, is completely alien to them, alien to the cherubim perhaps more than to other angels, since their life and activity is the very throne of God and its footstool. Their contact with the earthly sphere, which is completely alien to them, can be compared to that rough touch on an object that gives a spark from it. But not every touch and not to every object gives a spark. To obtain a spark, it is necessary that the touch be strong, fast, that it has the character of a strong and instantaneous push, and that the object experiencing this push be of a particularly hard, strong composition (metal, stone). The appearance of a spark from the legs of animals was supposed to indicate the extraordinary strength and speed of their movement, as well as the special strength of their legs, which should not have been inferior to the strength of metal or stone. The Prophet adds that, judging by the sparks, one could think (כ “as if”) that the animals’ legs were made of a special type of copper קלל. This is the idea of ​​this passage, given by both readings of it - Jewish and Masoretic. Both readings differ slightly only in the first word of this sentence, which for 70 σπινθῆρες “sparks,” and for the Masoretes נצצים “sparkling.” But this word is the main concept of the entire sentence. The Masoretic נצצים is ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. But in Is. 1:31 there is a very similar ניצוץ, where it has the meaning of “spark” due to the connection of speech. The Masor is based on this. nocecim in Ezek. 1:7 acquire the same meaning, and since according to the vowels and ending it should be the participle Kal im. pad. plural h. husband r. from the uncommon נצץ, it is translated “sparkling.” But 70, keeping the concept of “sparks” 57, have here not a participle, but a noun: “sparks”, σπινθῆρες. Obviously, they vocalized this word not like the Masoretes, but according to Isa. 1:3 : nizocim. To determine which reading is more correct, you need to establish the following provisions, which in general must be kept in mind for a correct understanding of this passage. 1) Throughout this (7th) verse the prophet describes the feet of animals. According to this, the definition nocecim (mass.) or nizocim (70) can only refer to the legs of animals in their entirety or in one or another part of them (for example, to the foot), and not to the entire figure of animals. 2) If the participle here is nocecim, then it cannot be agreed either with caph (foot), because the latter is singular, or with reglehem (legs), because this noun is very far and female. kind 58. Supporters of the Masoretic reading lose sight of these indisputable provisions and some attribute nocecim as a definition to the legs (Ros. and others), and others to the entire figure of animals (Gitz. and others). The basis for the first understanding is the parallels of Dan. 10:6 and Apoc. 1:15. In both of these places, the Man who appeared to these seers is described (in Apoc., undoubtedly the Son of God, and in Dan. probably) and his legs are compared, as in Ezekiel 1:7, with the appearance of shiny copper (Dan.), red-hot chalcolivan (Apoc.). It is immediately clear that we do not have a complete parallel here: the feet of the cherubim may not have completely resembled the feet of the Son of God; the description of the latter does not say anything about sparkle, which is what the matter actually concerns. Consequently, this distant parallel cannot shed any light on the grammatical agreement of this participle. It remains to recognize as the subject of nocecim the logical subject of the entire chapter kerubim or chajjoth, “animals” (sometimes taken in Chapter 1 of Ezekiel as a noun of the masculine gender). Why, they ask, would the prophet describe the appearance (shine) of only the legs, and not the entire body of the cherubim? He could and did see them from head to toe, so to speak. By attributing nocecim to cherubim, we are said to fill a sensitive gap in the description of the prophet, who, describing in such detail the wings, legs, and arms of cherubim, had to talk about the appearance of the entire body. – When delving into such considerations, one forgets the context of the place: it makes one expect to be talking here only about legs. The Prophet clearly begins with verse 7 a description of individual parts in the body of mysterious animals and conducts this description in this order: in verse 7. describes legs, 8 arms, 9 wings, 10 faces. There was no way the remark about the body could get into this thread. If you look for a description of the corps of cherubim from the prophet, then it is better to see it, as the Masoretic text does, in v. 13, when a description of the individual parts of the figure is concluded. In addition, there is no basis for demanding from the prophet any information about the appearance or body color of mysterious animals. Speaking in detail about individual parts of the figure of the cherubim, the prophet could not have said about the surface and covers of this figure, just as Isaiah did not do this in the description of the seraphim. The Prophet might not have seen this surface, seeing only the outlines of the cherubim, just as he does not see the lining of the walls in his mysterious church (40–42 chapters), as if contemplating its plan and size (all this is possible in visions). One cannot but agree with Kretschmar that the participial form, no matter what it is referred to, is completely unexpected and inappropriate here. Whether we refer it to legs, feet, or animals, the prophet could equally be accused of inability to speak in such a way that his speech was immediately intelligible. All such roughnesses of the language disappear when reading this word as suggested by 70. “And sparks, like sparkling copper.” This is an accurate but condensed translation of a condensed Hebrew expression. The full form of this phrase would be: “and behold (vehinneh) sparks, as if it were shiny copper.” And condensed speech is a feature of Ezekiel. Here, conciseness was necessary in order to enhance the impression on the reader of this picture. The Prophet wants to show how amazed he was by this new property of animal legs. There was something to be amazed at: the legs threw sparks from themselves that rained down from them, illuminating their copper shine. They offer another understanding of the word being analyzed. They think that it should be read נוצצָם or נוצָם (Perles. Anal. zur Textkritik des A.T. 45. Kr.) “their plumage.” Bird down or feathers in Hebrew is נוֹצָה (Lev. 1:16). Ezekiel also uses this word in 17:3 about the eagle's plumage. The word used here differs from that extra tsade, which could be dittography; in Chaldean, the plumage completely coincides with the word used here: ניצוץ (Targ. Job. 39, 13; cf. Assyrian nasu Del. H.-W. 474. Kr.). As for the ending im, it can be understood not as a plural ending. h., which collective nouns do not have a number, but as a pronominal suffix 3 l. pl. h. husband r., reading it am - “their plumage.” By the way, this will fill the sensitive lack of the subject in this sentence. In defense of this reading, the following theoretical considerations are also cited: “that the feathered body is compatible with the human species is shown by the Babylonian idea of ​​​​the appearance of spirits in hell, about which the Hollf der Instar says: they are dressed like birds in feathered clothing” (Kr.). The novelty of it alone speaks against the proposed reading. It was completely alien to all biblical and Christian antiquity, although the study of Ezekiel easily evoked such a comparison. Obviously, venerable antiquity considered such an understanding unworthy of the image of cherubs. And rightly so: everyone’s immediate feeling cannot allow such a trait in the image of cherubs. To the question of what the body of the mysterious animals was covered with, there can only be one answer: that the prophet did not see this, because he does not talk about it. So, the animals' feet undoubtedly produced sparks from themselves. “Like the appearance of copper,” the prophet continues. Interpreters are unanimous in looking for indications in the last comparison (of animal legs with copper) of the extraordinary shine of animal legs. As if copper, even the best, could give a shine that would be suitable, suitable for this vision, where everything shines with a light barely comparable to anything earthly and shines better than the best types of precious stones! We know that the prophet should not speak here about the shine of the legs of animals, but about a completely different kind of property of these legs - about their strength and strength. By comparing the legs of animals with copper, the prophet wants to express this property of the legs. If a modern writer wanted to show by comparison the strength and strength of someone’s legs, he would say: these are legs of iron. But at that time iron, although it was known (Gen. 4:22; Dan. 2:34), was far from being used as widely as it is now. Copper took its place. Everything that required special strength and indestructibility was made from it, for example, city gates (Is. 45:2), shields, etc. Not inferior to iron in strength, copper, especially some of its varieties, the best of which, under the name calal, is of course chosen by the prophet for comparison, was always considered somewhat nobler, more elegant than iron, and therefore was suitable for comparison here (as well as in the indicated places of Dan. and Apoc.), where next to the strength it was necessary to note the beauty of the legs. What has been said determines the approximate meaning of that most precise definition of copper קלל calal, which constitutes an insoluble problem for interpreters. First of all, if it is an adjective, then its grammatical form is not what you would expect: it agrees with nechoscheth, the noun feminine. r., but has a masculine ending. This ending is justified (Kr.) by the fact that nechoscheth can also be feminine: cf. 1 Kings 7:45. Interpreters, departing from their understanding of the comparison with copper used here by the prophet, look for the concepts of brilliance, light, radiance in the word calal, for which they resort to the most unnatural productions of this word. Since calal means “to be light”, “light”, then, they say, it can also mean “light”, since light seems lighter than darkness (! Geng.), just as Licht in German is almost consonant with leicht (Gietz.). Or it is assumed that the verb calal about metal is used in the meaning of polishing (Sym. in Syrian hex.); this meaning is derived from its basic meaning “to be light”, “mobile” (Bohart O.S.) - metal is polished through rapid friction, etc. Those who compare this word with עליל “smelter”, “crucible” (Gitz.) are on the right path. This is how they think the ap understood this word. John, who in the description of the Son of Man who appeared to him (Apoc. 1:15) calls the copper of His feet red-hot in a furnace. As for the ancient translations, they apparently completely abandoned the idea of ​​​​translating this word accurately. 70 omit it, replacing it with a randomly chosen definition of “lightning copper” - ἐξαστράπτων (as they do in v. 4 with mitthlacachath and chaschmal). That this is not a translation of Hebrew. calal, already shows the place occupied by ἐξαστράπτων; at 70: it comes before χαλκὸς, while calal and in mas. t., and in all other translations after nechoscheth. Other ancient translations have the same epithet as 70: Targum - instar aeris coruseantis, Peshito - aes fulgurans; Arab. Same; only Vulg. aes candens. Probably on the basis that lightning came from among the cherubim (v. 13), the ancient translators concluded that the prophet must have given the feet of the cherubim nothing other than a lightning-like shine and substituted this concept instead of the unknown calal. We have seen that it is not the concept of brilliance or radiance that should be sought in this whole comparison, but the concept of hardness, strength, indestructibility. And such a concept is easier to see in calal than the first. The original and main meaning of this word, as can be seen from its use in the ancient language, was “to make small,” “insignificant” (Gen. 16:4, 5; Josh. 1:14; Job 40:4; 1 Sam. 19:4; 2 Sam. 6:22; Exod. 21:17). In this sense, this word could easily be applied to metal placed in fire, which melts, destroys, crushes it, but cannot destroy it completely. Although it is impossible to provide any other passage in the Bible than the present one (and the parallel Daniel 10:6) as proof of this use of this word, this use is confirmed by the related roots of other languages, for example, Latin. calere, as well as the meaning of עליל. It is known that after heating metal acquires special hardness and strength. Apoc. 1:15 favors this understanding. In verse 70, the seventh verse ends with the remark: “and lightly, ἐλαθραὶ, she killed them,” which is not in the Masoretic text. Since in St. If the text could contain omissions rather than insertions, then we will take into account the possibility of the authenticity of this remark and delve into its meaning. The remark moves the reader's thought from the feet, which verse 7 describes, to the wings. It indicates one property of the wings of mysterious animals: their wings were ἐλαθραὶ - light, mobile, or perhaps what is expressed in new languages ​​by the same word, borrowed from Greek: elastic. Text of Art. 7 70 thus wants to say that just as the legs of animals attracted the prophet’s attention with their straightness, speed and sparkle, so the wings attracted his attention with their mobility. Each wing essentially cannot help but be mobile. And it was possible to talk about the mobility of the wings of mysterious animals only in the sense that in their wings this quality reached a significant, conspicuous degree. The Prophet in 70 obviously wants to say that the wings of animals were in constant motion: that peace, inaction, into which ordinary wings must from time to time plunge to rest and stock up on new strength, was alien to them. We see that the thought added by 70 is far from sterile or unimportant. The wings of mysterious animals, like themselves, are all movement and life. These wings “have no peace” because they do not need it. They cannot be lowered, because their tall owners cannot stop hovering, lower themselves and sit anywhere. This, with skillful secrecy, would indicate the sphere of habitation and action of the cherubs: this sphere is not solid earth, where you can stand and fold your wings, but above-ground and supermundane spaces where you can only soar. All this sufficiently explains the place that this remark occupies during the description - that it is connected with the description of the legs, and not the wings. Therefore, there seems no need to defend the relevance of this remark here by what the prophet further says about the hands that were under the wings and which could be visible only if the wings were constantly moving (Fr. Rozhd.): such a principle for the order of thoughts in the prophet could be reproached for the surface. These internal data for the authenticity of the addition 70 are joined by external ones: the impossibility of explaining this addition from a falsely understood Jewish expression and the complete absence of any motives for this addition. One attempt to explain the origin of the additive from the mass. i.e. we looked at (ἐλαθραὶ = עגל). There is another one. Cornille thinks that ἐλαθραὶ is a translation of קלל, which the current Masoretic text considers to be a definition of copper and which was in the plural. number – קלית; and πτέρυγες according to Cor. incorrectly transferred in the Masoretic volume from here to the end of v. 8, where it really seems to be superfluous. That. Cornille does not deny the authenticity of this remark, but only wants to find a correlate for it in the Masor. etc. But he does not buy this correlate cheaply: at the cost of amendments in two verses and the destruction of what is confirmed by Dan. 10:6 and Apoc. 1:15 definitions to copper. It's easier to assume a pass. וְיָדֵיהֶם עַל אַרְבַּעַת רִבְעֵיהֶם Καὶ χεὶρ ἀνθρώπου ὑποκάτωθεν τῶν πτερύγων αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὰ τέσσαρα μέρη αὐτῶν And the hand of man is under their wings in their four countries. Along with their legs, which were distinguished by inhuman perfection, speed and strength, the mysterious animals had ordinary human hands. This feature of mysterious animals must be explained in the same way as we explained the presence of their wings. Hands, one might say, constitute the same distinctive feature of man as the wings of a bird, and just as perfectly express the nature of man, his difference and superiority among living creatures, as the wings of a bird. By determining the possibility of activity for a person, they most sharply distinguish a person from animals, for whom, due to the absence of hands, activity is impossible, but only life (food). Their assimilation by the cherubim is intended to indicate their ability to perform activities similar to human activity. And this combination of the subtlety of human actions with the elemental power of an animal could not but be terrible and stunning for the gaze of the prophet. Just as the legs of the cherubim made it possible for them to stand on the ground, they connected and brought these purely above-ground (winged) creatures into relationship with the ground in general, so the hands (these instruments of human activity) were a symbol of their action in humanity. Subsequently, one of the cherubim made a terrible use of this “hand under the wings.” He used it to give a handful of coals to the destroying angel so that he would throw them at the wicked Jerusalem and burn it. On this basis, the Targum gives verse 8 the following paraphrase; “And hands like men were under their wings on their four sides, to draw coals of fire from among the cherubim under the firmament and to give them in handfuls to the seraphim to scatter them in the place of the wicked, to scatter the wicked who transgress His word.” Of course, the cherubim’s hands did not exist for such a terrible purpose. The Hebrew text of this passage raises eyebrows with the first word: “and hands” וידו. This word has keri 59 וידי, which is included in the text in many codes by Kennicott and Rossi. What is truer here - keri or ketib? Since ketib is punctuated in the text by keri, it remains unknown what vowels וידו should have, and the grammatical form of this word must first be determined. If vav is glossed with kametz וְיָדָו (Kimhi, Geth.), then יד “hand” will be in them. pl. with a suffix of 3 persons. unit h. “and his hands”, i.e. the hands of each individual cherub. If you gloss the word with kholem וְיָדוֹ, then it will be singular. h. with suf. 3 l. units h. “his hand”; Moreover, this “his” can be considered a suffix preceding gender. pad., an example of which is given by Ezek. 10:3 60 – Wed. 3:21; there the suffix has a purely grammatical meaning and should remain without translation; literally: “the hand of him, a man” (Gitz.). According to Keri, he will be here. pad. plural part in casu constructo: “and hands” 61. Finally, 70 perhaps offers a third reading of this word, translating it simply χείρ (=יד). Thus, the actual unity remains unknown. Whether the word “hand” is used here in number or in plural. h. Ketib admits the possibility of both; keri – plural only. h. For meaning, both numbers are almost indifferent. If there is unity here. number, then it does not give the right to think that each animal had only one hand. It can only have a collective meaning here; in the same sense it is said in Hebrew. i.e. about the foot and heel of animals, and not about the legs and heels. Why is the definition “human” added to the word hands? – the hand is an exclusively human property. One can look at this expression as an abbreviation of the following: “and a hand like a man was under their wings” (Mald.), i.e. the hands of animals only resembled human ones and differed from them in some ways (Targum: “and hands as if human were under their wings”). This word can be considered simply a pleonasm. And one can finally see in it an echo of some surprise on the part of the prophet at the fact of the presence of hands here: the creatures seen by the prophet, according to the general impression, were chajjoth - animals, and now they have a hand - a real human one! The mysterious creatures that appeared to St. Ezekiel were winged. This circumstance should give rise to a question in the reader: where were the hands of these creatures? The natural place of the arms in the body was occupied by these creatures with wings, which in birds form the second pair of limbs. The Prophet adds that the hands of the creatures that appeared to him were under their wings. “Under” is expressed מתחת. מן, which is part of this preposition, gives it the meaning not just “under”, but “from under”. The Prophet wants to say that the hands were not completely visible, but as much as the wings that covered them allowed them to be seen. In view of the four-faced nature of animals, the question also arose as to which of the four sides of the animal had hands. The prophet also gives an answer to this possible question from the reader: the hands were on all four sides of the animal. "Side" in Heb. expressed by רבע, which actually means a quarter (Ex. 29:40) and “side” means only in a quadrangular figure, which is what the mysterious animals represented. The prophet's remark about the presence of hands on all sides of the animal raised a new question for the interpreters of Ezekiel about the number of hands in animals. The very fact that the prophet, so thorough in his description, does not give an answer to this question, should not, it seems, allow exegesis to have two opinions here. However, this question was posed and the answer given was far from the same. The hands of each animal were counted from one (Knab., who notes that the hand was on all four sides of the cherubs, understands that there was one hand on each side of the square formed by the four cherubs) to 16 (Mald.). As an example of these considerations, one can imagine the opinion of Kretschmar: “each animal had 4 arms, or rather four elbows corresponding to 4 wings, and on each of the four sides there was a wing and a hand under it; in order for the latter to be noticed, the wings had to spread, and thus the remark of Art. 9. adjoins here very opportunely: from under the outstretched side wings mentioned there, hands could be seen; the other two arms in front and behind could only be inferred from the sides; but perhaps Ezekiel also saw the sides of the cherubim.” There could not be more or less than two hands on one side of the animal, because otherwise the number of hands would deviate from human ones, and the prophet had to say about this. But how many arms an animal should have, such a question cannot be posed, because the prophet could not see all of them at the same time, and what he did not see did not exist, since here we are dealing with vision, and not with external reality. Home page בְלֶכְתָּן אִישׁ אֶל־עֵבֶר פָּנָי׆ Kαὶ τὰ πρόσωπα αὐτῶν (καὶ αἱ πτέρυγες αὐτῶν) τῶν τεσσάρων (ἐχόμεναι ἑτέρα τῆς ἑτέρας καὶ) οὐκ ἐπεστρέφοντο ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν αὐτά: ἕκαστον κατέναντι τοῦ προσώπου αὐτῶν ἐπορεύοντο. And their faces and the four of them held each other; I don’t turn around the faces of their four whenever they walk: each one walks straight to his own face. Different texts give two significantly different readings for this verse. All Hebrew manuscripts and a significant part of the Greek codices, led by the most venerable among them, the Alexandrian, give this reading: “and their faces and their wings (Hebrew: “y”) of the four (in Hebrew: mappik) touched (Hebrew: “their wings”), they did not turn around when they walked; each one walked in the direction of its face.” Another part of the Greek codes has the following reading: “and the faces of their four (some: “and their wings”) did not turn around as they walked; each one walked in the direction of its face.” Thus this part of the codices makes a number of omissions in the Hebrew-Alexandrian reading of the present verse. It is the following codes that make the following omissions: the Vatican Codex, translations - Coptic and Ethiopic (ancient review) do not have “and their wings” (the first): the Vatican and Venetian codes and the Coptic translation do not have: “they touched each other.” Those and other words are placed under the asterisk (hence, they are considered borrowed from the Hebrew text) by the Cisian Codex and Syriac hexaples; and the last words are the Marshallian Code. This selection of codes is significant in that it consists of representatives of all three known reviews. Thus, the Venetian Codex is considered a representative of the review of Lucian adopted in the Antiochian Church, the Coptic and Ethiopian translations are representatives of the review of Hesychius - the Alexandrian Church, and the codes Vatican., March., Cisian. and Syriac hexaples - the Origen-Eusebius review, which dominated in Palestine. Thus, translation 70 in all its reviews casts doubt on the Hebrew reading of verse 9. Nevertheless, we must not forget that the first reading has on its side all the Hebrew manuscripts without exception, not one of which is stipulated, as happens in other cases, in favor of the Greek reading. In addition, the Alexandrian Codex has omitted words, which in other cases disagrees 70 with Hebrew. t. agrees with its related Coptic and Ethiopic translations. Therefore, it is not without reason that the reading of the Hebrew and the Codex of Alexandria is considered a textus receptus and included in church editions of the Bible. The dispute between texts, if it can be resolved, must be transferred to the soil of internal data. Considering the possibility of the authenticity of the first reading, the interpreter should not ignore the second, which is represented by a number of monuments that rival the first in their antiquity and authenticity. What does the prophet want to say here according to the Hebrew text? The Hebrew reading begins with words that literally mean: “and their faces and their wings were four of them.” These words can be considered as an independent sentence. Those who do this understand these words in four different senses. The reader first imagines this meaning for these words: all four animals had faces and wings, and were absent from none of them. But with such a meaning, these words would contain a thought that is completely unnecessary in the course of speech. After all that was said earlier, could the reader have the idea that any animal did not have faces or wings? If here the author wants to say: not one of them was missing his face or his wings, then this is a strange expression of what was already in Art. 6 (Gitz.), “such a remark after Art. 6. not expected" (See). That is why the Targum does not dare to give these words a direct and immediate meaning. He conveys them this way: “and their faces and their wings were alike among them four” (Targum is followed by Rashi, Roz). But even in this meaning, these words would express what goes without saying. The Prophet still describes not just one of the animals he saw, but all of them together: his description is dotted with the suffix הם - “with them”: “their legs”, “their wings”. Pescito and the Vulgate see a new meaning in these words. Peshito translates the Hebrew word לארבעתם not “at four of them,” i.e. animals, but “on their four sides” and Vulgate: per quatuor partes. Animals had faces and wings on four sides, i.e. on each side and on each of the four sides (of the world), so that they can look in all directions and go to all countries (Mald). And in this meaning, these words do not provide a significantly new thought compared to Art. 6, at least regarding the wings. In addition, this meaning of these words is purchased at the price of inserting into the text the new concept of “side”, “pars”. Those of the newest interpreters who do not dare to cross out these words or amend them, see in them the independent nominative phrase, characteristic of the Hebrew language and loved by Ezekiel, “an absolutely presupposed nominative” (See; cf. Ev. 292 a). The expression will then have the following meaning: “as for their faces and their wings, they were like that in all four of them: their wings touched one another...”. This understanding of these words has great advantages over the listed methods of explaining them. With this understanding of their 9th verse, which, after already talking about faces and wings, and the prophet moved on to the description of other parts of the body of animals - their legs and arms, after all this begins to talk again about wings, this verse with such an understanding of the real words does not stand so bare (kahl. See) and receives the transition that is so necessary for it from the previous one, an attack (Ansatz). After the prophet in v. 5–8 spoke about the faces, wings, legs, hands of creatures, he now describes the most important parts of the body - wings and faces closer” (See). “In this way, the prophet especially highlights the wings and faces from all parts of the figure; in those the power of life is revealed primarily, in these beings of animals.” (Geth.). And לארבעתם 62 “they have four,” explanatoryly joining וכ and their wings,” warns that what follows is valid about the wings (and faces) not of each individual cherub, but of all four” (Kr.). But this explanation is not invulnerable. The turnover is famous. self not as likely here as in Art. 6: there it refers only to the immediately following expression; here he would be referring to a whole long tirade, for which he would be too short. To be quite clear, it would not have hurt the prophet to add “their faces and wings were like this (זות).” Then: the prophet describes in verse 9 and d. wings earlier than faces; why does he name the latter first in this attack? Those who are not satisfied with any of these explanations make various amendments to the expression being analyzed. So they omit from it its first word ופניהם “and their faces,” suggesting that it came here from v. 9b, where it is quite appropriate and is found in many codes 70. Then all that remains of the entire expression is: “and they have four wings,” i.e. (v. 9:) “they touched each other”; then in 9b art. You don't have to read the words "wings" from the Hebrew text. Others suggest lowering after some. codes, the second word is וכנפיהם “and their wings,” which, they say, could have come here from the end of v. 7, where it appears in 70 (Cor.). Then all that remains of the expression is: “and the faces of their four,” i.e. (v. 9:) “were joined together”; therefore, “wings” 9 eur. You won’t have to read the verse again. – But any amendment that requires the omission of a few words from the text is suspicious. A more probable understanding of this expression is offered by 70. Art. 8b they connect with verse 9, and the words “faces” and “wings” are considered to be subjects of the verb חברות, “touched,” with which Hebrews 9 begins. poem. This connection of two verses is justified by the fact that 9 Heb. The verse does not have the conjunction ו “and” at the beginning. So, this passage takes on the following form in 70: “and their faces and their four wings held (ἐχόμεναι) one another.” The solution to the question of the possibility of understanding 70 depends on Ch. arr. from the meanings of the Hebrew verb חברות, which 70 translates ἐχόμεναι. Can it be applied to faces and wings and serve as a predicate for them? That. This question introduces us to the analysis of the next sentence. The verb חבר in v. 9. Usually they give the meaning “touched” (Russian translation). This meaning is based mainly on one place in Exodus (26:3), where this verb is used with the same preposition as here. There it is said about the opons of the tabernacle exactly as the Hebrew says here. i.e. about the wings of animals, that they were choveroth with (אל) each other. About opons, such an expression can only mean that they were sewn or in some other way (cf. Ex. 36:18) “connected” (Russian translation) to one another. But in addition to this purely specific meaning, this verb (חבר) also has a more general and abstract meaning. One can even say that the specific meaning that it has in Exodus and that they are accustomed to assimilate to it here is its rarest meaning, alien to it in all other cases of its use. It is used about any kind of connection and close relationship of objects - about the gathering of people in one place (Gen. 14:3; Ps. 121:3), about being in someone else's society (Eccl. 2:4), about alliances and contracts (2 Chron. 20:36, 37). 70 and assumed that the verb chavar has such a general meaning here - the meaning of gathering in one place, being near each other. In this meaning it can also stand with the preposition אל with which it is used here, as Gen. shows. 14:3. According to 70, the prophet wants to say that the faces and wings of the creatures he saw were constantly in the same relationship, as a result of which they formed one definite whole, “a communion together” Ps. 122:3. It goes without saying that this connection and connection in relation to faces was expressed differently than in wings. The faces of the mysterious animals could be connected to one another only in the sense that they were turned to one another, namely, the famous face was always facing the same thing; and the wings in the sense that they were raised, extended one to the other. Both in Hebrew, it was assumed 70, are equally expressed by the verb chavar with its such a broad meaning. Indeed, if the matter here was about the contact of only the wings of animals, then the prophet would have used here the verbs פרש (paras) and נגע (nagah) “stretch”, “touch”, used in a similar case in Ex. 25:20; 37:9 and 1 Kings. 6:27. The Prophet would say, for example: “and their wings were stretched out (paras) towards each other” or “touched (nagah) each other.” In the same way, if we were talking about the relative position of certain persons in relation to each other, the prophet could have said that the persons were “seeing” to each other, or he could have expressed himself as briefly as in Ex. 25:20 through one preposition אל: “their faces were one towards (אל) another.” The verb chavar unites these concepts, but at the same time it somewhat modifies them, introducing a new shade into them. He establishes a spatial connection between the mysterious animals, extending mainly to their faces and wings. Those and others, it seemed to the prophet, were clearly connected to each other. The prophet does not say how they were connected, he does not define more closely this general concept of connection. And he does not define it, of course, because the immediate method and basis of the connection could elude his gaze and his understanding. The Prophet only saw that the faces and wings always maintained the same position to each other. And this circumstance was a circumstance of great importance and significance. 4 the mysterious animals thereby revealed a close connection with each other, a certain inseparability from each other. They were connected to each other in a way that separate and independent objects or creatures on earth cannot be connected: they were connected by their faces and wings, which could never come out of the same position in relation to each other. Such a thought, the thought of spiritual contact and connection, is seen here by the blessed one. Jerome. “The Gospels have a contact and a mutual connection,” he observes in his allegorical explanation of this passage. That. understanding 70 has strong grounds behind it both in the letter and in the thought of this place. But this understanding also allows for objections to itself, which, of course, constitute the reason why this understanding, despite the authority of such a venerable antiquity, has not found general recognition, and is completely ignored by the latest biblical scholars. First of all, the verb chavar cannot be applied to the faces of animals with the same ease as it can be applied to wings. Even if it has the general and broad meaning here that 70 people assimilate to it, then when applied to persons it will not be entirely accurate and clear. If the faces of the animals were connected together, “held each other”, made one thing, then this is the same as the animals themselves were connected, connected with each other. Why name faces instead of animals? Then: the prophet subsequently, in verse 11, uses this verb again and refers it clearly to only the wings of animals, although in the same verse he speaks of faces. Finally, it became possible for 70 to relate this verb not only to wings, but also to faces, only due to the fact that they do not read in Art. 9. the word כנפיהם “krila them”, found in the Hebrew text and serving as the subject of choveroth “touched”. 9 euros verse in the first half of its mas. it reads “their wings touched each other,” and in 70: “they touched each other.” One may wonder whose reading here is genuine: 70 whether the word was omitted or whether the Masoretes added it. Since it is easier to decide on an omission in a sacred text than an addition, and since deviations from the letter can be more likely to be expected from a translator than from a punctuator, then 70 here they do not have a preemptive right to trust. So, the possibility of reading Art. 9 cannot be completely excluded. according to Masor. i.e., i.e. with canephehem as the subject of choveroth. And in this case, the second half of 8 tbsp. (according to Hebrew t. or 9a according to Slavic bib.) is an independent sentence and must contain one of those thoughts that the given methods of explaining it see in it. Verse 9b will then have this form (for its first half): “their wings touched (or connected, choveroth) with each other.” The interpreter of Ezekiel cannot but take into account the possibility of such a reading of verse 9. What idea would this expression convey in v. 9? The verb chavar then has the meaning it has in the above passages of Exodus. The wings of the mysterious animals could touch each other in the same sense in which the stitched or interlocked opons of the tabernacle touched, i.e. touch in the proper sense with your edges. But the question arises, what kind of animal wings were in contact with each other? Contact is conceivable between the wings of the same animal and animals could touch each other with their wings. The text does not directly answer this question. The Hebrew expression here has such a strange appearance for our ears: “the wife touching her sister is their wings.” This is characteristic of eastern languages ​​- a figurative designation of the concept “one to another” (since canaph wing, like other names of body parts, is feminine). If we keep in mind only the letter of the text, then it is acceptable to think that it is talking about the contact of the wings of one animal with each other, and not with the wings of another. By “other” wing it is closer to mean the wing of the same animal than of another. And the authentic Jewish expression is even more favorable to such an understanding: what would the name “sister” be more suitable for, if not the wing of the same animal. On the other hand, the contact of the wings of different animals should be indicated more separately, i.e. to say that the wing of one touched the wing of the other. The meaning that such contact of the wings of each animal should have with each other is also clear: connecting one with the other on the body of the animal, the wings would completely cover this body, leaving nothing visible on it. This would indicate the complete incomprehensibility for us of the essence of the cherubim, an incomprehensibility however less than the incomprehensibility of the Divinity, and perhaps even the seraphim, whose face is inaccessible to human gaze. Despite so much evidence in favor of this presentation of the matter, even the oldest translations of Ezekiel tend to have a different understanding of 9b. Thus the Vulgate translates the present sentence thus: junctaeque erant pennae corum alterius ad alterum, therefore thinking of the contact between the wings of neighboring cherubs. And almost all interpreters of Ezekiel understand this remark of the prophet exactly this way. What basis does this understanding have? As for the text, it is only slightly less favorable to this understanding than to the first. The word canephehem “their wings,” about which the prophet says that they were connected to each other, is designated by the prophet as the wings of all animals together, without any distinction between the wings of one animal and the wings of another; track. and union or contact is conceivable equally between all members of this equal union. The Prophet does not say that only everyone’s wings (לאש, cf. vv. 11 and 23) touched each other. So, the expression of the prophet apparently also gives the right to think that the wings of one animal were in contact with the wings of another, as well as to think that the wings of each animal were in contact with each other. The vagueness of expression allows for this and other understandings, and since, in essence, one does not exclude the other, nothing prevents us from giving the prophet’s words here such a double meaning. The wings of animals were in contact with one another, both in each animal individually and in different animals with each other. Subsequently, the prophet will return again to this circumstance, which apparently struck him a lot, and then we will be even more convinced of the possibility of this double contact of wings in animals. We learn from the prophet later that the two wings of the animals were stretched out - these wings could touch the edges of the wings of other animals; and two wings were lowered and covered the bodies of animals - these wings could be connected to each other on the body, thus completely covering it. And the contact of individual animals with their wings had a meaning no less significant and no less full of symbolism than the contact of the wings of each animal. “Thanks to this connection of their wings, all the animals together, as if with one aspiration (impetu), walked in the same direction with the same speed” (Mald.). Not to mention the fact that such a constant position of the animals’ wings testified to the extraordinary harmony and harmony in their movement, this position of the wings could attract the prophet’s attention in another respect, and all this was the reason why the prophet could not help but talk now about this, at first glance, so unimportant circumstance. Fresh in the prophet’s memory was the memory, dear to his heart, of two such wings touching each other, the edges of which peeking out from behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies, he, the priest, may have more than once been thrown into trembling reverence, knowing Who and What rests on these wings. Is it possible that here, too, these animals have wings extended towards each other for the same purpose? The coincidence was amazing... But there the images of cherubim, those creatures on which God actually sits and rests, stretched their wings towards each other. Here he sees the wings of some strange, if not scary, images of humanoid animals stretched out and touching each other. Can the Glory of God, the Shekinah, rest on these wings, as on the wings of the cherubim of the Holy of Holies? The Prophet, of course, would not have answered himself in the affirmative to this question, which undoubtedly confused him, if he had not subsequently seen with his own eyes that God really sat on the wings of these animals in all His glory. But even after seeing this, the prophet hesitated to recognize the cherubim in the animals he saw, until this bewilderment was finally eliminated for him during one of the later appearances of the Glory of God in an unknown way (10:20; perhaps by the voice of God in v. 6). But not knowing, and not daring to speculate, why and why the wings of animals were stretched out just as the wings of the cherubim were stretched out in the Holy of Holies, Ezekiel could only know that these wings could not have been stretched out like that for nothing. It is not in vain that the Prophet, following the description of the legs of animals, speaks about the position of their wings. This position told him the same thing that the sight of his legs told him. When looking at the slender, unchanging position of the animals’ wings, touching each other, it should have become clear to the prophet that the animals are carrying something on themselves, that they are supporting something on their wings, and that this burden makes it so hard for them, their legs are so strained and they need legs so strong (like copper). But what exactly the animals carried, what they supported with their wings, the prophet does not yet see. This position of the animal's wings was apparently so important that even the movement of the animals was subordinate to it, conformed to it. To maintain this position of the animals' wings, the animals did not turn around during the procession. But this did not restrict the freedom of their movements: having 4 faces, they were at all times facing each of the four countries of the world and could walk without turning around to any of these countries. It turns out that they had four faces so that, when turning while walking, they would not upset this harmonious position of the wings. The second half of the 9th (Hebrew) Art. receives such a natural connection. from the first. But in itself, the fact that this half of the verse speaks of was of great importance. For the mysterious animals, the very structure of their being completely excluded the possibility of returning back. Every movement they made was a movement forward, literally: “towards the side that lies opposite his face,” i.e. "straight in front of you." They moved only in a straight line in front of them, and not in a roundabout or circular manner. This meant that the spiritual forces represented by these animals are never defeated and do not retreat, but are directed further, forward (Bl. Jer.: “whoever takes hold of the handle of the plow must not look back and not imitate Lot’s wife; how much more should the 4 animals, which are full of light and inspired, not look around”, on Art. 12). Müller drew attention to the fact that with this method of movement of animals, they could not always move from place to place in a direct way. In fact, let us imagine that the purpose of the movement of animals lies not on the radii going from them (o) to the four cardinal points, but at some point “a”. To this goal, animals could move not along the shortest diagonal line oa, but in a roundabout way, describing two legs oa or both (p. 14). This kind of flaw in the design of the chariot depends on the fact that its base is not a circle, but a quadrangle. But we must not forget that “the prophet hardly knew the subtlest branches of the wind rose and that for him the number 4 meant the entirety of directions” (Kr.). Moreover, Deities. the chariot was above earthly conditions and spatial laws. We have analyzed verse 9 in its complete form, in which the Masor presents it. etc. and most Greek codes. Next to this reading of this verse stands another shorter reading of it, given by one part of the Greek codes, headed by the Vatican. This different reading removes everything from this verse that makes it so difficult to understand. In this entire verse it leaves only his last thought about not turning around the animals during the procession. With its simplicity and brevity, this reading cannot but captivate in its favor. But to a cautious biblical scholar, precisely this brevity should seem suspicious, artificially achieved through the omission of everything difficult. Supporters of this reading point out the following advantages. According to the Masor. the text, they say, firstly, in Art. 9. you have to guess what is in Art. 11 says precisely, namely, that each animal had only 2 wings extended in this way (i.e. so that they touched each other). Then: the words אל־אחותה אשה denote, without further explanation, the right wing of one and the left wing of the other (cf. 1 Kings 6:27. See). For the first time in st. 11 it is said that the wings touched at the top, and there what they want the prophet to say here follows exactly in its place. Further, 9b turns out (in the textu recepto) tightly and without connection to 9a, as if the direct procession of animals was a consequence of the connection of their wings, which is impossible (Gietz.). And with the context of Art. 9. according to the Vatican Code it fits more than according to the Jewish one: “with such a reading of verse 9 as given by Vatican. k., in 9 tbsp. a detailed description of the faces of animals begins; in 6 tbsp. it was said that each of the animals had 4 faces; Now the prophet does not repeat this, but only explains what the faces of animals were intended for: thanks to them, animals - cherubim - did not turn around when moving in any direction; at every given moment they walked in the direction of their faces. Which one? They have them 4. The answer could only be given in vv. 12, after the closest description of these persons, which follows in Art. 10". (Fr. Rozhd.). Generally Wat. code. “which omits 9a (and something in 8b) gives here a shorter and smoother text, but therefore not necessarily the original one; because of this plus masor. i.e. cannot yet be considered a glossa; Wat. code., as often below, tries here to come to the aid of Ezekiel’s somewhat unnaturally constructed presentation.” (Kr.). We have seen that even in a more complete reading, this verse does not contain any difficulties insurmountable for explanation; on the contrary, all the thoughts in him fit well with one another. The only thing that can be reproached with the widespread reading of this verse is that all its thoughts are subsequently repeated by the prophet in Art. 11 and 23. But 1) they are repeated with significant additions (to choveroth about the wings of perudoth v. 11 and jescharoth v. 23); 2) and a short reading is not free from this reproach: his thought is repeated, like the thought of a lengthy reading that is abundant against him, also 2 times - in Art. 12 and 17. Therefore, the sequence would require destroying the entire 9th st. from 8b, as Toi does. But we must not forget that repetition is a stylistic feature of Ezekiel. Home page Please contact us וּפְנֵי־נֶשֶׁר לְאַרְבַּעְתָּן Καὶ ὁμοίωσις τῶν προσώπων αὐτῶν πρόσωπον ἀνθρώπου καὶ ?? ἐξ ἀριστερῶν τοῖς τέσσαρσιν καὶ πρόσωπον ἀετοῦ τοῖς τέσσαρσιν And the likeness of their faces was the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right hand of four, and the face of a calf on the right hand of four, and the face of an eagle of four. At the very beginning of the story of his mysterious vision, the prophet noticed that the mysterious creatures that appeared to him had the appearance of chajjoth, animals. It is natural for the reader to then want to hear what animals these creatures were like. But the prophet still seems to hesitate to satisfy this legitimate curiosity. And only now, when he described everything in the animals that appeared to him, everything almost to the nails in the proper sense (“the feet of the calf”), the prophet finds it possible to indicate which earthly animals the four-faced creatures that appeared to him were like. Interpreters of Ezekiel are at a loss as to why the prophet speaks about this so late. They say (See and others) that the prophet describes from below, from the feet. But he speaks about the number of faces and wings first of all; Yes, and such an order of description of the figure would be strange. They say (Fr. Rozhd. and others) that the prophet first describes everything that was common on the four sides of each animal: on all sides they had the same wings, legs, arms and only different faces; therefore, it was possible to talk about faces after, (why not earlier?). It is more likely to assume that the faces of the creatures that appeared to the prophet later than other parts emerged from that cloud and whirlwind, shrouded in which the animals walked to the prophet. One might also think that during his vision these faces never appeared with all clarity and distinctness to the prophet’s gaze. Shrouded at first in the darkness of the clouds, these faces could hardly be seen later. loomed before the prophet in the density of a cloud, illuminated as if by the glow of a fire (esch mitthlaccachath v. 5), and cut through by incessant lightning (v. 13). If man cannot see the face of God at all, then the face of the cherub, the creature closest to God, could not be fully shown to man. This presentation of the matter is confirmed by the fact that in the prophet’s description the elastic and indefinite concept of “demuth” appears here again, which he used to characterize the general appearance of animals and which he did not need to resort to anywhere in describing all the particulars of their species (wings, arms, legs). The faces of the cherubs were precisely identified, described, but could not be named. For them, only some similarity (demuth) between earthly persons could be indicated. The Prophet points out this similarity 63. “And the likeness of their faces is the face of a man.” The prophet names the human face first, either because of its comparative dignity with other faces, or because it was the face turned towards him in all animals. The other three faces in relation to this, at least the main, face occupied a certain, the same position in all animals (hence the threefold לארבעתן “in four of them”) position. To the right (הימין אל coll. “to the right hand”) all four had the face of a lion, to the left (מהשמאול coll. “from the left hand” - from the root “to cover” - according to the custom of wearing clothes only on the left hand) - the face of an ox. The fourth face, whose position is not indicated as being determined by itself from the position of the previous faces, was the face of an eagle. It is clear why the lion occupies the right side and the ox the left. But in relation to what is right and left considered here? The right and left sides of the animals themselves cannot be understood here, because, having 4 faces, they cannot have a right and left side. The right and left sides of the world cannot be understood (east and west, if you look north, like the prophet in this case: v. 4), because only two sides are indicated, and animals must be turned to all 4 cardinal directions in order to go everywhere without turning around. The right and left sides of the spectator - the prophet cannot be considered here, because it would turn out that two faces are on the right side (the text says: the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side). The correct understanding will be this: since each animal has 4 faces and between them a human face, then the right and left sides are counted from the last face, as from the main one; the prophet wants to say that to the right of the human face each animal had the face of a lion, to the left of an ox, and behind an eagle” (Mald.). The meaning and signification of such persons among the cherubim has become a commonplace of exegesis, which, however, hardly satisfies anyone. No matter how fully the face of a person in cherubs expresses the idea of ​​​​their rationality, the face of a lion - their strength, the ox - strength and meekness, and the eagle - pomp, the introduction of the highest spirits of animals and animal forms into the images should remain strange and incomprehensible to us. This is the mystery of prophetic contemplation, of which little can be said to explain. The choice of animals is made so that it includes representatives of the entire living world. The rabbis noticed this: “four creatures have primacy in this world: among creatures, man; among the birds is the eagle, among the cattle is the ox, and among the beasts is the lion” (Schemoth rabba 23). The kingdom of reptiles (which, in a broad sense, can also include fish) is excluded for obvious reasons. Thus, from each area of ​​earthly life, the best was taken as a likeness for the cherubim, as if the color of this life. If, in order to express the idea of ​​the cherub as fully as possible, it was inevitably necessary to add to the human image the form of animals, then in truth a better connection could not have been given than here. God Himself is not ashamed to compare himself with these noble animals. So the lion in the Old Testament often denotes “the awesome power of God” (Rom. 22), “the royal dominion of God based on irresistible power” (Ir. 30:30; 19:29; 20:2; Hos. 11:10; Am. 3:8; Jer. 49:19. Gitz.); The eagle serves as an expression of God’s loving care (Deut. 32:11; Exod. 19:4), long life, eternal youth (Ps. 102:5; Isa. 40:31). The animals chosen here for comparison are all the most perfect embodiments of various and dissimilar to each other, but equally high qualities, which do not pass into them, as in other animals, in due measure. So the lion is the personification of indestructible strength, and this strength in him does not reach the bloodthirstiness and cruelty of the tiger. The ox is a symbol of labor, especially agricultural labor (Gen. 41), obedience, evenness, for which it became a sacrificial animal and was used to transport sacred things (Num. 7:3; 2 Kings 6:6, etc.) 64. The eagle has always amazed a person with the height of its flight and its soaring, which in our eyes covers up its bad instincts. Still, even with such a good selection of animal forms, the appearance of these forms here (for the image of cherubs) cannot but seem strange. Their appearance here can be partly explained by the fact that “in the Jewish artistic genius there appears the fullness of the idea, which barely allows sensual expression” (Geph.). In a sense, what Apuleius says about the diversity of the Egyptian gods, who had “effigiem non pecoris, non avis, non ferae, ac ne hominis quidem ipsius, consimilem, sed soletri ingenio repertam, ipsa enim novitale reverendam” (Metam. I. XI. Rose.) can be applied to the image of the cherubim in the prophet Ezekiel. These images acquired particular strangeness from the fact that they were part of the epiphany. The prophet should have seen God, and as if instead he sees these images. “God, who is above all, is incomprehensible to all creation; therefore, He, without placing any image to represent His invisibility, placed, as the image of His throne, incomprehensible natures, which are the footstools of God, as the throne is the footstool of him who sits on it” (Thomas Aqu. Sum. theol. 1,2, III, 4-b according to Vig. Dict. “cherubin”). Certain textual features of verse 10 cause critics of the sacred text to make various amendments to this verse, despite the complete agreement with which it is transmitted in all manuscripts and translations. Since the second and third persons indicate the side on which they were located, but the first and fourth do not 65, they tried to compensate for this deficiency with conjecture. Cornille and Siegfried after אדם (“man” i.e. face) insert מקדם (“in front” coll.: “to the east”; according to Is. 9:11. Ps. 139:5), which after אדם could so easily fall out, after לפּנימה “inside” (which Cornille suggests at the end verse as a missing definition for the location of the eagle's face) became corrupted in ופניהם v. 11 and therefore for mikedem “in front” there was no longer a conditioning and required opposition (Cor.). Toi, following Gretz (in Cor.), inserts after אדם לפנים - “outside,” and Bertolet considers it clear that the original וקדמה (“and in front” personal “to the east”) could be corrupted into ודמות (“and the like”). At the end of the verse Velg. at See, Cor. Zig. Bert, they read לפנימה “into the inside” (i.e. the eagle’s face was “into the inside,” of course, of the square or space that the 4 animals occupied), referring to ופניהם (“and their faces”) vv. 11 (where the presence of this word is really difficult to explain) to the previous one and considering it as a damage to לפנימה, while Gretz, Toi inserts after נשר (“eagle”) מאחור “behind.” But the text is understandable even without these changes, and “such strict symmetry in expression is completely not in the spirit of Ezekiel, who, on the contrary, willingly introduces particularly small differences. Therefore, neither the omission of the threefold לארבעתם (Zig.) nor the insertion of the fourth (Toi) is necessary” (Kr.). The Vulgate also makes an amendment to the Hebrew text of this verse, which after “the face of the eagle” puts (the codex Toletanus does not have this addition. Cor. 181) desuper - above: the face of the eagle according to it was on top of the other faces. “The Latin translators apparently think that the eagle rose on the heads of the cherubim, and probably assumed that the preposition על - “over” was dropped from the Hebrew text, where על is not present. But already blzh. Theodoret rightly puts the face of the eagle behind, which is well confirmed by the fact that the cherubim, no matter which way they go, go before their face” (Triebs 30). However, it is possible that with this addition the Vulgate “wants to mean not that the eagle’s face was higher than the others, but that it had a head higher than the others at the back, since eagles, by the structure of their bodies, have a longer neck than animals” (Mald.). Peshito also departs from the Hebrew. v. 10b, which he translates: "and the face of an ox and the face of an eagle on their left sides." This deviation reveals a clear desire to equalize the second part of Art. 10. from the first, where “to the right” is placed after two faces (the face of a man and the face of a lion to the right). Not understanding the compressed speech of the prophet, the Syrian translator completely changed the idea of ​​the verse: according to it, the animals had two faces on both sides. The difference in grammar is noteworthy. kind of pronominal suffixes in לארבעתם “they have 4”: this word is used for the first time in Art. 10. with suf. husband. r., the other two times feminine. The disagreement is explained above and does not require elimination from the text. Since such disagreement continues to occur, the codes equalizing in gram. In this case, all suffixes can be suspected of a willful correction by the prophet. If the suffixes in the original text were the same, then which copyist would have decided to introduce differences in them? Please contact us Home page Καὶ αἱ πτέρυγες αὐτῶν ἐκτεταμέναι ἄνωθεν τοῖς τέσσαρσιν ἑκατέρῳ δύο συνεζευγμέναι πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ δύο ἐπεκάλυπτον ἐπάνω τοῦ σώματος αὐτῶν (And their faces) and wings are stretched out over four, two of which are joined to each other, and two coverings are on top of their bodies. Researchers have noticed that the Prophet Ezekiel, as a Writer, has a special manner of returning to what was previously said and supplementing it with new details. Such a literary device, of course, has the goal of stopping the reader’s special attention on certain points of the description. In verse 11 we are dealing with precisely this stylistic feature of Ezekiel. The prophet in this verse returns to the wings of animals, which he briefly mentioned in v. 6. and to whom Art. 9 is dedicated. The 11th verse is distinguished by the same vagueness and uncertainty of the text as the parallel 9th ​​verse. It also has two readings, the dispute between which is also impossible to resolve, as between the readings of verse 9. Masor. etc. and a significant part of the Greek codes give this reading of this verse: “and their faces and their wings were divided, each had two joined to one another, and two covered their bodies.” Alexandria and Vatican. code., the Coptic and Ethiopian translations do not have the first word of the verse “and their faces,” due to which everything that follows in the verse refers only to the wings. This is the same word in March. code. stands under the asterisk. Thus, here, too, on the side of each reading there is a series of evidence that is not inferior to each other in reliability. But the famous Alexander also speaks out against Jewish reading here. code. But the Cisian Codex goes over to the side of Jewish reading, in most cases together with Marsh. codex, putting under asterisk everything that is redundant in the Hebrew volume against the translation of LXX. So, here too the interpreter must take into account the possibility of this and that reading and decide the question of the superiority of one and the other from internal grounds. In Jewish reading, this verse is filled with difficulties that still remain completely insurmountable for interpretation. According to this reading about the faces and wings of the cherubim, the prophet says that they are פרדות. פרד everywhere in the Old Testament has the meaning of “to divide”, “to separate” (Gen. 2:10; 13:9; Prov. 17:9; 18:18; Ruth 1:17; Esther 3:8). But all the ancient translations unanimously assign it not this meaning, but the meaning of spreading, straightening. In such a meaning, which is possible as a derivative of the indicated basic meaning, this verb goes well only to wings, and not to persons, to which the Hebrew applies it. t.: only about the wings can we say that they were extended. On the other hand, and in the course of his speech, apparently the prophet here could and should have spoken about outstretched wings: he further, in the second half of the verse, says that 2 wings of animals were connected from one animal to another, which is only possible for outstretched wings; to these connecting wings the prophet contrasts a pair of wings that covered the body of animals with traces. omitted. So, the context here apparently forces us to give perudoth the meaning to spread, in which sense this verb cannot be applied to the noun “persons”. Thus, either it is necessary to assume that this verb is used in a different sense about the faces of animals than about wings (See), a very incredible assumption, or else to assign to this verb here a meaning in which it could be applied equally to faces and wings. What meaning should he learn? The context, as we have seen, requires the meaning to be extended. But if we neglect the context, then we would have some right to assimilate to this verb its main and at the same time ever-present meaning in the Bible - “to divide,” in the passive participle in which it stands here, “divided” (Russian translation). But even in this meaning, so dearly (by making concessions to the context) purchased, the verb can hardly be applied to faces, and even to wings. In what sense could the prophet say of the faces and wings of the animals that appeared to him that they were divided? The fact that they were not merged into one mass? But this followed naturally from the very essence of the face and wing. Is it possible to imagine faces and wings not separated from each other? The very remark of the prophet in v. 9. about both of them, that they were choveroth “united”, includes the idea of ​​​​their separateness: only what is separated can be united. About the wings one would also expect such an expression: with this remark the reader would be warned against such an idea of ​​​​the connection of the wings, that the connection of the wings reached their complete merging into one wing, into one wing plane, but that on this area composed by the wings one wing was clearly demarcated from the other. But what meaning could such a remark have in relation to persons? Is it just that the four faces of each animal were not connected, like Janus, on one head, but sat separately on 4 heads and 4 necks (Keil). But this idea of ​​​​the animals of Ezekiel’s vision contradicts the description of the prophet: the prophet says that the animals had 4 faces, and not four heads. If perudoth cannot be attributed at the same time to faces and to wings, then it remains only to be attributed to wings. As we have seen, we apply this verb to wings, in whatever meaning we take it, whether its main meaning is to divide or its derivative meaning is to spread. Moreover, if we relate this verb to the word vekanephehem “and their wings” alone, then the further part of the verse, which speaks only about wings, will be the most natural continuation of this initial remark about wings. Meanwhile, if perudoth is also attributed to persons along with wings, then the second half of the verse, which clearly speaks of only wings (that a pair of them touched, and the pair covered the body), this half will remain without a subject and will have the following form: “everyone had two (what is unknown) in contact with each other, and two covered their bodies.” Thus, it seems that perudoth and the entire further part of the verse refer only to the wings of animals, and the first word of the verse should be completely cut off from the verse. What to do with this word? Of course, the easiest thing with that series of codices, which are headed by such venerable codes as the Alexandrian and Vaticanian, is not to read this word at all, or, following some critics of the sacred text, to attribute it to the 10th century, seeing in it a corruption of the last word of the verse (for example, לפנימח). Those who do not dare to destroy an entire word in the sacred text, which is nevertheless transmitted by the overwhelming majority of codes, not only Jewish, but also Greek, offer the following understanding of it. “If I had not seen, says Rashi, above ופניהם the accent Sackeph gadol 66 “great stop,” I would not have known how to explain it: but this punctuation mark shows that the word must be separated from the immediately following וכנפיהם “and their wings” and taken by itself in this meaning: “and such were their faces; their wings were spread over their four faces.” “The second ו here, as in many places, is the opposite” (Kimhi). In addition to the Masoretes and these rabbis, some Greek lists, which translate this word, also tend to this understanding of uphenehem: καὶ ταῦτα τὰ πρόςωπα ἀυτῶν (Fr. Rozhd.). But such an understanding is contradicted by the close coordination between uphenehem and the next word – vecanephehem. Words standing so close and in such a connection can only be two subjects of a continuous sentence; and conjunctions so symmetrically arranged can only have one meaning: one ו cannot be opposed to another. The Targum also sees this relationship between uphenehem and vecanephehem. “If uphenehem meant “and such” (i.e., as described in v. 10), were their faces, then the ellipsis here would be nimis dura” (Hebrans). So uphenehem, the first word of Art. 11, laughs at any explanation. So, should we destroy it by following the listed codes? We cannot decide on this. There are some signs of its presence here in the original text, despite all its inexplicability and apparent irrelevance. Namely: the prophet noticeably devotes verses 9-12 to an additional description of the faces and wings of mysterious animals, about which he said so little in verse 6. These additions concern exactly as many faces as they do wings. It is impossible not to notice that these additions fall into two parts - two verses in each part - (9 and 10, 11 and 12), and the second part supplements the first in some ways, and in each part the prophet speaks of both wings and faces, reporting new details about them. Isn’t it therefore natural to begin each part with these words: “and their faces and their wings” i.e. “there were such and such.” Such a beginning is also required by the law of symmetry, which Ezekiel likes to adhere to in his prophetic speeches: his speeches are dotted with so-called refrains (concluding verses). And it is not for nothing that the prophet speaks in this section (vv. 9–12) about faces and wings together. The faces and wings of the mysterious animals were indeed in such a close connection that it was impossible to talk about them except together. Both of them, forming the top of the whole phenomenon, represented, as it were, one harmonious and precisely measured system, in which one member could not move without setting the other in motion. In Art. 9–12 the prophet describes this wonderfully coordinated system of animal faces and wings. The prophet expresses the mutual connection of the members of this system first in the concept of choveroth (Art. 9), and then - perudoth. These verbs, which no one except Ezekiel uses about faces and wings and the usual meanings of which are difficult for both, obviously in the mouth of the prophet have some special meaning, which was already a mystery for readers as close to the time of the prophet as LXX. So (if we accept for 11 Art. Jewish reading), we must admit that we do not understand the prophet in this part of him, and we do not understand because what he described in this section was, like much in this mysterious vision, not easily amenable to a clear and precise description, as a result of which the prophet had to find new concepts for his description, adapting old words to them 67. Thus, the relationship between the wings and the faces of animals, like everything in these latter, was inexplicable and not easily conveyed. As in 9 art. The prophet here, too, having begun speaking about faces and wings together, moves on to one wings. But in 9 tbsp. he (according to the Kr. m. in Heb. t.) explains that he will talk about wings, repeats the word canephehem. Here he does not consider it necessary to make this reservation (if we follow the Hebrew term) and begins the description of the wings without naming them. “Each one had two touching one another, and two covering their bodies.” Except for this strange omission of the subject, this description does not contain anything incomprehensible and the texts convey it with minor differences. The connection this remark has with the previous one is clear. The Prophet already in Art. 9 said about the wings that they touched one another. Now he supplements this message with the remark that only two wings of each animal were in contact, while the other two were lowered onto the body. This remark seems at first glance to be somewhat late. Why not report the position of the other pair of wings in the same verse 9 that talks about the first pair of wings? With the same course of speech as the prophet follows, the reader up to verse 11 may think that all the wings of the animals were in contact with each other. Without a doubt, the prophet would have arranged his description according to such a natural plan, i.e. would have told everything at once about the wings, if he had not had to talk about wings and faces at once. Given this need, information about the wings could only be communicated incidentally and gradually, as their relationship to the persons was clarified. In direct relation to the faces, in the relation that determined the constant direction of the faces, there were only the wings of animals touching each other. They were actually important for the prophet; about the other pair of wings, which did not stand in such close relation to the faces, the prophet could not have mentioned here and limited himself to only a cursory remark about them, that they served to cover the body of animals. As in Article 9, the interpreter must also take into account the possibility of another reading, reading without the first word uphenehem. In such a reading, the entire verse will present no difficulty in explanation. The verse would then look like this: “and their wings were spread out above; each had two connected to the wings of the other, and two covered their bodies.” “Since only 2 wings were spread out, it is impossible, as is usually done, to understand the first half of the verse as a personal sentence (Nominalzatz): “and their wings were spread out”; – this would mean that vecanephehem would be understood in the sense of “two of their wings,” which is not possible. Vecanephehem is rather an absolute name presupposed as a title, cf. Art. 10, to which are attached two explanatory participial personal sentences, the subjects of which (“two”, שתים) due to the chiastic order of the members of the sentence follow each other directly; therefore, the verse should be translated as follows: “and their wings: each had two spread out at the top, touching one another, and two served to cover their bodies” (Kr.); or: “and their wings were spread upward, each with two, which touched each other, and two covered their bodies” (Vink. 349). So, according to this reading about the wings of mysterious animals, it is said first of all that they were perudoth. When applied to wings alone, this expression can hardly have any other meaning other than “to spread,” “to spread.” True, for the concept of spreading wings to other priests. the writers used another word, paras, but it could have become outdated by the time of Ezekiel and been replaced by parad, which is so consonant with it. The meaning of “to spread” is easily deduced from the basic meaning of this verb “to separate”: spread wings are wings separated, not adjacent to the body. The prophet could have used this word about a pair of outstretched wings to more clearly contrast this pair of wings with another pair that covered the body. The opposite concept of the word paras (to extend) would not be mecassoth - to cover, but raphah - to lower (vv. 24, 25). The wings separated, rose from the body, the prophet adds, upward מלמעלה. This is a simple pleonasm, because you can only be raised up. But this pleonasm contrasts well with the first pair of wings, an outstretched pair, with the second pair, always lowered on the body. Those wings could be called upper, these lower. In LXX, after the word “up” ἐπάνω is read τοῖς τέσσαρσιν. This word should be a translation of the Hebrew לארבעתם “they have four” (“all four”). One may therefore think that this word was lost in Hebrew. t. (but our rule for criticizing the sacred text is to allow the loss of a word in the sacred text rather than an addition). It has a strong analogy in the adjacent 10th century. Moreover, “without this word 11a would have been too short” (Cor., who therefore restores it in his edition of the text). The meaning that outstretched wings should have is clear: they were always ready to fly. Mysterious animals constantly hovered and could not be in any other state than in a state of hovering above the ground. And standing on the ground (the possibility of which is assumed by them by the presence of legs, cf. v. 19), they at the same time hovered over it with their constantly outstretched wings, ready to always rise from it. We subjected 11a to a comprehensive examination for each of the two existing readings of it and were convinced that in each of the readings this passage gives, although apparently not the same thoughts, but equally possible in the essence of the matter and the course of speech, and even equally fruitful. 11b is already conveyed in agreement by all texts. But that part of the Greek. manuscripts, which has in 11a the word uphenehem “and their faces,” leaves no doubt that the prophet in 11b speaks of wings; according to euro According to the text and the Greek manuscripts that agree with it, the reader must guess about the subject of this sentence, although he can easily guess. According to all texts in 11b, the prophet already speaks of only wings. And first he repeats about them what is said in v. 9, namely, that they were choveroth. But now the prophet adds that in such a relationship, in a relationship that can be expressed by the word choveroth (contacted, united), there were only two wings for each (לאש personal: “at the husband”; LXX: ἑκατέρῳ) being. At the same time, the wings of one creature touched or connected with each other. Another אש can only have this meaning; it is an abbreviated expression instead of such a complete one: “to (אל) two (שתים)”, i.e. wings, “another husband” אש 68 . They rightly consider (Kr. Vink.) the expression leisch choveroth isch to be an abbreviation of the corresponding expression of Art. 9. choveroth ischschah el achothah “one wing touched the other.” The Prophet omits in the previous expression the words ischschah el achothah - one (wing) to the other (touched), but makes a significant addition to the previous expression with the words leisch and isch "from one (animal) to another." Therefore, it is impossible with LXX, Pesh. Cor. Bert. Toi, Kr. restore here the fuller expression of the 9th Art. (i.e. read in verse 11 ischschah el achothah as in verse 9). Thus, if in 9 tbsp. It was still unknown which animals' wings were connected to each other, but now any doubt on this score is eliminated: the wings of one animal (leisch) touched the wings of another (isch). Which wing of one animal touched which wing of another should be clear by itself: of course, the right of one is the left of the other. It was just as clear and just as did not require special explanation on the part of the prophet how the animals had to be positioned so that such contact of the wings between them was possible. The animals were supposed to form a square, the corners of which they themselves would occupy, and the sides would be made up of mutually touching wings. Subsequently (v. 13) we learn what constituted the contents of this living and reverently terrible square. Here we only learn that between the animals there was a constantly closed place, cordoned off by their wings, a terrible and inaccessible place. LXX translates well here choveroth through συνεζευγμέναι “their wings were connected (conjugated), connected, “if not physically, then spiritually” (Fr. Rozhd.), inseparable, inseparable from each other. The same word choveroth 70 could not be translated so accurately in verse 9, where it is also applied to the faces of animals; there it is translated by them indefinitely - ἐχόμεναι (freedom of translation is completely legal, usual in 70). Reasoning from a natural point of view, when mysterious animals were flying in one direction or another, the wings facing the other direction should have been inactive (See). But this is precisely where one cannot reason from a natural point of view. Just as the legs of animals and the wheels near the animals were adapted to movement in all directions, so the wings, facing in different directions, all carried the animals in one direction. We find a unique idea of ​​the arrangement of the wings of Ezekiel’s cherubim in Maldonatus. Assuming that each animal has 16 wings (4 for each of the 4 faces of the animal), he considers 8 of them to be outstretched: 2 were outstretched so as to fly to the east, 2 to the west, 2 to the north and two to the south. According to this presentation of the matter, with his remark about outstretched wings, the prophet does not want to say anything else than that the wings of the mysterious animals were outstretched and positioned in such a way that the animals were ready to fly in any direction. 8 other wings covered the body of the animals: 2 covered the front part of the body, on which was the face of a man, 2 back - with the face of an eagle, 2 right with the face of a lion, and 2 left with the face of a calf. This idea is based on the incorrect assumption that each animal has 16 wings (4 wings for each face). If the upper two wings of the mysterious animals were in a state of constant soaring, then the lower two wings could not reach such a state at all. They had a special purpose - to serve as a cover for the body and therefore could not be separated from the body (parad) and rise upward (milmahlah). The two functions that are carried out by the natural wing - flight and closing the body, in cherubs are divided between special wings, of course, for a more perfect performance of these functions. Just as the cherubim could not help but constantly float in the air, so they could not leave their bodies uncovered. Why? Various answers have been given to this question. But before you start assessing them, you need to find out exactly what the animals were covering. Of course, they could not cover the whole body, both because the prophet sees and distinguishes faces, legs and even hands (though it was noted about the latter that they were visible, that is, barely, from under the wings), and because the wing generally cannot cover the entire body. According to EUR i.e. what they covered is called גויתיהנה גויה (gevijjah) the actual torso (Dan. 10:6), can mean the whole body, but devoid of life, “corpse” (1 Sam. 31:12; 14:9). Thus, the body itself was covered with wings of the mysterious animals 69. Blzh. Theodoret sees in the covering of the body by the wings of the cherubs “an indication that not everything is accessible to the heavenly powers and that they do not go beyond their prescribed limits; they spread two wings, enjoying the contemplation given to them, and with two they cover the body, content with ignorance of the hidden and not trying to find out what cannot be known.” By blzh. To Jerome, too, “the two wings with which the body is covered depict the imperfection of knowledge.” It is true that many secrets of the Divine are inaccessible to the cherubim; but this could hardly be symbolized by covering the body with their wings: the body cannot be called an instrument of knowledge. Rather, covering the body with wings could mean the incomprehensibility of the essence of the cherubim themselves or their reverence for God (as many people think). The difference with the seraphim, which cover only the face and legs, is noteworthy. This difference is explained in such a way that in Ezekiel the idea is strengthened through an indication of the body in general (Geph.), i.e. the whole body, then so that the cherubim, who do not cover their faces, “stand before Jehovah more freely and more equally than those who, like people, cover their faces before the manifestation of the Glory of the Lord” (Kr.). Perhaps there was no need for the cherubim to cover their faces because they were not in front of the throne of God, but under it, as its bearers. Please contact us הָרוּח means Καὶ ἑκάτερον κατὰ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ἐπορεύετο οὗ ἂν ἦν τὸ πνεῦμα πορευόμενον ἐπορεύοντο καὶ οὐκ ἐπέστρεφον. And each one goes straight to his face. Wherever the spirit was walking, I walked and didn’t turn back. The Prophet had already noticed that the mysterious animals could go in any direction where their faces were turned. Their faces, since there were four of them, were turned to “all the ends of the earth” according to the biblical expression, or to all the countries of the world in our opinion. “The design of a real chariot is of such a kind that the turning of 4 creatures when changing direction becomes unnecessary: ​​simply a different creature than before takes upon itself the leadership, and it is always the one whose human face stands in the direction that should be taken” (Kr. Bert.). This is the idea of ​​Art. 12a (according to the Holy Bible 11b). 12a is literally the same as Art. 9b. Such literal repetitions are in the spirit of Ezekiel, who uses them as a means of drawing the reader’s attention to one or another thought. That. The prophet considered the fact that the animals did not turn around while walking to be very important; he was very amazed by it. But there is a significant difference in 12a compared to 9b. There, the remark that each animal walked in the direction that was in front of him is preceded by the remark that the animals did not turn around during the procession. Here these two remarks are put in reverse order. In v. 9: “during their procession they did not turn around, but each walked in the direction of his face”; in verse 12: “And they walked each in the direction of their faces... they did not turn around as they walked. In 9b art. the main idea was that the animals never turned around, p.ch. this made possible the constant and always equal contact between their wings, which forms the theme of Art. 9. In 12 Art. This idea is secondary, but the main one is that the animals could walk in the direction of each of their faces, which means in all directions, to all countries of the world: access to the whole world was open to them with equal ease. And “as the 4 creatures were completely of the same species, their movement was completely the same” (See). What determined the movement of mysterious animals in one direction and not the other? “Wherever the spirit was to go, they went,” this is how the prophet literally answers this question in Hebrew. This is possible by design only in the European Union. language expression 70 is explained as follows: “even if the spirit walks 70, I go.” So, “a special command to the 4 creatures into which country the movement should take place was as little needed as in Isa. 6 an expressive command to one of the seraphim to take a hot coal from the altar. The entire chariot was permeated by one spirit and one will, which was communicated to creatures internally without the mediation of words” (Kr.). What kind of spirit is this that determined the movement of the Divine chariot? Here are the most important opinions about this “spirit”. Following the Targum, many understood the spirit, which determined the movement of the cherubim, to be the will, the desire of the cherubim themselves. The Targum conveys this passage as follows: “to the place where they wanted to go, they went.” Vulgate: ubi erat impetus spiritus. As proof of the possibility of such a meaning, 2 Chronicles is cited here for the word “spirit” רוח. 36:22; 1 Par. 5:26; but there ruach has its usual meaning of “spirit,” which is what the translation of these passages in 70 gives it. Ruach often means the soul by which the body lives and moves, like Eccl. 12:7; Zach. 12:1: Ezek. 20:21. Here, too, by ruach they mean the soul of the cherubim (Roz.). But cherubim do not have a body that this soul animates. A certain modification of the latter opinion is the opinion of Gafernik that by ruach we mean that divine breath of life, the carriers of which were the cherubim, p.c., after the fall of people. they were entrusted with the tree of life. "Breath of Life" is another name for the soul. Or rather, they think that “this ruach must come from God, who sits on the throne above 4 beings” (Bert.). “By “spirit” it is better to understand the impulse (impulsum) of God, etc. also in Art. 20, 21 speaks of wheels, and the wheels obviously did not have a will, but followed the impulse of God. This explanation - mystical - is more suitable, since later we learn that the prophet is also a trace. and God Himself, speaking through the prophet, wants those animals to follow the impulse and suggestion of God” (Mald.). “The animals went where God, sitting on the throne above them, directed them through ruach. That. ruach here as in other places, e.g. Is. 37:7 (“Behold, I will send a spirit into him, the king of Assyria, and he will hear the message and return to his land, and I will smite him with the sword in his land”) an instrument, a means by which God determines the thinking and action of his creatures in an extraordinary way” (See). Comparison of other places in the book. Ezekiel, speaking about the ruach, convinces Bertolet that the ruach “is not only spiritual, but also a material, albeit supersensible agent, comparable to the wind (ruach), which blows in Ezekiel. 1:4 cloud" (Bert.). “Feature of Ezek. that in him the “spirit” is ascribed essentially motive power; like here the divine chariot, like in other cases the prophet himself is transported in spirit from place to place” (Kr.). The mere fact that the word ruach, which had a wide variety of meanings in the language of the Jews, is used here without any explanation, this alone shows that, in the opinion of the prophet, it should not have aroused doubts in the reader about what ruach should be understood here. The term placed before this word 71 leaves no doubt about its meaning. Until now, the prophet has named only one ruach, and this ruach was the one that went (v. 4). This is the wind that preceded the vision and preceded it, just as it generally precedes and accompanies every appearance of God. So, the movement of the mysterious animals in one direction or another was determined by the movement of the wind, its direction. The movement of the cherubs was determined by the wind - isn’t there something unworthy and humiliating for them in this? This would indeed have been the case if the wind that determined their movement had been an ordinary wind. He, however, was a real wind that took place in nature. But he was not an ordinary wind. And the cloud that went with these winds was a real cloud (just as the pillar of cloud before the Jews in the desert was real); nevertheless, it was far from an ordinary cloud: for the spiritual gaze of the prophet, it was filled with unearthly living beings. So the wind that walked before the Lord had to be worthy and capable of this, so to speak. Like a cloud, it must have contained something similar to what the cloud contained. Moreover, since the movement of the cherubim who were in the cloud depended entirely on the wind, the wind had to contain something higher, superior to what the cloud contained. There is a trace in the wind that went before the Lord. something living and intelligent must have been present. In all parts and agents of the present phenomenon, even in such minor ones as wheels, there was life, there was intelligence and consciousness. All this - and to a much higher degree - must have been in the wind that accompanied the vision and preceded it. What or who was present in that wind? It is remarkable that while the prophet speaks of the “inner content,” so to speak, of the cloud, he says nothing about such content of the “lifting up” wind that walked before the cloud. Obviously, in this wind he did not behold anything similar to what he saw in the cloud. His spiritual vision also could not penetrate into the inner content of that extraordinary wind, as it penetrated into the content of the cloud. But not being able to see anything in the wind that accompanied the vision, the prophet could and must have felt that there was something special in this ruach. He even had to know what exactly was special about this ruach. He could not help but know a special kind of ruach, now unknown to us. In the book of Ezekiel one can often find the word ruach (“wind”, “spirit”) in the most unexpected connection for us and without any further explanation, as if its meaning should be clear to everyone from the connection of speech, from the place where it is found: m.t. No matter how closely you look at this connection, it will remain unclear what kind of ruach we are talking about. In fact, is it possible to understand what kind of “spirit” Ezekiel is talking about in this place: “and when (during the vision - the Lord) spoke to me, the ruach entered into me and set me on my feet” (2:2); or: “the spirit (after the vision of Chebar) lifted me up and took me, and I walked in grief” (3:14); “The ruach lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem” (8:3), after which visions the ruach also “lifted him up and carried him to Chaldea to the immigrants” (11:24). And the prophet apparently considered this name to be completely clear to readers and not requiring further explanation. Elsewhere in V.Z. we also find examples of such a vague and mysterious use of this word: Job, in his speech, which is called especially sublime (37:1), says: “While the breath is in me and the spirit (ruach) of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak unrighteousness, etc.” (3.4) 72 . Wed. Job. 3:8; 20:25. Apparently from biblical antiquity the ruach was known, which in its actions was so unlike the ordinary wind that it could hardly be called by this name. In Old Testament history, especially in the lives of the prophets, there were indeed cases of the appearance of such a wind, which, having all the signs of a real wind, was not, however, a simple, natural wind. The prophets Elijah and Elisha were sometimes lifted up by some special, extraordinary wind and carried them far away, so that later they could not be found; It seems that there were cases when such a wind overthrew the prophet on some mountain or valley: 1 Kings. 18:12. 2 Kings 2:16. The history of the prophets, of course, was so memorable to every Jew that he could not help but know about this type of wind, ruach, and Ezekiel could use this word without explanation. It is remarkable that such a ruach appears usually, if not exclusively, in the history of the prophets. It seems to have something to do with the prophetic gift and ministry. After the time of the prophets, we meet him again only in the history of the apostles - the successors of the prophetic ministry. Just like prophets and apostles are sometimes transported from place to place in some miraculous way; This is how Philip was transferred: Acts. 8:39 73 . In all these cases, some higher agent must have been present in the natural wind, an invisible agent of extraordinary strength and power. How great the strength and power of this figure is is evident especially from one place in the book. Ezekiel. It is known that during the miraculous revival of bones, the prophet had to prophesy the ruach so that they would breathe on the bones and revive them. Since this ruach is further described as a wind, for example, it is said that it came from the four ends of the earth, then here we have a phenomenon similar to those listed, i.e. the wind with some higher Actor in it; Moreover, this Actor is directly attributed life-giving power, an essentially divine power. That is why often, when such a wind is spoken of, it is called the Lord’s, God’s. If we now turn to that ruach, which had such a close and direct relation to Ezekiel’s vision, we will be convinced that Ezekiel could not help but assume the presence of a similar Actor in it. It is noteworthy that in describing the vision the prophet first of all calls this “spirit.” If we take a closer look at the latter’s relationship to the vision, then we can say about this “spirit” that he was the main agent of the vision. He was positively a visionary. In fact, the cloud had to be carried by the wind, and in the cloud there were both animals and wheels (that is why the movement of the latter, like animals, was subject to ruach, v. 20). So, if the Lord was coming to him on the cloud that Ezekiel saw, then none other than the Lord Himself must have been present in the “spirit” that moved the cloud and the whole vision. And yet the ruach, which directed the course of the vision, is not identified by the prophet with God, who appeared to him in the vision. The Invisible Actor of ruach has some immediate relation to the animals, the wheels of vision, to the prophet himself (enters him to put him on his feet, lifts him, carries him), while God sits inaccessibly above the animals on his throne. In a word, the Actor of ruach and the Lord are not quite the same thing, but at the same time it turns out that no one could act in ruach like God Himself. And in this idea neither the prophet nor his readers and translators saw a contradiction. The Old Testament knew so much about the Holy Spirit! This is what or Who depended on the choice of this or that direction in their movement by the mysterious animals. But once the direction had been taken, there might be a need to change it. The Prophet notes that this change in direction occurred among the cherubim in a completely different way from the way it occurs in the moving creatures of the earth. These latter in such cases turn to “set their face” on where they need to go. The cherubim, whose faces looked simultaneously in all directions, did not need such turns: “they did not turn around when they walked.” Codes Al. Vat., Peshito, N 23 Pars., Jer. con. ef. Arab, do not have in this sentence (12c) the last word בלכתם “when they walked”; code. March. Cheese. and sire. hex. have it under asterisk. Therefore Cor. and the Toi consider this word to be an insertion of a copyist, but according to Kr. on the basis of Art. 9 and 10, 11 it can be held. The codes listed in the first row and 6 Ken., as well as the Vulg. start 12s with “and”, which is absent from the mass. The entire verse is missing from #91 Ken. Home page Home וְנֹגַהּ לָאֵשׁ וּמִן־הָאֵשׁ יוֹצֵא בָרָק Καὶ ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ζῴων ὅρασις ὡς ἀνθράκων πυρὸς καιομένων ὡς ὄψις λαμπάδων συστρεφομένων ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν ζῴων καὶ φέγγος τοῦ πυρός καὶ ἐκ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐξεπορεύετο ἀστραπή. And among the animals there was a vision like the coals of a burning fire, like a vision of candles meeting among the animals, and the light of fire, and from the fire came like lightning. With their mutually touching wings, the cherubs cordoned off a certain place, which, as could already be concluded from such an extraordinary fencing of it, had some special purpose. Verse 13 describes this passage. The first half of this verse is rendered differently by the Masoretes and the 70th. Mas.: “and the appearance of these animals was like the appearance of burning coals, like the appearance of lamps”; 70: “And among the animals there is the appearance of burning coals, as of lamps revolving around one another.” That. According to 70, the prophet in 13a already describes the place between the animals, according to mass. t. – also the animals themselves, about the same thing that happened between the animals, speaks only in 13b. The Masoretic text is explained as follows. By “likeness” here we no longer understand the figure of animals (as in v. 5), since it has already been said, and not any particularity in the image of animals (for example, the eyes, as some want, recalling Daniel 10:6: “his eyes are like burning lamps” and Apoc. 1:14: “his eyes are like a flame of fire”), but the color, as is immediately explained through mar’eh, the color that was like a fire of coals; those. the animals were fiery in color, so that they appeared entirely fiery and sparkled like lamps (Mald.). Now almost all biblical scholars give preference in this place to 70 over mas. etc. The reasons for this are as follows. The prophet already spoke about the likeness (demuth) and appearance (mar'eh) of animals in v. 5. Then it should have been said that this species was fiery. This type of animal would be so unusual and amazing that it should be mentioned first of all. That the feet of the creatures that appeared were like shiny copper has been said for a long time, but that the creatures themselves are like burning coals and lamps, this is only being said now. And Pescito partly agrees here with 70: “like the appearance of burning coals of fire, the appearance is as if a lamp were moving.” The expression of the Masoretic text is rough: “and the likeness of animals, their appearance was as if”... – Demuth with mar’eh is unnecessary (Kr.: inappropriate; See: they do not reconcile). Then - how could animals look like burning coals and lamps? They could shine like coals and lamps, but not have their demuth and mar'eh. Moreover, the brilliance of the coal and the lamp are too different to serve as a comparison for the same object. Fire, as we will see, is produced by the movement of the cherubim and from it they take coals (10:7), and not they themselves are the fire. How did the Masoretic reading come about? Instead of ודמות there was either ובנות “and among them” (70, Arab., Gitz., See, Cor., Zig., Bert., Kr.) or ובתיך (Toi). The first is closer in design and for it 10:7. It might seem incomprehensible why the prophet does not say anything about the color of animals. Were they really hairy, like the animals whose faces they bore? They did not think that the prophet might not have seen colors and outer coverings, because in visions, unlike in material objects, everything should be visible. Verse 13 could provide an answer to this seemingly urgent question under the condition of changing the first word. And what, if not fiery, was it fitting for cherubim to be, if only they had color (and how could they not have it if the prophet saw them?). Their closest heavenly neighbors are “fiery” by their very name - seraphim. Ps. 103:4 says that God makes his angels winds and his servants flames of fire (one way or the other way around - the winds are messengers and the flames of fire are servants - is not clear from the text). With the exception of this first word, on which, however, the meaning of the whole verse depends, the verse is read 70 times in agreement with the Masoretes in almost everything. That. those coals and lamps, which the Masoretes want the cherubim to resemble, were a new data of vision. They filled the place that was cordoned off by the wings of the cherubim. The content is quite suitable for such a place 74 . The prophet calls the coals (גחלי) that were between the cherubim fiery (“coals of fire”) and “burning.” The second definition strengthens the first: the coals between the cherubim were not black and extinct, but red, still hot and in the very process of burning. But these coals were not ordinary, natural ones. It was something similar only to natural coals, something that looked like coals (mar'ehem ke). The appearance of coals here suggested and continues to suggest different thoughts, which can all be equally true, because a symbol can have several meanings. To reveal this symbol, they recall poetic descriptions of thunderstorms in the psalms, where coals are mentioned along with thunder, lightning and hail. So in Ps. 17:9: “The smoke of His wrath will rise up, and fire will kindle from His presence; coals were kindled from him"; 13: “from the brilliance before Him there came clouds, hail, and coals of fire”; Ps. 139:11: “Coals of fire will fall on them; I will cast them down in passion.” The context of these places apparently gives reason to understand these coals as simply lightning. On this basis, the coals between the cherubim were identified with lightning, about which the prophet now says: “lightning came from the fire.” “The place between the cherubim is, like ch. 10 (cf. 28:14; Gen. 3:24) as the original place of lightning, the most powerful weapons of the Almighty, which in other places are directly called coals” (See). It should only be noted that the passages of the psalms used for comparison contain a description not of an ordinary thunderstorm, exhausted by natural thunder and lightning, but of that special thunderstorm that surrounds the appearance of God, and precisely His appearance on the cherubim (Ps. 17:11). Consequently, coals there could be the same independent attribute of theophany as here. Therefore, if by coals here and there we mean lightning (they are mentioned near clouds and hail), then it could be called so not by its appearance (as is usually thought), but by the results of its action - as leaving behind piles of coals. If God is a consuming fire, then such a complete revelation of Him in a certain place, such as is produced by His appearance on the cherubim, cannot but result in the appearance of fire in this place. The place where God steps, seated on cherubim, i.e. Cherubim, first of all, must burn, and the product of combustion is coal. They also explain the presence of coals between the cherubim by analogy with the vision of Isaiah. There the seraphim takes a burning coal from the altar. Vision of Isaiah next. suggests an altar with coals at the throne of God. The same altar is suggested in heaven by apocalyptic visions, according to one of which “the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it to the ground, and there were voices and thunder and lightning and earthquakes” (8:5); incense is placed on this altar by an angel with the prayers of the saints (8:3); under it are the souls of those killed for the word of God (6:9). It is remarkable that the same terrible use was made from the coals of Ezekiel’s vision as was made from the coals of the apocalyptic altar (Ezekiel 10:2 cf. Rev. 8:5). These analogies are considered sufficient to recognize the coals of Ezekiel’s vision as altar coals and to suggest an altar under them, about which the prophet says nothing. This altar, of course, could not be other than movable, just as the entire vision of Ezekiel can be called a movable church (Ros. Keil, Bert.). But wouldn’t this mean complementing the vision of the prophet? Under the mysterious coals he did not see the altar; next, then there were no coals completely similar to those spoken of by Isaiah and the Apocalypse. Ave. Ezekiel does not describe the heavenly sphere that Isaiah and John the Theologian described. Therefore, complete coincidence in their symbolism cannot be expected. But this does not prevent the coals between the cherubim from giving a sacrificial character: the cherubim appear with symbols of constant burnt offering to God; the absence of an altar could indicate the highest and purest spirituality of this burnt offering. This also suggests a comparison of real “coals of fire” (gechalei esch) with those fiery stones (“stones of fire” - avnej esch), among which, according to Ezek. 28:14 Cherubim walk. Precious stones, undoubtedly understood there as fiery stones (Act. 118), are thought of for the sake of their burning in the world as if hardened, having come into a hidden state by fire, which, like ordinary fire, cannot but be generated by the presence of cherubim in a certain place. The Hebrew text of this part of the verse (about coals) presents several grammatical difficulties. After correcting demuth into benoth, the suffix with mar’eh is considered inappropriate and instead of מראיהם they read מראה (Gitz. Cor. Bert. Toi, Kr.). But Smend finds this change in the text unnecessary: ​​“it is true that mar’ehem briefly speaks about what happened between the animals, but judging by Art. Ezekiel was not alien to this way of expression, and if 70 are translated simply ὅρασις, then they hardly had one mar’eh before them.” בערות – “burning” – i.e. coals, not consistent in gender with its defined gachalej – coals, which are m.r. (plural on ם Proverbs 25:22). Therefore, they propose to punctuate this word בערֶתִ in agreement with אש, fire: “coals of a blazing fire.” But 70 agreed with “coals”: ​​ἀνθράκων πυρὸς καιομένων. In Chapter 1 Ezekiel is generally free about grams. family “Like the appearance of lamps,” the prophet continues his description of the place between the cherubim. Lamps before the throne of God are also found in the visions of the Apocalypse: “seven lamps (λαμπάδες) burned before the throne of God, which are the seven spirits of God” (4:5); in another vision, the seer “saw 7 golden lamps and in the midst of the 7 lamps one like the son of man”; these “seven lampstands are seven churches” (1:12, 13, 20). Lighting a lamp before God is a rite of worship, signifying the warmth and dedication of serving God. If the “spirits of God” and “churches” appear before the throne of God not with lamps, but themselves turn into lamps, then this idea is strengthened to extraordinary proportions. In Ezekiel, instead, the lamps appear in a clearly close, but not precisely defined, relationship to the cherubim, accompanying their appearance. But their symbolism is the same as always and everywhere: the spiritual burning of the entire being before God. The original text presents the following perplexities. The member of הלפדים (lappidim – λαμπάδες, arg. int. to consonance of roots) is quite unexpected. Kretschmar and Toi destroy it, like the dittograph ה in the preceding word כמראה, but according to Gesenius (Gram. 126) and Bert. in euros it is used in comparisons. The sentence begins without “and”, simply: “like a type of lamp.” This gives reason to consider it an explanation of the previous one: the same light mass could sparkle not like coals, not like the flame of a lamp; “The fire coals burned like torches” (See). But “and” is also omitted for the sake of vividness of description. Therefore, its absence does not prevent us from considering lamps as new data of vision, especially since further new data are also indicated: fire and lightning. And the flickering of coal is too different from the bright light of lamps. “There is an obvious gradualness here: coals, torches, lightning” (Geph.). Coals m.b. occupy the bottom, turning into flame at the top and discharging even higher with lightning (Shr.). The Prophet continues: החיות בין מתהלכת היא “she walked among the animals.” Who is she? Which noun does היא, the personal pronoun f, refer to? r.? There are two nouns ahead in the verse. r.: demuth – likeness and esch – fire. Demuth, although standing too far away, has the advantage over esch that it is the first word in the verse and the main concept in it. But the authenticity of this word is doubtful, and “how can the likeness of animals walk among these animals?” (Gitz.). All the less can hi apparently relate to esch, which occupies too subordinate a position in the sentence: standing in casu constructo with gachalei - coals, it forms one word with this latter, as if ending it. But since all the contents of the space between animals listed so far were fiery, there was fire in one form or another, then the reader of the prophet who by hi will mean fire will not sin. Although grammatically esch occupies a very insignificant position in the antecedent so that it can be replaced by a pronoun, but logically it is the main subject of speech. Ancient translations are inconsistent in their rendering of this word. 70 lower it. The Targum is thought to read חאש instead of חא (“one letter is missing” Cor.; “ignis ardens interanimalia”). Vulgate: haec erat visio, next. seems to relate hi to mar'eh. Isn't it used here? r. instead of cf. p., which, absent in Heb. language, often replaced by feminine? In fact, if the prophet wanted to say: “this (i.e., everything mentioned earlier - coals, lamps) walked among the animals,” how could he express “this” otherwise than through זות or היא. True, analogies for such an expression have not been found, but the language of Ezekiel is generally peculiar and with a tendency towards conciseness at the expense of clarity. If such an understanding of hi was grammatically and impossible, then in the course of speech and in the essence of the matter, nothing more than exactly everything listed earlier should most likely be what מתהלכת walked among animals 75 . The Prophet, at least so far, sees the cherubim only in motion (lelectan. v. 9. 12). Track. everything that was between the cherubim, the place between them with all its extraordinary content - coals and lamps, had to move, go with (mithalec) them. That. the verb הלך, placed here in the seventh (reciprocal) form, has the same meaning as in v. 4. has the same form of the verb לקח to take. Used about fire, the verb lacach in the 7th form meant that the fire moving in the vision engulfed everything as the vision moved. The verb halac, used here in the same form and about essentially the same fire, means the movement of this fire together with animals. Verb mithhalleketh m.b. contains another thought here. It indicates not only the close relationship between the movement of what was between the animals - coals and lamps - and the movement of the animals themselves, but may indicate reciprocity in the movement of that fiery mass in itself. Prophet with the word mithhalac m.b. wants to say that everything (hi) that was between the animals was mutually moving. All this - these coals and lamps - were not at rest, but moved, moved not only as the animals moved and depending on their movement, but moved between the animals, walked between them, and walked depending on each other: the movement of one of these fiery elements caused the movement of the other. This idea is given by the Masoretic reading of this passage. But this reading is not entirely uncontroversial. Apparently 70 gives a completely different reading of this passage. By omitting היא they agree מתהלכת with λαμπάδες and translate it συστρεφομένων. Track. they vocalized this word מִתְהַלֶּכֶת – also a participle, but w. r. no units h., and pl. In this form, the word is incorrectly agreed with halappidim, which is m.r.; but 70 obviously didn’t attach any importance to this, maybe. in view of other cases of Ezekiel's free use of grammatical genders. This verb 70 is conveyed here through συστρεφομένων. It is unlikely that this Greek word here has its later specific meaning of “rolling up” or “hoarding”, “gathering.” If it is a translation of the verb halac, then its meaning should not lack the concept of walking. And such a concept will be contained in this word if we give it the basic and rather frequent meaning of the verb στρέφειν “to address.” Since, according to 70, this word is a definition of λαμπάδων, then it should characterize those lamps that the prophet saw between the animals. These lamps are not in a calm state, but rotate (στρεφομένοι), i.e. do not fluctuate only like the flame of an ordinary lamp (Fr. Rozhd.), p.ch. There would be nothing to talk about this, but they either walk back and forth, or rotate, spin around. Whether the first of these concepts is contained here or the second, and if the second, then whether each person is circling around his own mental axis, or one around the other, or everyone around one axis, one thing does not determine more closely. But the method of this treatment is defined somewhat more closely by the prefix σον. It is impossible to convey in one word the concept contained in a verb with such a prefix in Russian. language Συστρέφεσθαι should mean joint circulation or circling, dependent on each other. So, the mysterious lamps between animals have 70 circulation or rotation together, and again it remains unknown whether it is joint with each other or with something else, etc. This may mean the compatibility of handling, for example, with coals, which were mentioned earlier, or with animals, between which the lamps were located. That. With this word, the prophet (in the understanding of his 70th) wanted to say that the lamps rotate either together with each other, or together with coals, or together with animals (they go in the direction in which the animals go). Each of these thoughts with the same right can take place in the broad to the point of uncertainty concept of “converge” 76. The word συστρεφομένων is not a literal translation of mithhalleketh, הלך means to go, πορεύσθαι, and not to turn, στρέφεσθαι. 70, who freely translate only when absolutely necessary, obviously found literal translation impossible here. In fact, can the verb halac, to go, have in any language other than Hebrew and perhaps the ancient eastern languages ​​related to it, the reciprocal meaning that the 7th form gives it in this place? The reflexive meaning of this verb could be expressed in Greek. with the verb “to address”, mutual – with the prefix σον. By a remarkable coincidence, this translation of this Hebrew verb almost coincided with the translation of a completely different verb, used about an object very close to that described here. That “flame of the sword” (החרב להט), which according to Gen. 3:24, together with the cherubim, blocked the access of the first parents to paradise, called מתהפכת, according to 70 στρεφομένην. These two passages (Ezek. 1:13 and Gen. 3:24) may shed some light on one another. There, as in Ezekiel, the appearance of cherubim is accompanied by fire. This alone allows us to expect that the fire in both cases will be more or less the same. Indeed, the appearance, form of fire in Gen. 3:24 does not depart far from the form that the fire between the cherubim had according to Ezekiel. In Gen. he is a flame like a sword. In Ezek. it looks like (kemar’eh) coals and “lights”. In both cases, this flame has movement, and this movement is characterized by words that in Greek and other languages ​​cannot be conveyed otherwise than by the same word (στρέφεσθαι). If the fire of Ezekiel's cherubim had so much in common with the fire of the paradise cherubim, then we will better understand Ezekiel in this place if we take into account all the circumstances that should have surrounded the appearance of this fire, which took place in that actual case of its appearance. If we consider paradise to have once materially existed on earth and occupied a certain place on it, then the sword of circulating fire, which blocked access to paradise, can only be imagined in the form of some kind of strip, a tongue of flame, not always located in one place, but appearing here and there. Since the cherubim, on which, according to the biblical concept, God ascends to walk, “fly” (Ps. 17:11, etc.), are thought of as being in more or less constant motion, then the fire that accompanies the appearance of the cherubim cannot be other than arising here and here, walking together (mithalleketh) with the cherubim. Should the word mithhalleketh be attributed to lamps from 70 or should it be read from mas. i.e. a special subject (היא), in both cases its meaning will be almost the same, almost the same thought will be expressed in it. And for this thought this word will be quite suitable. Therefore, there is no need to assume that 70 read here the verb used in Jer. 23:19 – מתחולל (“raging” flame) or that the original verb used in Proverbs was here. 25:22: חתה, heap (“to gather” coals on the enemy’s head” 77 . Since it is difficult to assume that in Heb. Since such an unclear word as hi was inserted, then 70 rather they omitted it. But by lowering it, 70, as we were convinced, did not at all affect the thoughts of the entire place. A circumstance that gives the translator the right to make any omission necessary for the sake of clarity. “And the radiance from the fire,” the prophet continues his description. From this remark, we first of all see that the coals and lamps, which were in constant motion, merged for the prophet into one mass of fire, which spread light around itself. Every fire spreads light around itself. And this remark would be idle if it contained only such a thought. If between the cherubs there was fire in one form or another, in the form of burning coals or the flame of torches, then it should have illuminated the surrounding space. But obviously there was something special in the brilliance and radiance of that fire, if the prophet draws the reader’s attention to it. Since the fire between the cherubim was not a natural and ordinary fire, it was to be expected that the light from this fire, its radiance, would not be ordinary. But can anything be concluded about the nature of this light from the prophet’s brief remarks about it, which apparently says nothing except that there was light from the fire? The light emitted by the fire of the cherubim is called by the prophet וְנֹגַהּ in Hebrew. In those not particularly frequent places in the Old Testament where the word nogah is used, it serves the purpose of a poetic description of light (Isa. 4:5; 60:10, 62:1; Joel. 2:10; Hab. 3:11; Prov. 4:18). This is primarily a poetic word. But poetry has a unique language and from the stock of words it selects words of predominant power and beauty. You can also point out examples of the use of the word nogah in prose speech, but these examples only confirm the extraordinary power and expressiveness of this word. So, this is the word that is used about the radiance of the glory of the Lord (Ezek. 10:4). So, the radiance emanating from the fire between the cherubim was of extraordinary power, if Ezekiel denotes it by this word. This should have been expected based on the position occupied by the fire that emitted this radiance. He was between the cherubim and was produced by them. The cherubim themselves shone with this radiance. Track. in strength (intensity) it had to approach the radiance of the Divine, which is already unbearable and cannot be visible to man. In this description, the prophet uses the word nogah not for the first time. At the very beginning of the vision, when the majestic phenomenon had just opened to the eyes of the prophet in the north, he had already noticed and paid attention to this radiance. It illuminated the cloud that was coming towards him (v. 4). Since this cloud contained 4 mysterious animals (v. 5), this radiance, illuminating its bulk (gadol), served as an immeasurable halo that embraced the entire horizon (saviv), worthy in size of those whom it surrounded. That. By using nogah here, the prophet refers the reader to article 4, where he already spoke about radiance. What he said about it there - that it illuminated the whole great cloud around - helps the reader to get an idea of ​​​​it now. On the other hand, what the prophet now says about this radiance - that it was produced by the fire between the cherubim - supplements his previous brief remark about it. From this fire between the cherubim, as the prophet says, came that extraordinary nogah, which illuminated the entire phenomenon - the great cloud with its living and terrible content. The fire between the cherubim emitted more than just a quiet, gentle radiance (in Is. 62:7 nogah about the morning dawn; 16:19 and Joel 2:10 - about the radiance of the luminaries). It continuously flashed like lightning. Of all the types of earthly light, lightning alone brings us, in addition to admiration, to a certain awe and therefore can serve as the best likeness of the light with which the Divinity shines. In addition, lightning can be called inner, hidden light, only temporarily breaking out and visible to man, and in this it most closely resembles the divine light invisible to man 78 . Thanks to this, lightning in the V.Z. often acts as an attribute of theophany. Mount Sinai shone with lightning when God descended on it. Lightning is mentioned in the description of expected or requested theophanies (Ps. 17, Hab. 3:4, 11). The face of the one who appeared to Daniel on the river was like lightning. Tiger (10:6). Ap. John sees lightning coming from the throne of God (Apoc. 4:11). The fact that the fire between the cherubim emits lightning indicates the high degree of godlikeness of the cherubim: they shine with a glory close to the Divine glory. It is remarkable that, while everything that was between the cherubim bore only the likeness of earthly phenomena (“the appearance of coals,” “like the appearance of lamps”), there is no such addition about lightning, but it is directly noted that lightning (ברק) emanated, and not the appearance or likeness of it. It is indeed difficult to imagine anything only similar to lightning: any resemblance to it must be complete identity. On the other hand, it in itself and in the form in which it is given by nature is majestic enough to become a companion of theophany. Home page Καὶ τὰ ζῶα ἔτρεχον, καὶ ἀνέκαμπτον, ὡς εἶδος τοῦ βεζέκ I address myself as a vision of Vezekov. This is the darkest and most questionable verse in the chapter. Providing a barely translatable text, it is crossed out by the majority of modern biblical scholars (Gitz. Cor. See Dav. Bert. Toi, Cr.). There are many reasons to think that this verse was not in the text used by LXX. Blzh. Jerome says that in translation 70 it was added from Theodotion. It is not found in the Vatican Codex, the Venetian Codex, or Parsons Codex 106. In Alex. Code. March. Cheese. and sire. copy it is under the asterisk (the following is brought in from the Hebrew text). So, not a single review of LXX considers this verse to be indisputable. In this sense, with some right they say about him that “LXX doesn’t have him.” To these external grounds of non-authenticity are added, as we will see, many internal ones: in the usual understanding, it apparently contains thoughts that contradict other places in the chapter and bears obvious signs of gloss or interpolation. Nevertheless, its presence in all Hebrew manuscripts without exception and in a considerable number of Greek and in translations made from LXX does not allow a cautious exegete to irrevocably recognize its non-authenticity. One must always take into account the possibility of the authenticity of such dubious passages and subject their idea to the most careful testing. No matter how differently the individual words of this verse are understood, half of which are ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, almost all ancient and modern interpreters agree that this verse speaks of the movement of animals. One must think that in the movement of animals, in the process of it, there was some hitherto unspecified feature and this feature is noted by the prophet in Art. Of course, it is very likely that in addition to the above-mentioned features in the movement of the Cherubim, i.e. There was no need to turn the constant position of the wings, there could be some even more amazing feature in their movement: everything about the mysterious animals seen by the prophet was so unusual that their procession could be completely different from the ordinary procession and movement. It is just as likely that this movement, if it was so different from ordinary movement and procession, was very difficult to describe and visualize for the reader, it was difficult to choose words to characterize it and it was necessary to resort to the most unexpected comparisons. All this could lead to particular ambiguity in the description and all this requires all the more attention to this place. The Prophet says that the mysterious animals ושוב רצוא, which is usually translated: “ran and returned” or “ran back and forth.” According to Masoretic punctuation, these verbs are placed in the indefinite mood, which here obviously replaces the verbum finitum. The second verb is “to return.” The first one is ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. It is considered an Aramaized form of the verb רוץ to run (Geph.), the root ו of which became “at rest” (Roz.). So, this part of the verse asks the following questions: 1) why is the indefinite mood used here and 2) is it possible to assign the indicated meaning to the first verb. On the first question, it is assumed that the replacement of the verbum finitum by the indefinite mood is not alien to the Hebrew language, as to the ancient one: Gen. 8:7 (Gitz.), so especially later: Job 40:2; Dan. 9:5, 11; Zach. 7:5. (Geph.). Life 8:7 does not at all confirm this use of the indefinite mood; there it serves as an addition: “(the raven from the ark) flew out (infinitive) to fly out and return (indefinite).” In the other three places, unspecified. is also not without the indicative, although it does not serve as an addition to it. Dan.: “We have sinned, we have committed lawlessness, we have acted dishonestly, we have persisted” - taking everything away. “and retreated” undef. Zechariah: “when you fasted” exc. “and they wept” undef. And most importantly, in all these places we are dealing with poetic speech, where the indefinite could be used for liveliness of speech; here “it is not clear why the description suddenly had to become so vivid” (See). This forces many interpreters to see the indicative mood in these verbs. But if רצוא can still be somehow made indicative (read רָצוא, which was 3 literal plural aor. already from the verb רוץ, but the last א will be superfluous), then שוב is impossible without touching the text. So, the indefinite mood remains a mystery here. The second question should also remain without a decisive answer. Such an Aramaization of the form, which is assumed here with the verb ruz “would have no analogy. And the concept of running does not go to the cherubim” (See) So, although the meaning of “run” for the verb רצא is confirmed by ancient translations (ἔτρεχον, Pesh. currebant), nevertheless, this meaning cannot be considered firmly established. With this meaning, this word will not correspond to the directly related vashov, which contains the concept of direction in movement, and not its speed. The amendments proposed in this verb also help matters little. Instead of רצוא they read “to go out” and the so changed word is punctuated differently: יָצְאו (Neopr. Gitz. Toi), יצאו (2 aor. Ev. See) or יצאו (I aor. Gez. 936, 1). This reading is confirmed by the Targum: “they turned and went around and returned” Vulga. ibant et revertebantur. One can also object to such an amendment: 1) that it is an amendment and then 2) the change proposed by it is far from easy; ו is not so close to small י. Kretschmar suggests reading יעוא “sparkled”, and before hachajoth insert benoth “between”, which, as graphically similar to hachajoth, could fall out: “and between the animals there was a sparkle like a kind of lightning.” If the meaning of the first verb must remain unknown, then the second cannot apparently leave any doubt as to its meaning. Since שוב retains its meaning of “return” in all its forms and in every connection, then in conjunction with the first verb it can only have this meaning. Next, whatever movement, whatever image, type of movement is signified by the first verb, return is or could be combined with this movement in animals. When attached to a verb meaning movement, chuv must express the concept of the versatility of this movement, which is why, when translated into new languages, it can be conveyed by the adverb “here and there” 79 . Next, and not knowing what the prophet wants to say about the movement of animals with the first verb, we extract from the second verb one not insignificant feature of this movement - that at times it also had a return direction. This feature takes on particular importance in view of the fact that it was previously noted about cherubs that they could not turn around when walking. Now we learn that this did not prevent them from moving backwards. Prophet m.b. wants to say that the animals “ran both in front and behind with the same ease, just as they had a face and wings in front and behind” (Mald.) LXX: ἀνέκαμπτον - walked around (ἀνακάμπτω “bend” and “go around”). But this feature in the movement of animals, with such seemingly certainty given by the verb schuv, seems to some interpreters impossible. Pescito already corrects the text here, translating: “and the animals fled and did not return”, following, he sees a contradiction between schuv and lo issabu “did not turn around” Art. 9 and 12. LXX: ἀνέκαμπτον. The reverse movement for the cherubs is considered incredible by the newest interpreters. “This “here and there” does not fit the description of Art. 19 and 21, especially since the wheels would have to keep that course.” (Gitz.). “After it is said that between the animals torches walked to and fro, verse 14, according to which the animals themselves must walk to and fro, is not tolerated; such a remark completely destroys the idea of ​​their greatness, which is so excited by the remark that they did not turn around in the procession” (Bert.). “From such a movement, not constant, but deviating here and there, like the movement of lightning, the balance of the Divine Throne located on animals would be in significant danger. In other cases, the chariot always turns out to be in calm motion, but never moving back and forth” (Kr.). We will speak further about the relationship between the movement of animals and the throne of God. Then we will be convinced that the idea of ​​​​Divine greatness could not be lost from this or that method of animal movement or from its speed. Nevertheless, it is difficult to expect that the verb schuv would convey here the idea of ​​versatility in the movement of animals or the possibility for them of a reverse movement, a return: if the phenomenon went to the prophet, then how and why could it go in different directions or receive a return direction at times? The movement of animals, characterized by the words razo and schov, is compared by the prophet with the movement as if (kemar'eh) בזק. This word is again ἅπαξ λεγόμενον and its meaning has to be found by the root. In later Heb. language and in related languages ​​the root bazac means “to scatter” (Talm.). “scatter” (Arabic), crush, divide” (Syr.). This indefinite meaning of bazac., the meaning of scattering, scattering, which can be considered an established fact (Ros.), must be defined here more closely through the context, which according to Art. 13 is not difficult: The entire phenomenon according to this verse retains a fiery appearance. Вazac there is a trace here. a special expression about some kind of “scattering of fire (Sprühfeuer), fiery splashes” (Geph.). Or “it might. means rays of light or lightning suddenly scattered over a wide area. The Arabs use this word, in addition to scattering, about the sun rising and spreading its rays widely; it is precisely used in the translation of Luke. 17:24: “Like lightning shining from under heaven to under heaven” (Ros.). Ancient translations agree in this exact understanding of this word - about rays, about light. While Theodotion (from where v. 14 is taken in the text of LXX) leaves this word without translation, rewriting it simply in Greek letters - βεζεκ, Symmachus renders it ἀκτίς ἀστραπῆτ, Aquila ὠς εἶδος ἀπορροίατς ἤ αστραπῆς, Targum ברקים כהיזר “like a form of lightning.” Peshito puts here the mentioned related Syriac word bezec, the root meaning of which is sparsio, dispersio (Geph.), and the present one is lost and is indicated differently by various Siriologists and interpreters of Peshito: St. Ephraim the Syrian allows a choice between meanings: flame of lightning or meteor, rain of stars (splendor subinde et per intervalles rutilans, qualem mittere solent fulgura, aut discurrentes per sudum fatui ignes), Castellus in Lex. syr. by Rose - a shooting star. Rose. tela ignea s. fulminis (fiery fabric), some - a whirlwind, glossa in one review by Pescito even lapis hyaccinthinus 80. Many of these difficult philological studies about the meaning of the word bazac are avoided by suggesting a typo here: instead of בוק, they think, in the original text there was ברק: “lightning”; The difference is one letter. In essence, it is of course possible that animals had a movement similar to the movement of lightning. The design of the chariot, as we have highlighted, determines that animals, in order to move from one place to another, could not always walk in a straight line, but sometimes had to walk along the legs of a triangle built on it. Such a movement will be a zigzag movement, and lightning has precisely a zigzag movement. But the possibility of such an error in the text is unlikely: it is difficult to admit that barac could be replaced by bazac. Verse 13 allowed us to expect barac here. Why in 13th Art. this word remained unchanged, but changed in Art. 14? Distant in outline in Hebrew. language the letters ר and ז in Arabic and Syriac differ even more from each other and their substitution there is very doubtful. The assumption seems to be supported by the fact that bazac is translated by many ancients as “lightning.” But such a translation does not prove either that those translators read barac in their text, nor that they considered this meaning to be undoubted (Ak. “outflow or lightning”, Sym. not just “lightning”, but “lightning ray”). And not all ancient translations assign this word the meaning of lightning: Theodotion, almost a contemporary of Ak. and Sim., leaves it without translation. That. the translation of this word “lightning” was just a guess and a deliberately approximate translation: the translators were aware that this word meant some other light phenomenon, but, assuming on the basis of Art. 13 that this phenomenon should be close to lightning, they hoped that they would make little mistake if they put “lightning”. Absence of Art. 14 in many Greek codes gives more reason than for any other place in the chapter to consider it a gloss. But if a verse is recognized as a gloss, then not only the meaning of this gloss must be explained, but it must be proven that such a gloss could have appeared and could have found its way into the text. Biblical criticism has not provided sufficient evidence for this. Gitzig says that the whole idea of ​​​​this verse is in connection with the incorrect attribution among the Masoretes of the fiery coals and lamps of Art. 13 to animals (i.e. with the opinion that animals are likened to coals in v. 13) and that the verse refers to mithhalleketh: mithhalleketh, incorrectly applied to animals, is explained through razo and schov. Kretschmar looks at v. 14 as a doublet of v. 13, inserted by the editor from a parallel review. Such a gloss would not explain Art. Could bazac really explain barac, the meaning of which no one doubted? No matter how unsuccessful and doubtful all attempts to explain verse 14 have been, it cannot be said that they have led to nothing. They established several truths regarding this verse and found several thoughts in it, their understatement and obscurity all the more attracting the attention of the researcher. There is every reason to think that the prophet wants to say something else here about mysterious animals and something very important, perhaps. That’s why he saved it for the very end of his long description of animals. There is no doubt that what he communicates here concerns the movement of these mysterious animals. Meanwhile, for the cherubim, these engines of the Glory of God, on which God sits when he descends to earth, movement is in some way their element, their purpose, their main calling. At rest they are barely imaginable. It is not surprising if this movement was so important and difficult to characterize. No matter how the meaning of the comparison given by the prophet for the movement of animals has not been established, it can be recognized beyond doubt that this comparison is taken from the field of light phenomena. So, the only movement in nature that can be compared to the movement of the cherubs is the movement of light. The verb schuv, the only word used by the prophet to characterize this movement with undoubted meaning, shows in which aspect the movement of light can most serve as a similarity to the movement of the cherubim. According to some ancient interpreters, the side that light always returns to its source does not leave it. “Cherubim move like light from a luminous body, which spreads rays in all directions, and they do not leave the body, which is the source and, as it were, the center of their brilliance” (Calmette according to Petit). “Just as the ether is illuminated by sparks of private fires and in the blink of an eye lightning suddenly scatters in different directions and returns back, without losing the container and, so to speak, the source and substance of the fire, so these animals, continuing their path unhindered, hurry forward” (Blessed Jer.). A similar thought is seen in this verse in the Targum, which conveys it as follows: “and the creatures (those), when they were sent to do the will of their Lord, who placed His majesty on high above them, in the twinkling of an eye they turned and went around and covered the universe, and the creatures returned together, and were swift as the form of lightning.” This understanding of Art. 14 can hardly be accepted in its entirety, since it apparently presupposes the removal from time to time of the cherubim from under the throne of God, about which the chapter says nothing and which, as we have seen, does not agree with the idea of ​​cherubim. But this understanding can be accepted and will contain a completely harmonious and fruitful thought with the idea of ​​​​cherubim - in a slightly modified and supplemented form. The cherubim moved without leaving the throne of God and at the same time not dragging it to every place where they needed to be. The Throne of God, under which they were and which they wore. That. did not connect their movements. They could have, in addition to a common movement with the throne of God, their own, which, although not coinciding in direction with that movement, was simultaneously with it. Such a connection of such seemingly incompatible things, says the prophet, is also given in nature, in one of its phenomena, which he calls bazac. Home page הַחַיּוֹת לְאַרְבַּעַת פָּנָיו Καὶ εἶδον καὶ ἰδοὺ τροχὸς εἷς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐχόμενος τῶν ζῴων τοῖς τέσσαρσιν And Videkh, and behold, is one on the earth, holding the four living creatures. Having as their main purpose the movement of the Glory of the Lord, the cherubim in the vision of St. Ezekiel do not perform this high service as directly as one could imagine their bearing of God according to the well-known expression of Ps. 17:11: “he sat on the cherubim and flew.” Between the cherubim and the Glory of the Lord they carry or the throne of God, in the vision of St. Ezekiel there appears a new, independent and apparently of great importance figure - wheels. The wheels suggest a chariot behind it. But the prophet does not indicate it, p.ch. the wheels intended in this vision, as in the vision of Daniel (7:9), for the movement of the throne of God, did not need a material connection with this latter and should, without this connection, mediate the movement of such an exceptional object. The cherubim themselves were the chariot in this case. Assuming one or another chariot behind it, the wheels give the real epiphany the character of a solemnly majestic and rapid ride instead of a simple and slow procession, which has hitherto represented every epiphany. It is remarkable that in another prophet of that era, Daniel, the epiphanies receive this new feature: the throne of God has wheels like a flame of fire. From now on, a special speed is introduced into the actions of Divine Providence, which is usual at the end of each task, inevitable in the works of God at the end of time 81 (it is better than with Grotius to see in the wheels a symbol of the dispersal of the Jews to 4 countries of the world, or with Qliphoth - a symbolic indication that God Himself will descend to earth, will walk (walk - and wheels!) and dwell visibly among His people). Not without reason blzh. Jerome sees in the wheels of this vision an indication of the rotation of earthly life: “everything heavenly and earthly, everything accessible to human understanding turns on the wheels of the sun,” he says in explanation of why the wheels were introduced into the vision of the prophet. If so, then in the rotation of the world the cherubim, next to which stand the wheels of vision and to whose movement they subordinate their movement (vv. 19–21), are assigned by the vision of the prophet the highest significance after God 82 . It goes without saying that in the vision, where everything was unusual and everything had only a similarity, and not the very image of earthly things, the wheels did not completely resemble natural wheels. They are subsequently described by the prophet as gifted with knowledge and led by “spirit.” In the book of Enoch they are counted even among the angelic ranks, under the name of the Ophanim (61:10; 70:7). However, these mysterious visionary figures were actually shaped like wheels. The Prophet does not prefix their names with mar'eh and demuth, with which he introduces into his description the names of other material objects - animals, coals, lamps. The real ones differed from ordinary wheels in some particular features of their type - color, size, etc. But these were real אפנים “wheels”, such as are found in chariots (Ex. 5:18), in millstones (Is. 28:27). To get a correct idea of ​​the wheels of the present vision, Hebrans rightly advises paying attention to the name given to them when repeating the visions in Chapter 10. There, in addition to ophan, they are also called גַּלְגַּל. This name is remarkable in that it was initially given to the wheels of vision not by the prophet himself, but by an invisible voice (obviously of God): “to these wheels, as I heard, it was said: Gilgal” (10:13). Galgal as a name for a wheel is used primarily in poetic language (Eccl. 12:6; Isa. 5:28; Ezek. 23:24; 26:10) and this is not the only and not the proper meaning of this word. Its proper meaning seems to be “whirlwind.” In the Psalms and in Isaiah it is used to designate one natural phenomenon. These are the places. Is. 17:13: “they were driven like dust over the mountains by the wind, and like galgal (glorified dust of wheels) by a whirlwind”; Ps. 82:14; “Let them be like kolo (galgal), like dust before the wind.” “Both verses refer to something like straw, which is easily blown away by the wind; and it is known that even now in the countries adjacent to Palestine, during the harvest or a little later, some rather large balls, driven by the wind, rush along the roads and fields; these are nothing more than plants, which, when dried, are picked up by a storm and, in the form of a ball, are transported with great speed across the fields” (Hebr. 598–9). Track. galgal means not just round, but also spherical; therefore in Ps. 77:9 this word denotes the vault of heaven (“the voice of Your thunder in the wheel”). Used by God himself about the wheels, previously called simply ophanim by the prophet, the word galgal obviously aims to more closely characterize these wheels. The wheels were similar in their movement to a galgal, which rushes through the fields in a storm, like a whirlwind of a special kind. From here, not without reason, Hebrans concludes that the wheel in the vision of St. Ezekiel had a spherical shape and that it (according to Hebr. there was only one wheel in the vision) represented the celestial sphere. In addition to the use of galgal about clods of straw in the psalms and in Isaiah, the basis for this view of Hebrans is the meaning of the words galgal and ophanim in the Talmud. The first word there once (Chag. 3, 79) refers to the solar disk (the Sadducees laugh at the Pharisees for washing the galgal of the sun), and another time (Petach 94b) the vault of heaven (“the galgal is motionless, but the signs of the constellation rotate”). Ophanim in the Talmud are called mental circles in the firmament: ophan hammischor lit. “circle of straightness” – equator, ophan hammazaloth “circle of constellations” i.e. zodiac, ophan hammaphrisch “distinctive circle” i.e. horizon, ophan chahi hajjoth “circle of noon” – meridian. But it should be noted that these words could have acquired such a meaning from the Talmudists under the influence of this vision. The character imparted to the wheels of vision by their name galgal sheds light on their general significance in the system of vision and on their relationship to the main figures of vision - animals. Having wings, animals could fly using them. But you can only fly through airspace. Meanwhile, the vision from time to time descended to the ground and moved along it (vv. 19, 21). On the ground, animals no longer had to fly, but walked or ran. But all running must give way in speed to flying on wings. That. if animals moved on the earth on their feet, it would have turned out that the earth, with its gross materiality, presented obstacles to the Lord walking on it. This couldn't happen. And so animals are equipped with a tool for moving on the ground, giving them the opportunity to perform this movement with a speed no less than the speed of flight. Animal wheels were such a tool. Ordinary wheels, of course, could not satisfy such a purpose. It is impossible to imagine such a wheel that would move with the speed of a flying bird or the wind (which carried the present vision - v. 4 and 5). Yes, even if such wheels were possible, one could only ride on them at the desired speed. The wheels of vision were only located near the animals and by this alone mediated their movement and imparted the required speed to the movement. How they could do this explains the name of their galgal. Since the galgal is nothing more than a special kind of whirlwind, the wheels of vision must have had quite a bit in common with the whirlwind, if they are directly and deliberately called a whirlwind. Now it is clear how they, being only near animals, could influence their movement: a strong whirlwind lifts and carries large objects along the ground. Flying through the air with the speed of the wind on their mighty wings, the animals rushed along the ground in a whirlwind with exactly the same speed. Having made these preliminary remarks about wheels, we can proceed to read the original. A description of a new component of the vision begins, which will occupy a considerable (vv. 15–21) section of the chapter. Hence the solemn: “and I saw” or “and I looked” וארא. Mass. i.e. has after this the words החיות “animals”, which the LXX does not have. That. in wt. t.: “and I looked at the animals and behold a wheel”: in LXX: “and I looked and behold a wheel.” Both readings have their advantages. The meaning of the expression mas is clear. i.e. It does not mean: “when I saw the animals, i.e. after seeing the animals, another vision appeared to me – wheels” (Mald). Expression wt. t. wants to point out the close connection between animals and wheels. “The four remain such the main subject that the wheels are only part of them - cf. Art. 22" (See). The further description of the wheels really shows such a close connection between them and animals, not only in terms of movement (“when the animals walked, the wheels also walked” v. 19), but also in the essence of both (“the spirit of the animals was in the wheels” v. 21), that the wheels could be considered almost as inseparable a part of the animals as their wings and legs. For the reading of 70 (in which, which does not always happen when there is a disagreement between 70 and mass. t., all manuscripts, hexaplar translations and translations dependent on 70 - Copt., Ar., etc.) agree that wheels are, despite their close connection with animals, a rather independent part of the vision; The prophet’s description of them is given after the description of animals and a special section of the chapter is devoted to them. It is also noted (Kr.) that Ezekiel is very fond of the connection והנה וארא “and he saw, and behold” cf. 8:2, 7; 10:1, 9, and in mas. i.e. it is violated by the word החיות. But it is not so likely that it will be inserted into the sacred text. in the text of a word that is not necessary, as an omission, by the translator of a word that is obscure and seems superfluous. The following "and behold" combined with "and saw" is the usual beginning in Ezekiel for describing visions or special sections of such a description (8:7; 10:9), as here. “And here is one wheel.” 10:9 (“here are 4 wheels next to the cherubim, one wheel next to each cherub”) and 1:16 etc. show that there were several wheels. Therefore, here Pescito rightfully translates freely into the plural. This is the unit. h. dividing: “one wheel next to the animals” (as in Art. 8 “hand”, in Art. 7 – “foot”). Hardly “because the prophet speaks of one wheel, that like chajjoth in 10:15, 20 wheels are considered as making one whole” (Tr.). In any case, there is no need for the correction of Toya ophan in arbaat ophanim “4 wheels”. Blzh. Jerome also admits the possibility of one wheel, “which, divided into four, had as many faces as there were animals following.” The wheels were בארץ “on the ground.” Such explanations are unlikely. “This does not mean that what the prophet describes takes place in the vale of the earth. The sky is open and the wheels stand on the basis of the heavenly arena contemplated by the seer” (Bert.). Or: “the wheels were on the ground, which was visible to the prophet in the very sky under the chariot, just as in a picture we see a drawn chariot on the ground” (Mald.). A slightly better explanation is: “the wheels were not on earthly soil, for the chariot comes from heaven through the air, but on the surface, which at one time or another serves as the chariot’s basis” (Kr.). It is even better to see here “only an indication of the local subordination of the wheels to the cherubim - that the wheels are lower than the rest of the vision, in particular slightly lower than the animals, being completely in front of them” (Tr.); “The figures of cherubim moved forward above the wheels, meaning that in 10:2 it is said that the wheels were under the cherubim” (Kr.). But how then should we understand the remark of Article 19 that the wheels sometimes rose “from the ground” after the animals? Doesn't it really say here that the whole moved on the earth? God descends to the earth on cherubim and walks on it - why shouldn’t there be wheels on the earth itself, at least the lower part of the whole phenomenon? Wheels are primarily a method of transportation adapted to land (like wings - air, a ship - water). They can be looked at as a link between the heavenly vision and the earth, of which this is the most perfect method of movement. Descending to earth, God must reckon with its frailty, which does not allow for a better way of movement. The purpose of the wheels is to show that God moves on the earth itself, not above it. The wheels were “near” אצל animals, in what sense can one object be located next to another (ezel 83) 1 Sam. 5:2, etc.). Since an object has several sides (ezel 1 Samuel 20:41), one would expect the prophet to give the most precise indication of which side of the animal the wheel was on (more precisely, which of the four persons). If this indication is not given in the immediately following unclear words (learbahath panav - “before their four faces”), then it is not there at all. But without containing this precise indication, ezel clearly characterizes the general relationship of wheels to animals. The attitude of the ego was one of mere presence, without any other connection (except the spiritual one indicated later in v. 20). אצל immediately places the wheels on the level of an independent part of the vision, occupying a place of honor next to the animals in the divine phenomenon and having a trace. a more or less independent attitude towards the throne of God. The wheels carried the throne that the animals carried. Therefore, this idea (based on 1 Kings 7:30 etc.) is incorrect: “the animals were connected to the wheels as the upper part of the chariot is connected to the wheels, and not as the chariot is connected to the animals, for the animals were supported by God. a throne on their heads; any chariot or cart is no different from them” (Roz.). Not connecting to the wheels, as animals are connected to a chariot, the cherubim were not connected to the wheels in the same way as the parts of a chariot are connected to each other: the cherubim and the wheels were only ezel “near” each other. The verse ends with the words: לְאַרְבַּעַת פָּנָיו, (lit.: “in his four faces”) of which 70 read only the first: τοῖς τέσσαρσιν. The meaning of the Hebrew the expression obviously depends on the meaning of the suffix at פנים. Who is this “him”? This pronoun was attributed to the chariot: there was one wheel at the four sides (faces) of it, the chariot (Roz.). But the prophet makes no mention of the chariot at all, and “it would be as much an arbitrary ellipsis as it would contradict the prophetic idea” (Geph.). Ewald is no better: “the suffix in panav refers in meaning to chajjoth (Peshito translates: “beside four animals”) or, to make it more correct (m. r.), to cherubs, which (chajjoth or cherubs) are considered as one creation, unity.” Hebrans, who wants one wheel, attributes the suffix to ophan, and understands the preposition ל as secundum, κατά: one wheel, by its four faces or its four faces (sides, ribs), was located next to all the animals that “surrounded” it. The suffix is ​​also referred to as a whole phenomenon (See) or to ezel, understood as the noun “neighborhood” on the axis. Mich. 1:11 (האצל בת “neighborhood house”, i.e. neighboring): the wheels were next to the animals at each of the four fronts (“faces”) of this “beside”, on each front of the space occupied by the animals” (Gitz.). Following the Vulgate, which translates the words being analyzed: habens, i.e. rota, quatuor facies, see in them an indication not of the place where the wheel was located, but of the property of the wheel itself: the wheel had four faces, i.e. consisted of 4 semicircles or two intersecting wheels; the suffix on panav would then refer to the ophan wheel. “The expression will need to be translated “according to its four faces,” which will correspond to our “with four faces,” or “about four faces” (Maurer. Commentarius grammaticus criticus in. V. T. Lipsiae 1836. Geph.). Only such a design would wheels go to four-faced animals. “Each animal had 4 faces and under or next to it 2 wheels, intersecting with each other, producing 4 semicircles near the four faces. Hence there are 4 faces and only 2 wheels: the face can only look in one direction, and the wheels can move in two directions” (Mald.). Regarding this understanding, we note that the wheels actually had such a design, but their design (mahaseh) was first discussed in Art. 16. “Learbahath panav τετραπρόσωπος (Symmachus, Vulg.) cannot mean” (Cor.). And the suffix of panim would be, with such a meaning of the words being parsed, either unnecessary (Vulg. omits), or he would give the whole expression the following meaning: the wheel was next to the animals with all four of their faces.” But “what an idle remark this would be, when it goes without saying that the wheel, if it is not disassembled, with all its sides is in one place” (Gietz.). Panim, neither a place nor a wheel can have a face. You need to look for it in something else that was recently mentioned and that could be designated by the pronoun “him.” But in this verse it is mentioned, and mentioned in Hebrew. t. twice, about animals, about cherubim. The suffix יו should apply to them and their faces should be understood as those four faces that had the wheels. After the prophet’s remark that the wheels were near the animals, the reader expects from him the most precise indication on which side of the four-faced creature had the wheel near him. Such an indication should be given in the words being analyzed. “At (or “before” as in Russian translation, colloquially “for”) all four persons,” the prophet answers this question. The indication is already quite precise and definite, but at first glance it contains something simply unthinkable. One wheel was in four different places at the same time! It is not for nothing that 70 omitted this “exact” indication. But such apparent inconsistency will not surprise us. We have already seen something similar in this vision. On each side of the animal (and each side was the front side), the prophet saw everything that was on the other side: except for the special one on each side of the face, he saw the same wings, which were in the same position as on every other side; I saw the same two hands; and yet each animal had only four wings (v. 11.23); it is not visible that there were more than two (“a human hand is under their wings,” i.e., two lowered). Just as four wings and two arms could be in four different places at one time, i.e. on four different sides of each animal, so could it be with wheels. In visions, violations of the laws of space and time are allowed, which have no force in the sphere of existence affected by visions. Unit the number of the suffix is ​​given according to the meaning (contrary to grammatical agreement, since chajjoth, to which the suffix refers, is in the plural), p.ch. we are talking about one wheel, which can be owned by four persons of only one animal. So, it cannot be said that “no meaning can be squeezed out of the Masoretic expression” (Cor.). Therefore, we do not need to resort to text correction here. This correction is based on the text of 70 who do not read the second word panav. The Hebrew reading “is explained simply as a scribal error in the original לארבעתן. The scribe first wrote לארבעתם (with male suf.), but then found לארבעתן (with female suf.) in his original and added ן as a correction after ם, without destroying the latter. This phenomenon, which can be observed in other places (see Wellhaus. on 1 Samuel 4:18 and Lagarde Semit. 1, 18 on Isa. 9:10), occurs more than once in Ezekiel. To this מן was subsequently added the ו from the next verse, for the sake of which מראה vv. 40 in euros t. contrary to 70, Targ. Pesh. turns out to be without a union and from ומראה לארבעתן became מראה פניו לארבעת” (Cor.). Home page Please contact us Please contact us Καὶ τὸ εἶδος τῶν τροχῶν ὡς εἶδος θαρσις καὶ ὁμοίωμα ἓν τοῖς τέσσαρσιν καὶ τὸ ἔργον αὐτῶν ἦν καθὼς ἂν εἴη τροχὸς ἐν τροχῷ And the vision of the wheels, and their creation, like the vision of Tarshish, and the likeness is one of four; and their work was as fast as if there were a wheel on the wheel. The verse contains a description of the appearance and structure of the wheels. The difference between the texts here is insignificant and does not concern the meaning. Mass. i.e. does not have “and” at the beginning of the verse, contrary to 70. It cannot be said that it is necessary here: not every verse in this chapter begins with “and”. Therefore, there is no need to necessarily see omissions here on the part of the Masoretes. But since 19 Kennicott and 27 Rossi codes have ו, since the disappearance of something in the sacred. i.e. more possible than an addition, at least on the part of the translator (especially one as accurate as 70), then maybe. the truth here is on the side of 70 (but on the other hand, didn’t they decide to add here, as they undoubtedly added “and” in verses 1 and 2, to correspond with almost all the verses of the chapter beginning with “and”?). Then 70 lacks two words in the verse compared to mas. t. “The appearance of the wheels and their arrangement (ומעשיהם not in 70) is like the appearance of topaz and the likeness of all four is the same, and in their appearance (ומראיהם not in 70) and in their arrangement it seemed as if a wheel was within a wheel.” Not all codes 70 lack these words, but only Alex. Vatik. lane cop. ef.; into code. March. Cheese. and sire. hex. they are under asterisk. The following considerations speak for reading 70. “The first half of the verse talks about the appearance of the wheels, and the second about their design; therefore, in order to get a smooth sentence, you need to destroy in a mahasehem, and in b umarehem, according to cr.m. in a directly contrary to the meaning of umahasehem” (Kr.). “Whether מעשה is understood as active as a “device”, or passive as “composition”, “property”, neither of both can be compared with the appearance of a precious stone” (Cor.). “The second predicate - “as if there were a wheel within a wheel” - and the first - “like a type of Farshish” - are clearly different and yet mas. i.e. gives them two identical subjects. Mahaseh wheels, their design cannot be compared with the עין of Tarshish; on the contrary, מראה and in v. 13. 26. 27; 8:2; 10:9 refers to a shiny surface" (Gitz.), "meaning speciem et colorem" (Ros.). In general, “style will benefit if these words are destroyed” (Bert.). If we can talk about greater smoothness here 70 compared to wt. i.e., then the reproach to this latter for “meaninglessness” (Kr.) is not fair. Mahaseh, "as lat. opus, can also mean the matter from which a thing is made, while mar’eh=species here means color” (Mald.). And if the prophet wants to say here that not only the color of the wheels resembled topaz, but that they seemed to be made, carved from this stone? “At first glance it seems as if in a we are talking only about the form, and in b about the structure, but in reality in both halves of the verse we are talking about both, and it is pure arbitrariness if 70 is omitted in a umahasehem, and in b umarehem; Wed Art. 8. 11” (See), where one can also suspect them of omitting words. Let us also remember that the omissions of the sacred. the text could rather be subjected to rather than added to. The wheels shone and sparkled (=עין cf. v. 7 about copper, v. 5 about chaschmal’e; not mar’eh; Akila – ὀφθαλμόσ) as תרשיש. 10:9 more precisely: as a “stone tharschisch.” Tharschisch mentions 28:13 among the precious stones. He was wearing the breastplate of the high priest, first in the fourth row (Ex. 28:20 ==39:13). The Song speaks of the high dignity of this stone. 5:14: the hands of the Beloved “as if polished with gold, set with tharschisch,” and Dan. 10:6: The body of the one who appeared to the prophet was like tharschisch. But the ancient translators did not know what kind of precious stone this word meant, as can be seen from the disagreement in the translation of this word. Even 70 translates this word differently in different places: here they leave it untranslated, but in the completely identical place 10:6 they translate ἄνθραξ, in Ex. 28:20 is translated χρυσόλιθος (Fl. Ak.). Targum and Peshito also refuse translation here: Peshito retains the Hebrew name, and Targum - טבא אבן “good stone”, i.e. "precious". Symmachus translates ὑάκινθος “hyacinth”, “which stone resembles the sky” (bl. Jer.). Arab. lane – jasper (Geng.). The Vulgate shows even greater 70 hesitation in translating this word, not daring to see in it even the name of a precious stone: in this place it translates tharschisch by mare (on the basis of which Rashi and Mald. consider tharschisch to be a crystal, a water-colored stone), and in 10:8; 28:13 – chrysolithus. The meaning "sea" is erroneously assigned by the Vulgate to tharschisch on the basis of Ezek. 27:25; Is. 23:1, 14; 1 Kings 22:43, where this word serves as an epithet for ships (“Tarshish ships” - that is, ships even entering Tarshish, and not “sea ships”). Tharschisch is the name of a Phoenician colony and port in Spain on the Tartessus River (Guadalquivir). “From the connection with other places it is clear how the name of the country was transferred to products: this was the case with אופיר Ophir Job. 22:24 (“and you will be so rich that you will exchange the gold ore for dust and the stones of the streams of Ophir, that is, the gold of Ophir”). This happened with products that came from only one country and were therefore especially expensive. There must have been a trace between the precious stones. occupy such an honorable place as Ophir gold among all types of gold. The most authoritative understanding of the word tharschisch in terms of antiquity and the number of votes is that it is chrysolite. (70, Ak., Vulg.). "According to Pliny's description of Hist. nat. 37, 42 our topaz would correspond to the chrysolite of the ancients” (Kr.), which is why they usually identify tharschisch with topaz (and the Russian translation), but this is done partly ob marini coloris similitudinem (bl. Jer. on Is. 2:16), p.ch. tharschisch was thought to mean sea. But even without knowing what kind of stone the tharschisch was, one can determine its color. It should be a bright fiery color. The wheels of the throne of God in Daniel's vision were "blazing fire." Quoted passage from Song. requires a stone of a similar color for this: with the tharschisch with which the Beloved’s beautiful hands are set, either the ruddy tints on white skin or pink nails are compared. This was also the opinion of the ancient translators about the color of tharschisch: when translating it χρυσόλιθος, they attributed to it a red-golden color. This color of the wheels would correspond to the fiery contents between them (there were burning coals between the wheels: 10:2) and would most contribute to the harmony of colors in the vision: golden-red wheels, crystal-white firmament and sapphire-blue foot of the throne. There is no doubt, moreover, that of the stones known to the ancient Hebrew, tharschisch, as the listed biblical passages about him show, was one of the most beloved and beautiful. The delightful beauty of this stone, sung so many times in the Bible, was enhanced in the vision of the prophet by the fact that it was present here in large quantities. Such bulky objects as wheels were made from it, which, moreover, amazed with their size (v. 18). Shining with extraordinary beauty, wheels made of such rich material should also be distinguished by their strength 84, which was required by the great kebod resting on them, as well as on the cherubim. Cherubim here too, as in Ezek. 28:13, 14, etc. find themselves among precious stones (“stones of fire”), and if we remember that the area of ​​​​paradise abounded in them, then some kind of connection seems to be established between the two, which can anyone explain? “And all four have one likeness.” Even if this remark had not been made, the reader himself would have drawn such a conclusion from the description of the prophet, from the fact that the prophet nowhere indicates the difference between the wheels. Track. the prophet wants to draw the reader’s special attention to this circumstance, to the similarity of the wheels. The wheels were as similar to each other as animals, and just like animals there were four of them. That. the wheels, like the animals, were directed immediately and equally to “all the ends of the earth” (countries of the world). All countries of the world were accessible to the Divine chariot with absolutely equal ease. It did not have a front or rear, which is usually characterized by the difference in the wheels and their size. In addition to complete similarity with each other, the indifference of the wheels in relation to different directions of movement was achieved by their special design, which will be discussed later. The Hebrew text of this sentence is grammatically rough. The numeral of the word “similarity”, demuth, does not agree with it in gender: it is not placed in g. r. אהת, and in m. אהר. Errors in Heb. t. it would not be, if we translate echad genus. n. “the likeness of one”; and to translate “one likeness” you need to either read from Toi and Kr. echath or assume grammatical license here by the prophet, examples of which are not uncommon in Ezekiel, especially in chapter 1: in the same verse “four of them” w. r. contrary to m.r. ophan. “And their appearance and their structure were as if there were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” This sentence can be understood in four different senses. 1. The wheel of vision could be composed of two such wheels, which clasped one another, having a common axis. In this sense, the entire expression can refer to the inner circle of each wheel, hub or hub (Prad). – But the hub could not be called a wheel: hub in Hebrew. חשר 1 Kings 7:33. And why would the prophet indicate in the wheel such signs that every wheel must have in order to be a wheel? To show that it was a real wheel and not a circle (Prad)? But this is said by the very name ophan “wheel”. 2. The expression of the prophet cannot say that the wheel was composed of two wheels clasping each other. Two wheels wrapped around each other cannot be called wheels with rims (v. 18). 3. The wheel could be in the wheel perpendicular to each other. This understanding of this expression is the most ancient (Blessed Hierarch Rashi), the most widespread (Keil Shr. Knab. o. Rozhd. Or. Bert.) and the most possible in essence and in context. Next The verse says that the wheels could go on their four sides without turning around; track. they had four sides. Only a semicircle can be called the side of the wheel (“on which it can go”). Track. the wheel of vision was made up of 4 semicircles or two intersecting circles. “Having a double axis” (Hebr.), thanks to this it could move in 4 directions. “Understanding the following is possible only with such an assumption” (Bert.). But the image of the expression speaks against this: the member of the ophan, “moreover, double” (See). The term apparently requires thinking about being in each other between the previously mentioned, given wheels. And this being in each other could be either apparent only in perspective, or real. 4. According to Smend, “each wheel was more than half the breadth and length of the quadrangular chariot, was perpendicular to the adjacent wheel and parallel to one of the rear wheels; and since the same relation existed between the other pair of wheels, it seemed as if one wheel were in the other. This was, of course, possible if the wheels were not exactly in the middle of the sides, but the fact that they stood like that is in Art. 15 clearly expressed through ezel.” For such a complex distribution of wheels, the prophet's expression is too brief and requires too much mental work on the reader. In addition, it is not clear why such an asymmetrical and unnatural arrangement of wheels was needed. As the author of this view himself admits, in this case only one wheel would always carry the throne, as according to Art. 9 only one animal would always do this with its wings. Kretschmar accepts Smend’s placement, but thinks that “the wheels in reality, and not in perspective, only touched each other (כאשר should be understood like other comparative particles in this chapter), so that between them a square closed space was obtained, which was surrounded by wheel spokes all around and, as Art. 13 and 10, 2:6 it was filled with hot coals. If the wheels did not actually fit into each other, then the coals between the wheels would have scattered.” – The coals of vision, of course, needed little material fencing as well as a stand, a hearth, which they do not have, not to mention the fact that the purpose of being a container for coals cannot be included in the idea of ​​the wheel. The member of ophan, due to which all these assumptions are made, can be explained by maintaining the indicated understanding of the expression being analyzed that is most convenient in the context and essence of the matter (that each wheel was made up of two intersecting wheels). Each of these constituent parts of the wheel could be called an ophan with a member, and such a member would have no less grounds than, for example. lappidim's member in st. 13. Although neither one nor the other was previously mentioned, these are not some lappidim and some wheels, but strictly defined, well-known lamps that in other cases accompanied the appearance of the cherubim - those wheels that should be thought of at the throne of God descending to earth. The double repetition of a term may contain the idea that the wheels located in each other should not be represented as just components of one wheel, but as independent, although interconnected, wheels. This relative independence of the component parts of the wheel would correspond to the combination of several persons in animals. Please contact us בְּלֶכְתָּן Ἐπὶ τὰ τέσσαρα μέρη αὐτῶν ἐπορεύοντο οὐκ ἐπέστρεφον ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτὰ Their march to four countries; I don’t always ask to follow them. The wheels had the same amazing ability to move in all directions as the cherubs. It had to be so, because “otherwise the movement of the wheels would not be in harmony with the movement of the cherubs.” (Gitz.). In cherubs the ability of such movement was determined by their four-facedness, in wheels by their four-sidedness. The first preposition על is noteworthy. In parallel verses 9 and 11, where the same is said about the movement of animals, the preposition אל is used: “each one walked in the direction of his face.” The preposition el, a special preposition to indicate the direction of movement, which is quite consistent with the Russian “k”, is replaced here by the “energetic” (Geph.) hal. Hal more accurately expresses the movement of the wheels: while animals could only walk in the direction (elhever) of one or another person or their side, the wheels could roll on (hal) their four sides. If in Art. 20 על is also used in relation to animals, but hardly “in the later weakened sense instead of” אל (Geph.), and p.ch. the speech there is about the joint movement of animals and wheels, and wheels constitute the main subject of speech, as the theme of this entire section. The four faces of the animal in the wheel corresponded to its four sides or sides, רבע (actually 1/4, therefore 70 “good” (Ros.) μέρη), probably composed of two circles of each wheel located within each other. The four sides of the wheel made it possible for him to move to four main points, which, as in Art. 9 and 11 represent all directions. Suffix pl. ch. (“them”) in רבעיהן shows that here we are talking about the sides of the wheels, and not “the chariot on the sides of which there were wheels” (Kr.), and not animals, of which there is no mention nearby and which therefore could not be designated by a pronoun. Here again (the first time in learbahatan v. 16) the pronoun referring to wheels has w. r., (although many codes are m.r.). In this inconsistency of generic suffixes (Kr.: “ugly”) there is a strange, yet unexplained feature of Chapter 1. Ezek. But it’s remarkable that where is the pronominal suffix relating to wheels, w. r., there the expression can be understood with some plausibility about animals (and chajjoth - female r.) - so learbahatan 16th century, belectan art. 17. The further word of the verse בלכתם (“as they walked”, i.e., the wheels went in four directions) after a few words is repeated again and since it is more necessary there, it seems superfluous here. It is not in one manuscript Kennicott, 70, Pescito 85; into code. March. Cheese. and sire. hex. it is under asterisk. Cornille crosses it out as “idle.” Kretschmar, although he recognizes it as “superfluous in itself,” finds it possible to leave it. In parallel terms Art. 9 and 12 (the animals “each walked in the direction of his face”) this word is not present. But here we are talking about the movement of the wheels; therefore, the first halac in the form belectam can generally mean the movement of wheels; the second jelecu is a special movement characteristic of wheels - turning them on an axle: "when they moved (belectam, the wheels could roll (jelecu) on their four sides." In relation to animals, the repetition of belectam with jelecu would be a pure tautology. The Hebrew text, in order to preserve all the words given in it, must be translated as follows: "on their four sides, when they moved, they rolled; they did not turn around when they walked." “They did not turn around as they walked” is a literal repetition of what was said about animals; for completeness of similarity, maybe and the suffix is ​​placed in zh. r., although, wheel according to Heb. m.r. This expression thus. This is the third time that the prophet has spoken. Sounding like a refrain, its repeated repetition draws the reader’s special attention to this feature in the movement of the entire phenomenon - that it did not require turning when walking. With any change in direction, not a minute of slowdown was required for the phenomenon. With regard to wheels, this feature was even more surprising and therefore deserved to be pointed out: lateral movement is even more impossible for ordinary wheels than for living creatures with sufficient flexibility of the legs. If the wheels did not consist of two intersecting circles (which concept cannot be said to be absolutely necessary in verse 16b), then such a possibility for them to move in all directions without turning would be even more surprising, as completely physically impossible. But “one should not attach as much importance to physical possibility as to the thought that lies here” (Kr.) “Natural forces (laws of nature), no less than living creatures, obey with swiftness all the commands of God” (Geng.). Please contact us עֵינַיִם סָבִיב לְאַרְבַּעְתָּן Οὐδ᾿ οἱ νῶτοι αὐτῶν καὶ ὕψος ἦν αὐτοῖς καὶ εἶδον αὐτά καὶ οἱ νῶτοι αὐτῶν πλήρεις ὀφθαλμῶν κυκλόθεν τοῖς τέσσαρσιν Below are their ridges, and the height of their towers, and they are visible, and their shoulders are full of feathers around four. In wheels, the prophet’s special attention was drawn to the rims, גבים, νῶτοι. No matter how different the reading of verse 18 may be in verse 70, the Masoretes, and other texts, its theme in all readings is wheel rims. The verse begins in mas. i.e. in a word – וגביהן. 70 translate this word: οὐδ᾿ οἱ νῶτοι αὐτῶν, connecting with the previous sentence (17th verse): “I do not turn (i.e., the wheels) to always walk them, their ridges are lower.” The Hebrew ו 70 was rendered in meaning through “and not” (in Jerome’s Latin translation 70 – and et). Connecting the word vegabbehen with the previous verse, 70 obviously do not find any way to connect it with the next sentence, although the next sentence is about these gabbim, νῶτοι, and the previous one says nothing about them. In combination with the previous sentence, this word does not give any new thought and is completely idle: if the wheels did not turn around when moving, then their rims could not turn around. Another interpretation of this word is offered by the Masoretes, placing over it zakkef kathon, a dividing sign of medium strength (from the category of reges). With such a sign, this word stands independently of the previous and subsequent sentences and is a nom phrase. abs. In this understanding, it needs to be translated: “as for the rims, they were such and such” “ו in this case will be apodotic” (See Apodosis lowering in the period), = a: “and as for the rims, then”... גב here as in 1 Kings. 7:33 rims (“ridge” Ps. 129:3; “hillock” Job 13:12). So is the Targum (“ridges”). But in 1 Kings, 1. p. it has a male education, plural. h. on ם, and here, Geth thinks, its gender fluctuates: at the beginning of the verse it has a plural. h. with husband ending, and then with wives. גבית. She should actually have a female education (Ev. Gram. § 375). “Like m.r. it’s suspicious” (Cor.). Therefore, they change it in accordance with the following in וגבותם (Cor.) or, on the contrary, the following according to this (See). Why later in the verse this word appears with a feminine ending, we don’t care about that yet; but here it is, completely coinciding in form and meaning with the decree. m. 1 Kings, should mean “rims”. Peshito and the Vulgate assign to the first word of the verse not this undoubted meaning, but another, Peshito - “height”, Vulg. – “statura”, as if the verse began not with the word וגביהן, but with the next one, וגבה, which can have such meanings and is in singular. h. Based on this translation Pesh. and the Vulgates propose to destroy the first word, as a dittography of the second (Cor. Bert.). But Pescito and the Vulgate clearly give a free translation here. Pescito apparently rearranges the first two words of the Hebrew original: et altitudo erat dorsis earum, and the Vulgate also undoubtedly reads both words, but the first in singular. h.: ​​statura quoque erat rotis (=גביהן; the pronoun is conveyed by the noun to which it refers) et altitudo (וגבה). So, what “should be considered firmly established” is not the “absence” (Cor.) of the first word of the verse in the original text, but its presence, as conveyed by all translations and explainable. As in art. 6, this nom. abs. the prophet indicates the theme of the entire verse. And this was necessary, huh. The prophet, both before and after, speaks generally about wheels, but now he wants to deal with only one part of them - the rims, just as in v. 6 he wanted to dwell in detail on the legs of animals. Such an episodic transition in the description is well marked by this phrase. Having warned that he will now talk about the rims, the prophet, as can be concluded from the triple ו, points out three features of them (twice להם, and the third time the suffix ם), which attracted his special attention. First: להם וגבה “and height (was characteristic of them)”, גבה “height” in the concrete (Am. 2:9) and spiritual sense (Job 40:5; Prov. 16:18), 70 ὕψος, Vulg. and Pescito – altitudo. The expression can be understood (with this meaning of govah) only in such a way that the rims “represented an elevated and majestic appearance, which is usually not characteristic of wheels rolling in the dust of the earth” (Kr.). The expression: “the rims were characterized by height” sounds as unusual in Hebrew as it does in Russian. One could simply say: “and they were tall or great (gadol).” Moreover, we need to talk about the height not of the rims, but of the wheels themselves. This quality of the wheels would have an understandable meaning for them: the high height of the wheels achieves the speed of the chariot. M. T. the prophet speaks here about the height of the rims, not the wheels. Several ways out of the difficulty created by the prophet's expression are offered. According to Lenormand (Les orig. de l’hist. 1, 132) “the wheels were in a horizontal position, serving as a pedestal for symbolic animals; their circumference lay on a horizontal plane, which is expressed in the name galgal, whirlwind, which is given to them. This explains how their circle, with which they were obviously facing the prophet, could be filled with eyes all around; and when the prophet says that they had an amazing circumference and height, the second dimension is the measurement of the thickness of their rims. So, the wheels of vision can be imagined as a round drum of great height, rapidly rotating around its vertical axis.” But such an understanding moves too far from the meaning of the word “wheel” (Knab.). The horizontal position of the wheel would be so unusual that it should have been mentioned deliberately. And how could such a wheel serve movement? Other attempts to explain govah lahem are closely related to the understanding of the following expression, to the explanation of which we now need to move on. להם ויראה “and fear (was characteristic of them).” This expression, which can actually mean: “and fear was inherent in them,” is usually understood as: “they had fear” (Fr. Rozhd.), i.e. rims Although יראה contains the subjective concept of fear - “fear” (Jon. 1:10: Isa. 29:13), the concept contained in it sometimes receives a completely objective connotation - the meaning of “fearfulness”, “terribility”, as in Ps. 89:11: “who knows the power of Your wrath according to the measure of Your fear (fearfulness) - כיראתך (See).” In this objective sense, here too jir’ah is attributed to the rims: “they aroused fear in those who saw them” (Rashi) Targum: “and they were terrible.” But this meaning of jir’ah is easy to dispute. “Jir’ah can never mean scary, Furchtbarkeit (Cor.)”; “jir’ah is fear, not terribleness” (Gitz.). “In Ps. 89:11 objectivity lies not in the word itself, but in the suffix, cf. Life 9:2, Deut. 2:25; 11:25, etc.” (Cor.). “And in Ps. 89 it denotes the reverence due to God (=Your)” (Kr.). Ancient translations also side with these objections. LXX and Arabic: καὶ ἴδον αὐτὰ, “and I saw them,” i.e. “I looked at the rims and”... “which in Hebrew would be וראיתי or ואראה” (Rose. To the ease of transition א to י cf. Wellhausen, Der Text d. Bücher Samuelis VI. Bert.), Peshito: et videbant “and they saw”, i.e. could see the rims (having eyes), which in Hebrew “reduces to ויראו” (Cor.). But “m.b. LXX also had our text: their ἴδον coincides with ויראה” (See). In any case, in ויראה they recognize LXX and Peshito as probably the root ראה “to see”. Vulgate, “combining two understandings” (Cor.): et horribilis adspectu. That. the usual meaning of both govah and jir’ah turns out to be not entirely appropriate here, which forced us to look for other meanings for these words, even at the cost of significant amendments to the text. According to Gitzig, a wheel is either simply a circle that rotates around its axis, or it has, as here, spokes and rims. The first וגביהן expresses this thought: “and they (had) rims. But rims have a top and a bottom side. And this must be presupposed here for the sake of what is now to be said. Now it will be said that the wheels in the wheels are dotted with eyes. The Prophet prefaces this with the remark that the wheels had rims and these rims had an upper side גבה. This גבה should be punctuated not with גבַהּ, but with גַבָּה and translated “upper or “outer side.” The same word now appears in the prophet's plural. h., since 4 rims are given, and the next. and 4 wheeled peripherals. Just as each of the rims is a spine for the spokes, so the upper side of the rims is a spine for the rims themselves. But to differentiate from the rims, their upper side takes on the feminine gender and ending, which in any case was correct when transferring the concept to inanimate objects (Ew. Ausführl. Lehrb. §174 c). But if גבה means “upper side,” then by יראה only the lower side can be understood, which is at the same time internal and posterior. This word is akin to one Arabic verb, which means to look inward, and it (this word) could be should read viraah." – But 1) gabihhem cannot mean “there were rims”; 2) if the rims are not thought of in the concept of each wheel, then the prophet in any case could begin to describe the rims without fear that the reader would ask where they came from. Same price reasoning for the top and bottom sides of the rims. The meaning of "surface" for govah is a stretch, and the "underside" for jiraah is not Hebrew. According to Cornille, “the וגביהן at the beginning of the verse must be destroyed, like the dittograph וגבה; but even וגבה is hardly correct: that the wheels were high would be a very trivial (?) remark; on the contrary, the essential feature is that the wheels have גבות “rims”, that they are not just circles; track. you need to read וגבות instead of וגבה; and instead of ויראה there are 70 ואראה. And להם, although ראה is rarely combined with ל, must be original, p.ch. In this way, the corruption of ואראה into a noun parallel to גבה, read גבות, is most easily explained. Instead of the next וגבותם you need to read והנה; Wed construction 37:2, as often the pronoun was first glossed through its name (cf. 11:15; 21:16, etc.) and finally replaced by the latter; Wed 13:2. It would be possible to keep וגבותם everywhere, but the result would be an infinitely widespread and viscous image of expression. Is it possible to see a trace of this והנה in the και ιδον αυτονς και ιδον οι νωτοι κτλ of Theodoret; but this can be explained much more simply by the fact that Theodoret’s so frequent και ιδον και ιδον somehow found its way into the language.” This is the understanding of the 18th Art. speaks against itself by requiring too many amendments to the text. It is also not true that גב about the rims cannot be m.r: in 1 Kings. it has a casus constructus husband. יֵ. The passage can be explained without any amendments to the text. In addition to the abstract meaning of “height,” “greatness” must also have a specific meaning. But the meaning of “upper side”, “surface” would be too artificial for this word, not justified by any case of its use and far from its root meaning. The root meaning of גב, retained by this root in other languages, is “convexity,” “elevation” (1 Sam. 10:23; Ezek. 19:11). This meaning fits well with this word here: there could be a bulge on the rims. Only with such a specific meaning of govah would lahem “with them” be appropriate here: about the rims we can say that they had elevations, recesses, but that they had a height, size, this expression is awkward and incorrect, and that they had an upper and lower side is an unnecessary remark. The Prophet now explains why there was a bulge on the rims: “their bulges are וגבתם pl. h., (p.ch. each of the four rims had these bulges) were full of eyes.” And in fact, where should the wheel heads be, if not on the special bulges of the rims? The eyes could not be on the outer side of the rims (Gitz.), since the rolling wheels came into contact with the ground on this side of their rims. If the eyes were on the inside of the rims, then 1) this should have been said, since this does not go without saying; 2) the eyes would then look into the inside of the wheel and would not achieve their goal - inspecting the road. Since the prophet indicates eyes on wheels, the reader expects from him the most precise indication of where these eyes were and how they could exist on an object so unsuitable for placing an eye as a wheel. The Prophet apparently wants to give these precise instructions. He places the eyes on the rims. But this indication is still not enough: the rims have several sides; It goes without saying that eyes cannot be on either the outside or the inside. They can only be on their sides; but the sides of ordinary rims are flat, and eyes placed on such rims could look not at the road, but to the side. And to accommodate the eyes, the rims of the mysterious wheels are equipped with a special convexity, on which the eye could look forward. It can be objected to the proposed understanding that the meaning of “convexity” for גבה is not confirmed by any cases of its use in the Bible. But if this word ever had a specific meaning, and not just an abstract one, in which it is used several times in the V.Z., then this meaning could not be other than approximately the same; a word with such a root could not not have a specific meaning. Ezekiel's language differs significantly from the language of even his closest predecessors: he uses many words in new meanings. Only, it seems, it would be better to punctuate this word in singular. h. not in Masoretic, but gavah, in order to more easily receive the plural. Part גּבוֹת. There is no need to look for another meaning for jir’ah other than its root and usual meaning of “fear”, “horror”. “There was horror on them,” on the rims. What this horror consisted of is now said: there were eyes on them. Isn't this horror? Eyes on wheels! Therefore, it cannot be said that “it remains unclear why the wheels or their rims were terrible” (Fr. Rozhd.). The Venetian Codex and 5 minuscule codes, which preserved Lucian’s review, translate this expression: καὶ φοβεροὶ ἦσαν, Interpretation. prophet: “and fear the behu.” The possibility of such an understanding of this expression cannot be denied on the grounds that jir'ah contains only the subjective concept of fear (Cor.). In euros language there was no word expressing the objective side of this concept, anything similar to the German Furchtbarkeit, just as there is no such word in Russian. language If in such a developed language as Russian, the same word has to be used to express both the subjective and objective sides in the concept of fear (“the whole horror of this situation”), then is it possible to demand from the Hebrew? language such subtlety. If for these concepts there existed in Hebrew. language one word, what other word could the prophet have used to express the horror of wheels? His expression allows for such a literary translation, but close to the original: “and the horror of them (lahem) - the rims - was that (=ו) those bulges of them were filled with eyes all around all four.” “Four of them had full eyes all around.” The rims were not just equipped with eyes on a special bulge that covered their sides. They were “full” of eyes, abounding with them (=γέμοντα ὀφθαλμῶν Apoc. 4:6), they were densely dotted with eyes, “many-eyed.” The eyes were not on just one side of each of the rims, but on both (saviv, = ἔμπρωσθεν καὶ ὄπισθεν Apoc. 4:6). And so it was for all four wheels - learbahatan - refractive increase cf. Art. 8. 10. 16, but together enhancing the impression of the picture: four wheels and all dotted with eyes 86. The addition of eyes to wheels is one of those purely Eastern symbols in which an idea of ​​special strength seeks expression, an idea that does not fit into natural ideas and concepts. And of course, what is represented in this symbol “is presented somewhat roughly and corporeally due to human weakness” (Blessed Theod.). The immediate meaning of this symbol is clear. “The eye is the liveliest expression of inner activity, the most beautiful evidence of vitality, a special symbol of insight and wisdom” (Geph.). Track. and in the wheels “the eyes point to life and the intelligentsia; The wheels themselves constitute a living organism.” (Kr.). “Since a dead object cannot at all be an instrument of the Glory of God, the wheels are animated (v. 20) and their rims are dotted with eyes” (See). The eyes, of course, were not idle on the wheels: the wheels could look with them. “And they saw,” translate Peshito vejir’ah lahem. The wheels looked where they were rolling. They rolled deliberately. “The wheels were full of knowledge” (Blessed Theod.). The wheels are equipped with eyes “to express the infallible confidence with which the Divine Throne moved” (See). “With watching eyes the wheels could not stray from the road” (Bert.). Since wheels move the throne of God, we can say that through the eyes of wheels God Himself looks at the earth on which He walks. Therefore, with eyes on wheels “the omnipresence of God is depicted” (Blessed Theod.). “They are a symbol of the all-seeing and, above all, all lawlessness of God who recognizes and punishes” cf. Zach. 3:9; 4:10, 2 Chron. 16:9 (Cr.). Since wheels are the connecting link of the Divine appearance with the earth (v. 15), this multitude of eyes may also indicate that the forces of nature are not blind forces, but are in the service of Divine Providence” (Geng.). Этот символ по-видимому находил особенное место у пленных пророков, ср. Dan. 7:8 (“in the horn were eyes like the eyes of men, and a mouth that spoke arrogantly”), He could have been true. a consequence of the eastern environment and symbolism, “like the ancient sculptural image of Jupiter in Larissa had three eyes and was traced to Trojan, at least Asian origin, Pavs. 1. 24. 5" (Geph.). Wheels, says the blessed one. Jerome, “were such as the fables of poets depict the hundred-eyed or many-eyed Argus.” This symbol then finds a place in the post-exilic prophets, like Zechariah, who speaks of the seven eyes of Jehovah (“this is the stone that I lay before Jesus; on this one stone there are seven eyes... those seven joyfully look at the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel; these are the eyes of the Lord, which look out over the whole earth” 3:9; 4:10). “At the same time, partly the number 7 (cf. Ezra 7:14; Esther 1:14), partly the image of the eye was a Persian symbolic image of expression. Wed. the eyes and ears of King Xen. Cyrop. 8, 2, 7 – both in the classics and in the inscriptions of coins; that here (in the institute of satraps) the designation of earthly relations is taken from the sacred representation of heavenly relations, from Parsi theology, it is clear from the Zend-Avesta, where it is said about Mithra: he has 1000 ears and 10 thousand eyes” (Kr.). Home page Home הָאוֹפַנִּים Καὶ ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι τὰ ζῷα ἐπορεύοντο οἱ τροχοὶ ἐχόμενοι αὐτῶν καὶ ἐν τῷ ἐξαίρειν τὰ ζῷα ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐξῄροντο οἱ τροχοί And the animals always walk, the walker and the wheel holding on to them; and when the animals rose up from the ground, the wheels also rose up. The Prophet has already finished describing the wheels: having listed all the features of their appearance and structure in comparison with ordinary wheels, he also described their movement. Now the question arose about the relationship of wheels to animals. Was there any connection between both, similar to the connection between the animals pulling the chariot and the chariot itself? In Art. 19–21 the prophet gives the answer to this question that he could give. The relationship between animals and wheels was completely incomprehensible to the viewer. There was no visible connection between the two. “There was no drawbar or yoke on the animals. The divine chariot moved by itself: the animals were in front, the wheels moved behind them, heading in all directions without turning” (Blessed Theod.). However, “when the animals walked, the wheels walked beside them (אצלם).” Such a joint movement of animals and wheels certainly implied a connection between both. This connection was even more clearly confirmed by the fact that the wheels followed the animals not only when the latter moved on the ground, but also “when the animals were raised from the ground, the wheels also rose.” The wheel is a tool for movement exclusively on the ground; having wheels in the air was an unnatural position for them, and if they accepted this position, then this proved their especially close connection with animals. The text of verse 12 is conveyed with literal agreement by all codes and translations. Only Pescito after the “wheel” has again “beside them”; this slight addition could have come from the freedom of translation, and in view of the singularity of the evidence, it cannot be considered a remnant of the original reading and introduced into the text (Cor.): in the second half of the verse, “in front of them” is an unnecessary pleonasm. There is also no need to complete 19bβ to 20bα with the word לעמתם “along with them”: in Art. it replaces ezelam, which is not there, and here, with the latter, it would be a completely superfluous word. Note that instead of הנשא “to rise” in the parallel version of Ch. 10 always stands רום (Kr.), a synonym for the first. Please contact us Home page רוּחַ הַחַיָּה בָּאוֹפַנִּים Οὗ ἂν ἦν ἡ νεφέλη ἐκεῖ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ πορεύεσθαι ἐπορεύοντο τὰ ζῷα καὶ οἱ τροχοὶ καὶ ἐξῄροντο σὺν αὐτοῖς διότι πνεῦμα ζωῆς ἦν ἐν τοῖς τροχοῖς. Wherever there were clouds, there was a spirit of life that walked, and animals and animals walked, and the wheels went up with them, and the spirit of life was in the wheels. Forced to return to the movement of animals, the prophet repeats the most important of what has been said about this movement. It differed from any other movement in many ways, but most of all in that it was determined in its direction in a special, mysterious way. Its qualifier was רוּח “spirit”. Masoretic: “where was the spirit to go” 70 render: οὗ ἂν ἦν ἡ νεφέλη τοῦ πορεύεσθαι. That. 70 introduce into the verse a new concept νεφελη, cloud. In a parallel place 12 tbsp. this word does not exist and therefore 70 unanimously suspect an increase here. They could read the first על (here replacing אל v. 12, which there is no need to restore from Kr., here, i.e. wheels are the main subject of speech, and about wheels rolling on their rims, it would be more accurate to read עב “cloud” (Gitz.). But this על is conveyed in 70 in the particle οὗ, which can contain the whole Hebrew expression אשר שם על. Therefore, it is more likely that 70 was replaced by this concept ruach, which is really unclear why the Masoretic text puts it twice. This substitution could be made on the basis of 1 Kings. 18:45, where the cloud appears before the wind during a thunderstorm (“m.t. the sky became gloomy from the cloud and the wind and it began to rain”). By putting νεφελη, 70 they obviously meant the cloud that the prophet saw at the very beginning (v. 4), and under the spirit the wind that revealed the whole phenomenon; “The meaning will be this: where the cloud went, there was the wind, and the animals and wheels went there” (Fr. Rozhd.). The following objection cannot be raised against understanding 70: “it is hardly fair to make the movement of animals and wheels dependent on the movement of the wind” (Fr. Rozhd.): wind Art. 4 was not ordinary and, as we have seen, it had a very close connection with the “spirit” that determined the movement of animals according to Art. 12. The order is hardly correct only in 70: in Art. 4 wind and cloud, and not vice versa. 70 could have allowed such a free translation here if their former Hebrew text contained such incoherence as the current Masoretic text presents with its repetition of three whole words: ללכת הרוח שמה. This repetition defies explanation and the translation is 70 m.b. is the first attempt to explain these words. 70 answers them: ἐκεῖ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ πορεύεσθαι will answer hal ascher jihjeh scham haruach laleketh. To explain this strange repetition of 70 t.o. replaced ruach with a cloud. Other ways of explaining these words (repetition: schammah haruach laleketh) are no more satisfactory. If under the first ruach st. 20 Of course, the spirit that determined the movement of animals, what the prophet later calls the spirit of animals, then by the second ruach does not mean the spirit of the wheels: wherever the spirit of the animals attracted the animals, the spirit of the wheels of the wheels directed the wheels there” (Mald.). But there is no reason to understand by ruach1 the spirit of animals, and by ruach2 the spirit of wheels: there was no talk yet about the spirit in the wheels and it could not be called so abbreviated: there was no talk about the “spirit of animals” or “in animals,” but only about the spirit that determined the movement of animals. In view of the fact that the words: schammah haruach laleketh, since the relative pronoun (hal ascher) is not repeated before them, cannot mean: “where the spirit sought to go,” they are suggested to be understood: “there sought to go.” “And this remark, as it were, once again draws attention to the fact that the spirit controlled the animals and therefore their movement was in harmony with the wheels” (See). “Here a transformation of the sentence is made: wherever the animals went, the spirit strove there, which indicates their greatest harmony and agreement” (Roz.). And yet it turns out to be a tautology: wherever the spirit strives, there it strives. The only way out of the difficulty created by this repetition, apparently, is to see dittography here (Gietz. See Cor. Sig. Bert. Kr.). Indeed, schammah haruach laleketh is repeated with literal accuracy twice and these identical expressions are separated only by the word ילכו. The only difference between the second expression and the first is that instead of scham in the first, there is schammah in the second. According to Art. 12 here one would expect schammah rather than scham; therefore, it is assumed that in שם ה could fall before the next ה in הרוח (Cor.). The second of the identical expressions is not found in Pescito, in Kennicott in N 28, 30, 50, 150, 182, 223, in Rossi N 443; in N 543 there is only ילכו, in N 419 there is only הרוח. This absence, of course, does not guarantee the inauthenticity of the repetition. It is more difficult to understand the appearance of such seemingly unnecessary repetition in a text than the destruction of these words when they are no longer understood; but they were not understood for 70 years. Since these words contain a repetition of what was previously said, their meaning should be no different than that which they have in front. There they mean: “wherever the spirit strives,” and here they must mean the same. They are repeated for the same purpose for which all repetitions in speech are generally made - in order to emphasize the idea. And especially in the mouth of Ezekiel, who is so fond of repetition, this repetition should not seem strange. In this case, it was especially appropriate, showing that the spirit could strive in either direction, both in one direction and the other. In Russian, the thought given by this repetition could be expressed as follows: “whether the spirit was striving there, or here it was striving, they went everywhere.” This is common in euros. language way of conveying the concept of “everyone”. An expression may seem strange only from the point of view of a developed language; in any case, it is no more strange than the similar expression of Isa. 6:2: six wings, six wings for one (= 6 wings for each); Wed and Ezek. 1:23. It should not be confusing that not everything from the first sentence is repeated in the second (hal ascher and jihjeh are omitted): we are dealing with an abbreviated repetition. And schammah instead of scham for variety. Art. 20a presents another difficulty. What is the subject of ילכו “went”? “Wherever the spirit strives, they go,” who are they? “By wt. i.e. the subject is what must be completed from Art. 19. “animals” (Cor. See), as in v. 12, from which this sentence is repeated. Codes Alex., March., Venez., Copt. lane and they add such a subject to “went”: they have here τὰ ζῷα (“internal Greek addition” Cor.): “the procession and the animals and the wheels went up with them.” But the code. Vat., transferring the conjunction “and” from “wheels” to the next word “rose” (which in Hebrew serves as a predicate for wheels), makes “wheels” the subject of “went”: “where the spirit was, the wheels went and rose.” Reading Vat. code. (=Cor. Kr.), as an individual, cannot be accepted; against him and 12 art. So, 20 tbsp. in its first half the mass is correctly preserved. and in Russian it may have been conveyed this way: “whether the spirit wanted to go there or here, everywhere they walked - animals - and the wheels rose along with them.” Why is it said that the wheels rose and did not walk? “They rose up” here hardly has its exact meaning – separation from the earth: in verses 19 and 21, where it has such a meaning, “from the earth” is added to it. Here it means to rise from a place, leave a place, move (Num. 23:24; 2 Kings 20:17; Am. 4:2). If this verb has its usual meaning here, as in v. 19 and 21, then it gives the idea that animals with wheels hovered in the air rather than walked on the ground. To destroy the words “and the wheels rose up along with them” on the grounds that the agreement in the movement of animals and wheels is already described in detail in Art. 19. (Toi, Kr.) it is impossible, p.ch. they are transmitted everywhere. The Prophet also indicates the reason for such agreement in the movement of wheels and animals: “for the spirit of the animal (החיה רוח) was in the wheels.” What is ruach hachajah? The ancients unanimously translate “spirit of life” (70, Pesh., Vulg.; Targum in essence too: “the same spirit that is in creatures is also in wheels,” but the beginning of the verse: “where they wanted to go, they went there”). Life in Hebrew chajjim חים, not chajah; but “the later ones (Ps. 142:3; Job 33:18, 22, 28; 36:14, etc.) and Ezekiel himself say more chajah. And after the wheels have eyes, a living soul cannot be alien to them” (Gitz.). One can argue against the fact that here chajah means “life”: 1) that the listed cases of using skatai in the meaning “life” instead of chajjim all take place in poetic speech (chapter 7 of Ezek. is also poetic); 2) that chajah in this meaning cannot stand with a member, but here it is with a member. Moreover, “if wheels generally only have a living soul, then it does not at all follow that they move in accordance with animals; but the whole point is that the same ruach that animals follow is also in wheels” (See). Ruach hachajah should actually mean “animal spirit.” By animals in this expression, each of the four animals can apparently be understood: the spirit of each animal was in the wheel located next to it (Bert. interrogatively). But – “individual animals did not have different spirits; Here, moreover, the unity of spirit throughout the entire train must be brought forward; and was it possible after this (“the spirit of each animal”) to say in “wheels” in the sense: “in each individual wheel?” (Kr.). The most common understanding is that the prophet refers to chajah as “animals” as “four animals inseparably connected with each other and moving in exactly the same way” (See). The Prophet more than once assimilates such a collective name to 4 animals - and in Chapter 1. Art. 22 and especially in ch. 10. (vv. 15. 20). just as his wheels are also designated by the collective name galgal (10:2, 13). Track. ruach hachajah can be translated “animal spirit” (Russian Bible). This understanding also leaves quite a bit of room for objections. “Too much independence is attributed to them to the spirit of the creatures themselves, whereas their control should belong to nothing else but the Spirit of God” (Kr.). And what, in this case, would the expression mean: “the spirit of the animals was in the wheels”? Is it really that the soul of animals was in wheels? those. “that the existence and movement of the wheels depended entirely on the animals with which they were connected, as it were, organically” (Fr. Rozhd.)? But then the wheels would be some part of animals, the bodies of animals. M.t. The prophet thinks of them as something independent next to animals; This is how the ancient translators imagined the wheels: among other things, the translation is based on this idea: “the spirit of life was in the wheels.” And the parallels cited are not entirely convincing. “In 1:22, only the Masoretic text has the singular. h., and 70 min. In chapter 10, where it is said twice: “the cherubim took hold: this is the animal that I saw on the river Chebar” singular. h. chajah is used in an explanatory phrase that does not actually refer to the phenomenon, not to the cherubs themselves, but only to their name; So in Russian you can say: “and the cherubim rose up - this is the name of the animal that I saw on the river. Khovar." Everywhere where all 4 animals are spoken of, especially in Chapter 1, everywhere they are called plural. part chajoth" (Fr. Rozhd.). But in 1:22 the Masoretic text may be accurate, and 70 give a free translation. And at 10:15, 20 it is doubtful that many. h. cheruvim explained unit. part chajah: the prophet saw more than one animal on Khobar. Chajah in the present verse and the Targum are understood collectively. The animals were so closely related to each other that the prophet in v. 11 considers it necessary to warn (in Hebrew) that their faces and wings were still separated, perudoth. In general, cherubim are thought of in such inseparability from each other that they are not spoken of separately anywhere. Part of this name is almost uncommon. What kind of creatures could a collective name be more suitable for if not these? It is easy to understand why the collective name is used here. If the prophet had said: “ruach hachajah,” then one would think that he was talking about the spirit, like the soul of animals. By calling animals by a collective name, he excludes such a division of ruach between animals and makes it clear that he is talking about that ruach in animals that was the same in all of them, about the spirit not of individual animals, but of the entire hachajah “this living thing.” Ruach hachajah is here another name for that Doer who earlier in this verse and in verse 12 is directly called haruach. It is the Spirit that determined the movement of animals. “The Prophet wants to say that both wheels and animals were set in motion by the same Spirit of God and therefore moved in the same way; the same Spirit that directed and moved the animals directed and moved the wheels” (Mald.). The amendment proposed in this sentence by Kretschmar is unnecessary: ​​instead of “and the spirit of the animals was in the wheels” - “and one spirit was in them.” Its foundations: “the connection rather requires expression for the unity of the spirit that filled the entire chariot - the cherubim, like the wheels; therefore I read instead of החיה here in v. 21 and 10:10 אחת “one”, which could easily deteriorate into that, and further instead of באופנים בהם; Art. 20 does not justify the harmony that existed between the 4 wheels, but, as Art. 19. 21 lead one to expect, rather, the harmony that existed between them and the animals.” Against this amendment, it is enough to say that the clearest does not deteriorate into the darkest. Home page Please contact us הַחַיָּה בָּאוֹפַנִּים Ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτὰ ἐπορεύοντο καὶ ἐν τῷ ἑστάναι αὐτὰ εἱστήκεισαν καὶ ἐν τῷ ἐξαίρειν αὐτὰ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐξῄροντο σὺν αὐτοῖς ὅτι πνεῦμα ζωῆς ἦν ἐν τοῖς τροχοῖς. Always this walking, walking (and the wheels), and always standing for them, standing (and the wheels with them); and when I was lifted up from the earth, I was lifted up with them (and the wheels), for the spirit of life was in the wheels. The agreement in the movement of wheels and animals was so remarkable that the prophet once again draws attention to it by briefly repeating everything that was said about it. He complements this repetition with an indication that when the animals stopped, the wheels also stopped with them - a circumstance that is far from obvious in itself due to the fact that the wheels were in no way connected with the animals. That. "21 Art. combines the two preceding verses with the addition of a new one and concludes them” (Gitz.). It “only describes in more detail and more fully the agreement in the movement of animals and repeats the reason for this agreement: the spirit of life was in the wheels” (Fr. Rozhd.). Besides this immediate purpose - to serve as a conclusion to the description of the remarkable harmony in the movement of animals and wheels, Art. 21 has another purpose: it paints us a picture of the general movement of the entire phenomenon. From it we learn that the phenomenon did not always proceed, but sometimes stopped, and that it sometimes walked along the earth, and at times rushed above the earth, “rose from the earth” - information that is important and has not yet been communicated by the prophet in such completeness and clarity. The author here, as usual, replenishes himself. So, it cannot be said that “Art. 21 is the first tangible evidence that we are dealing with a writer who is spreading” (Bert.). This is far from being a verse that the chapter could do without, and without great damage to the whole picture of the vision it cannot be thrown away, as 2 Kennicott manuscripts do (181, 665). The verse ends with a literal repetition of the final words of the previous verse: “for the spirit of the beast was in the wheels” - one of Ezekiel’s literary devices, meaning to draw attention to the idea repeated with such literalness. “This causal sentence costs twice, p.ch. the main strength lies in him” (Kr.). “It is said twice: “for the spirit of life was in the wheels,” so that we should not at all consider the wheels to be something that we see in the lower parts of carts, carts and chariots, but living beings, even higher than living beings” (Bl. Jer.). According to Kretschmar Art. 21 should follow 19: “indefinite pronominal suffixes in Art. 21 are deprived for 20 Art. correct attitude, but this verse perfectly adjoins Art. 19; Wed corresponding place of parallel version 10, 16, etc.” Such a rearrangement, besides the fact that it has no basis in any manuscript, is not necessary: ​​and in the current place of the verse, its vague suffixes have not yet aroused doubts in anyone about what they should be attributed to. Some ambiguity was inevitable in view of the brevity that this verse required as a final one. Home page Please contact us Καὶ ὁμοίωμα ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτοῖς τῶν ζῴων ὡσεὶ στερέωμα ὡς ὅρασις κρυστάλλου ἐκτεταμένον ἐπὶ τῶν πτερύγων αὐτῶν ἐπάνωθεν. And the likeness above the heads of the animals is like the firmament, like a vision of a crystal stretched over their wings from above. “The climax of theophany was approaching” (Tr.). What the prophet saw above the heads of the mysterious animals was the same as what the New Testament seer saw in heaven itself through the door opened into it (Apoc. 4). So, the very sky now opened before the prophet. Before Ezekiel, only Moses and with him, to some extent, some of the best representatives of the then Israel (Ex. 24) were honored to look into such an open sky. The reader is warned about the mystery of what is now being described by the word דמות. The Prophet again (vv. 5, 10) sees something to which only a similarity on earth can be pointed out. It is not said about the wheels that only their likenesses were visible; but it is said so only about animals, about their faces, and (perhaps) about the fire that was between the animals; the concept of demuth will be used only when describing the throne and Him who sits on it. The remoteness of the similarity is intensified here through what is not immediately said, the similarity of what, what similarity the prophet sees. The similarity can be determined more closely in a few words. “The likeness of the firmament over the heads of the animals” is a stronger, more mysterious expression than: “the likeness of the firmament is above the heads of the animals.” The first can be conveyed this way: something was visible above the heads of the animals, as if the firmament. Therefore, there is no need on the basis of Art. 26 and the usual Ezekiel image of expression to rearrange demuth to רקיע (Kr.): and at such a distance between these words there can be an “oppositional opposition” (Kr.), all the more powerful. What the prophet would describe was above, על, the heads (אשי) of the animals. The preposition hal can mean both “on” (Gen. 37:23; Exod. 23:13; 2 Kings 23:2; Isa. 6:1) and “above” (Gen. 1:20; 2 Kings 25:16). It is not indifferent which of these two meanings is given to hal here. If we give the first meaning to “on,” then the firmament rested on the heads of the cherubim, they supported it with their heads; if the latter, then she simply towered above their heads. Following 70 (ὑπὲρ), here this preposition is usually given a second meaning. In such a phenomenon, where there was no material connection anywhere: neither between living beings and the wheels located next to them, nor between the wheels and the throne of God carried by them, was such a crudely material connection between animals and the firmament possible, such as the support of the latter by the heads of the former? The cherubim were also to invisibly and spiritually carry the throne of Jehovah, just as the wheels beside them carried it. Therefore, it is not true that the basis of this entire idea are Assyro-Babylonian architectural monuments, one of which, in Zendshirli, is this: two sphinxes, with their backs turned to each other, support a base on which columns stand and other objects could be located (Vink. 347). Instead of ראשי 1, the Russian code has ראשיהם. So 70, only units. h.: ​​κεφαλῆς αὐτοῖς. The firmament rose above the heads not of the “animals,” but of the “animal” חיה. Again “strange” (Cor.) singular. h., as in art. 19 and 21, instead of which, however, there are 3 hands. Ken., 70, Targ., Pesh. and Vulg. have plural h. On this basis they correct (Gitz. Cor. Bert. Toi) this unit. on plural “Each cherub did not have 4 heads, but only 4 faces, and none of the four was previously designated so that one could return to it with a member (chajah here with a member); and the vault spread over everyone. The suffix ראשיהם (at the end of the verse) also shows that it should be read as plural. h." (Gitz.). Unit b.b.b. is based only on the equation with Art. 20 and 21 (ruach hachajah). At 10, 15. 20 units. has the right to exist, since the entire phenomenon is considered as one organic being (Cor. Kr.) while here only 4 cherubs are meant. All these objections to units. h. do not have decisive persuasiveness. 70 and other ancient translations could allow free translation here. At 3 euros hands pl. h. could be an amendment. 4 cherubs can also be considered here as one organic being. It is more difficult to explain the appearance of units here. instead of plural, than vice versa. What is רקיע, στερέωμα 70, firmamentum Vulg., “firmament” of glory, (“vault” Russian translation), which the prophet saw above the heads of the cherubim? Rakiah, the root meaning of which according to Qal רקע is “something solid, established” (Kr.; cf. monophonic Syriac word and Assyrian רקא Del. N.–V. 627; Wellh. Rgo 1. 406), in V.Z. is not used in any other sense other than the one given to it by Genesis. 1:6, i.e. in the sense of the visible sky (Ps. 18:2: the heavens tell the glory of God, but the creation of his hand proclaims rakiah; Ps. 150:1: praise God in his saints, praise Him in affirmation - birekiah - His power; Dan. 12:3: and the understanding will be enlightened like the brightness of the firmament (rakiah); Job 37:18: are you with Him spread out the heavens (rakiah) like a cast mirror). Visible sky m.b. “It was called that way, p.ch. the ancients considered the sky or ether to be solid (Vassii Not. ad. Georgic. 3, 261. Rose). “For the ancients, the firmament was like a solid vault covering the earth; Wed Life 6:1 "(Tr.). And in Job the firmament is likened to a cast mirror. Ave. Ezekiel could hardly have used rakiah here in any other sense than the generally accepted one (of the firmament). True, the absence of a member makes it possible that here rakiah “does not mean the firmament” (Tr.). But “since Jehovah has a throne in heaven, then Ezekiel’s rakiah must mean heaven” (Kr.) 87. For the place of God's standing, Moses finds no better comparison than the firmament (Ex. 24:10). Nothing else but the firmament itself was supposed to stretch over the heads of the cherubim. But this was not the firmament that we usually see, but only a similarity of it, demuth, of course much superior to its prototype. 70 before “firmament” they have a particle, as it were, ὡσεὶ, the corresponding כ is not in the mass. t. A similar redundant particle, only the weakest one – ὡς, is found in 70 and 5th century. As we saw there, there is no need to assume that the corresponding כ is lost in the mas. t.: the particle could be added to weaken the concept of ὁμοίωμα and bring it closer to the more vague and broad Hebrew demuth. It is possible that here ὡσεὶ has such an origin, although, since it is stronger than the local ὡς, there is more reason to assume that it is a Hebrew כ. If so, then the similarity between the firmament that appeared to the prophet and the visible one becomes even less and is reduced to a weak similarity. The visible and sensible sky could give a very insufficient idea of ​​the invisible sky. Disappearance, if it occurred, in Heb. i.e. כ cannot be explained to someone who does not share the theory of the sacred code, the way its adherents explain it. “Rakiah is also a common noun here: spread surface (solidum quippiam diductnm. Rose.). Therefore, it is here without a member, and only in Art. 23, meaning Art. 22, is it already with a member. But the foundation on which the throne of God rises in other places is the firmament, and the surface on which the throne of God stands now, when God descends to earth, should resemble it; That’s why the word rakiah is used to designate this surface” (Gietz.). “The word still stands here in its original sensual meaning and for the first time from here it became a technical expression for the firmament of heaven, which it designates in Ezekiel’s passages. For the scribes, through whose oversight demuth moved to the beginning of the verse, rakiah was already a common noun for the firmament” (Kr.). “When, thanks to this place, such a use of the word (in the sense of the heavenly firmament on which the throne of God stands) became generally accepted, then כ in Ezekiel had to be crossed out, since Jehovah has a throne in heaven itself” (Cor.). Above the wings of animals spread wide in all directions. The firmament itself had already spread out. But this was not the firmament that we usually see above us. And the firmament usually visible to us at other times, for example. on clear days or on starry nights, it has a view so beautiful that the human imagination finds it difficult to imagine anything better. Moses and the “elders of Israel,” who saw the place where God stood, found that with its pure and transparent light it resembled the firmament of heaven: “like a vision of the firmament of heaven in purity.” Ave. Ezekiel does not find this comparison sufficient for the vault that he saw above the heads of the cherubim. This vault seemed to him like a huge mass of קרח’a. Kerach means either cold, frost (Gen. 31:40; Jer. 36:30), or ice (Job 37:10; 38:29). The second meaning, more rare and seemingly later, must nevertheless be recognized as the main one, p.ch. the root of this word is “to be smooth” and therefore initially it should have been applied to water that had become smooth from the cold; hence probably this word came to mean freezing cold. But already 70 and after them almost all ancient translations considered the usual meaning of this word not suitable here (only the Targum renders it גליד “ice”). The appearance of ice, however pure and transparent it may be, is not at all so magnificent as to serve as a strong comparison in this case. A piece of ice is too ordinary, common and familiar to everyone for it to surprise the prophet as much as the vault he saw surprised him. The delight and surprise into which the prophet came from the sight of this vault were so great that they exceeded their usual measure and bordered on fear and horror: the prophet speaks in mass. that is, that the sight of this kerach was terrible, hannorah, a word that denoted among the Jews the horror generated by the appearance of angels. Realizing the impossibility of giving the word kerach here its usual meaning of “ice,” the ancient translators, and after them almost all interpreters, settled on a crystal or crystal, as an object that, having the properties required here, would be more suitable here than ice 88. Although kerach is not used anywhere in the meaning of crystal (in Job 28:17 “crystal” is translated גבש), they think that a crystal could be called this either because of its resemblance to ice or the like. according to the ancients, it is produced by frost (Pliny, Hist. nat. 37, 2, 9: “crystal occurs when the strongest frost reaches the highest degree; for it is found in no other place than where winter snows constantly lie, and it is known that it is ice, which is why the Greeks gave it this name”). It is difficult to decide what meaning the word kerach has in the mouth of Ezekiel: whether it means ice, crystal or crystal, or something else. They think that ap. John, who of course meant Ezek. 1:22 in Rev. 4:6, tends to the second meaning; but he rather combines both meanings when he says that before the throne of God there was a sea of ​​glass, like crystal. The newest researchers are already inclined to the first meaning (See Kr.: “the firmament was like ice, and not like a crystal from Targ. contrary to 70”). In the book. Job's crystal or crystal (if this is how gavisch should translate) is apparently placed below the gold of Ophir and sapphire, but on a par with ordinary pure gold (28:17, 18). Track. In ancient times, crystal was one of the greatest values ​​and may was worthy to be part of a majestic phenomenon, where everything, even the wheels, seemed made of the best precious stones. Crystal can serve as a good symbol of heavenly purity and clarity. “It was fitting that in the above-described (firmament) there should be extreme purity, which would cover everything” (Blessed Jer.). But if by kerach we mean crystal, then it will remain unclear why the prophet calls it such an uncommon name. The Prophet needed a mineral that would be the best combination of complete transparency and stone strength. Kerach could also have the meaning of “solid”, “cf. Assyrian kirhu==castellum. The floor of the throne of God in Ex. 24:10 consists of sapphire slabs” (Kr.) and kerach should be the same condensation of the transparency of the sky as sapphire is of blue. It should mean a mineral that is, as it were, numb pure water. A crystal or other mineral of such transparency would be no different from our pure diamond, which in its polished form was probably unknown to ancient times and therefore the prophet could not use it for comparison. But we would successfully translate the comparison of the prophet into the modern language of objects by putting “diamond” instead of kerach. And a small grain of diamond, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, produces a whole radiance all around it. One can imagine what an impression a solid diamond the size of the vault of heaven would make. The firmament seen by Ezekiel should have looked exactly like this. Indeed, one could come not into surprise and delight, but into positive stupor and horror (hannorah) from such a view. The beauty of a diamond is especially enhanced by artificial lighting, since in the light of a fire it burns especially strongly. The diamond firmament, seen by St. Ezekiel, also had this advantage. When the prophet saw her, he had long ago entered the “darkness of vision.” The entire surrounding area was shrouded in thick darkness before him, and in this darkness large tongues of flame burned terribly between the cherubs and the pile of coals beneath them sparkled with its trembling brilliance. One can imagine how the diamond vault, spread wide over everything, must have burned from all this. For the mysterious object, called kerach by the prophet, he learns the no less mysterious definition of הנורא, which 70 in the code do not have. Al. Wat. lane Cop. Eph.; in Chiz. to. under ast. The root meaning of this word is “terrible.” But in those two places in the Old Testament where it is used, it means fear and awe inspired by an angel or God (Judg. 13:6: a man of God came to me, whose appearance as an angel of God was very honorable - hannora; Job 37:22: bright weather comes from the north and there is terrible splendor around God). And in such a special meaning, this word is appropriate here: that kerach, which hung in the form of a firmament over the heads of the cherubim, of course inspired awe in the prophet by the fact that it made him feel his high, unearthly purpose. The Prophet realized that only heaven itself, on which the throne of God stands, can combine such transparency of pure water with the real hardness of stone. He suddenly felt himself in front of a real open sky, and this feeling could not help but fill him with horror. Appropriate as a definition of kerach, the word is (hannora) m.b. would be even more suitable as a definition for the firmament. It can also be classified as the firmament. Then the crystal-like quality will be the first sign, the external quality of the firmament seen by the prophet, and hannorah will be the second, internal quality. Everything he had seen so far could only inspire the prophet with delight, surprise, and some fear, with the possible exception of the many-eyed wheels, about which the prophet noted that they were terrible for him. This is not what the prophet should have felt when he saw the firmament, the very sky. On it he had to wait for God, His throne. “The Firmament was called terrible because of the Divinity Which it bore on itself” (Mald.). Therefore, although the word hannora is not in so many and so venerable Greek codes (but from the Hebrew rkp. it is not absent from any; it is also in the Targum, where המין “strong” is conveyed, Peshito and Syrian copy), its authenticity cannot be denied as decisively as the newest interpreters do. It is called “an inappropriate and incorrect predicate” (Gietz.), “since neither ice nor crystal can be called terrible” (Kr.; “shivering from cold is not a thrill of fear” Gitz.). According to Gitzig, this is apparently a field gloss, someone who, by fluently reading, understood demuth about God himself (Ps. 75:12; Deut. 10:17; 7:21). According to Kretschmar, “it is better to change הנורא into נראה (pirah) “became visible,” “came out,” i.e. firmament, cf. 10:8; 8:5; Ps. 18:6; in the thought that the appearance of Jehovah is something terrible for man, the scribe wrote נורא instead of ניראה.” The Prophet has already said that the firmament extended over the heads of the animals. According to the description of the firmament, he repeats this instruction, obviously with the aim of drawing attention to it, as if he is saying: “and this firmament, a terrible sky for humans, was located directly above the heads of the animals, on top of them, as if on the heads themselves.” But 70 (code. Al. Vat. Marsh. Cop. Eph. sire. hex.) in this repeated indication is read instead of the Masoretic על־ראשיהם “on wings,” ἐπὶ τῶν πτερύγων. On 70 next. the firmament extends over (ὑπέρ) the heads of animals on (ἐπὶ) their wings. With this reading 70, they think, their 23rd article is connected, where after 70 כנפיהם they insert ἐκτεταμέναι שיות Isa. 8, 8, i.e. the wings, according to representation 70, were motionlessly spread out under the firmament, “supporting it” (Kr.). It is objected to reading 70 that the wings moved and therefore could not carry the firmament (See Kr.). But this objection has force only against the accuracy of the translation on the part of 70 hal through ἐπὶ, and not against the possibility that the prophet in the second half of the verse more accurately determines the position of the firmament: it was not directly above the heads, but above the wings, which were somewhat raised above the heads (v. 11). On the other hand, the Hebrew text is unfairly reproached for tautology (Gitz.): not to mention the prophet’s penchant for repetition, which he uses to “emphasize” thoughts, the prophet in the second half of the verse can say that the rakiah was spread over the entire space that was above the heads of the cherubim, trace. was connected by a square surface, which is not visible from the previous one (Kr.). Pescito, having difficulty explaining this tautology, eliminates it with a free translation of the verse: “and there was spread over the heads of the animals, as it were, the likeness of a terrible crystal.” Ἐπὶ 70 also reveals in them a tendency towards free translation. In view of all this, and also in view of the fact that the most difficult reading (mas.) does not displace the smoother one (in 70) and that the next verse is dedicated to the thought put into the mouth of the prophet by the 70th, the Masoretic roschehem has more rights to authenticity. Home page Home page שְׁתַּיִם מ means Καὶ ὑποκάτω τοῦ στερεώματος αἱ πτέρυγες αὐτῶν ἐκτεταμέναι ?? ἐπικαλύπτουσαι τὰ σώματα αὐτῶν. And under the firmament of the wing they are stretched out, hovering towards each other, the two are coupled to each other, covering their bodies. The description that one might already expect - what was on the cloud - Ezekiel dramatically postpones until the end and in verse 23 returns to the description of the sight in which the animals rushed towards him with thunderous beats of their wings” (See). Verse 23 serves as an introduction to the picture of this deafening flight, in which the prophet recalls what was already described in verses 9 and 11. relative position of the wings. Prophet so he talks about this for the third time, which shows the importance of this particular vision. But “the verse does not simply repeat the data of verses 11 (and 9): the new thing we learn is that the points of contact of the two wings lie at the base of the firmament” (Ber.). Tachath "under" is directly opposed to milmahlah "above" v. 22, and we get two features corresponding to each other in a harmonious image: a vault spread out on the wings and these latter equally spread out under it” (Gietz.). “It seemed that the firmament carried wings, although, as Art. 24, they only touched her” (Tr.). In the proper sense, the wings could not materially support the firmament, because they were in constant motion (“soaring”). The firmament of the vision, like the real firmament, was founded on nothing. In general, there was no visible connection between all parts of the phenomenon. There was some kind of invisible connection between them, no less strong than a material connection. Animals could also carry the firmament of heaven without supporting it, just as wheels could move the throne of God. Wings of cherubs t.o. reached that highest heaven where God dwells. The wings connected the cherubim to the throne of God, serving as a sign of their immediate proximity to God. Such wings can truly be called “wings of immaterial glory.” At the same time, they covered the firmament from below the earth with the throne of God on it, just as the wings of the church cherubim covered the Capporet, on which God was revealed: “and the cherubim will be covering the lid with their wings - there I will reveal myself to you and speak to you above the lid in the midst of two cherubim” (Ex. 25:19, 20). Repeating the data of Art. 11. on the relative position of the wings, art. 23 makes one significant addition to them. Thus, he more precisely defines the way in which the wings of the cherubim were extended to each other. In view of this, the prophet in mas. t. does not even repeat here that the cherubim extended (perudoth) their two wings until they touched (choveroth) with each other - which he already spoke about in vv. 9 and 11. and that, according to his calculations, the reader himself could not help but remember, since the conversation turned to wings, - and you directly indicate how the wings were extended to each other. They were, says the prophet, straight, ישרות to each other. This expression probably has the meaning that all the outstretched wings of the four animals formed one horizontal plane. This position should have been all the more surprising since the wings, even during flight, do not leave this always-present, mathematically precisely calculated position in relation to each other. It must be admitted, however, that the appearance of the word jescharoth here is somewhat unexpected. It takes a lot of originality of language to use such an expression about the relative position of the wings. But it is not sufficiently explained by the uniqueness of the language. It is remarkable that even when speaking earlier about the position of the wings, the prophet could not avoid some ambiguity and had to resort to expressions that were barely understandable in the use given for them there (perudoth, choveroth). It was as if the wings of the mysterious animals were in some difficult to convey position towards each other. The expression is so strange that even 70 did not dare to translate it literally. Instead of Euro jescharoth they have ἐκτεταμέναι (“stretched out”) πτερυσσόμεναι (“soaring”, but 3:13 “creating”). Hardly 70 read anything else here (according to Gitz. they read נטויות Ex. 6:6, according to Ev. משיקות 3:13, according to Cor. פרודות v. 11, and πτερυσσόμεναι increase at 3:13). Their εκτεταμεναι πτερυσσομεναι m.b. are simply a loose translation of jescharoth: in order for wing to wing to form one straight plane (jescharoth), the wings needed to extend towards each other until they touched. So, the word jescharoth, used about the relative position of the wings, is not refuted by the 70th and, although it is not entirely clear here and has not yet received a completely natural explanation, it is not logically impossible here. It cannot be said (Cor.) that jaschar could be called a leg in contrast to a curve, but not a wing; and that in the meaning of “straight outstretched” it is lexically not permissible: in itself, of course, it does not give such a meaning, but it implies perudoth Art. 13. And in Art. 7 jaschar has some mysterious meaning, it seems broader than “uncrooked”. The Prophet considers it necessary again, as in Art. 11, make a reservation that only the two upper wings of the cherubim were stretched out. The remaining two wings were constantly lowered, because their purpose was to cover the body. In wt. i.e. this thought is expressed in an apparently dividing sentence: “one of them (לאש) had two (wings) covering them, and the other (ולאש) had two covering their bodies.” "Those. In addition to those outstretched ones, each animal had two wings covering their body. The repetition of the same sentence divides the 4 animals into two parts, which are designated generatim להנה and distinguished singulatim לאש” (Rose). “Animals are divided into two pairs, opposite one another; on each side two covered the body with wings” (Tr.). This is how the Vulgate, which translates it, understands the Hebrew expression: et alterum similiter velabatur. Vulgate next finds in the Hebrew text the idea that “there was complete similarity in the way the cherubim covered themselves” (Tr.). It is unknown whether 70 read both sentences of the Hebrew text in 23b or only one of them; but in the best codes 70 (Al. Vat. trans. Cop. Ef. Arab.) the thought is conveyed in one sentence: “each two (in some words: conjugated 89) covering their bodies.” In code. Cheese. and sire. hex. second guess και δυο καλυπτουσαι αυττοις under the asterisk. On the part of 70, it could also be a free translation of the Hebrew disjunctive clause. But it is possible that 70 read only one sentence here in their original. There is no second offer (from leisch2 to lehennah2) even at 8 euros. manuscripts (Ken.). And the hesitation in the transmission of Greek codices 23b casts doubt on its integrity. Then 23b introduces grammatical irregularities. “The correlative relation is never expressed through להנה, but through מזה, e.g. 1 Sam. 17:3 ;. indeed lehennah is not at 3 euros. RKP. and it was probably not read by 70 and Pesh. Before leisch1 there is no ligament that cannot be dispensed with here” (Cor.). Then “there is no date that the remark about outstretched wings refers only to 2 wings; perfect harmony would be obtained only when, in Art. and add also שתים לאש (“under the firmament their wings extended one to the other, each one had two, and each one two covered their bodies”), through which a construction would be obtained corresponding to Art. 11. All these oddities, we note, admit of justification. להנה is proven להם art. 6. Asundeton in Ezekiel part. As for the last objection, the prophet could count on the detailed 11th Art. will help to understand the condensed expression of this verse on the same subject. That. the authenticity of Masoretic transmission 23b cannot be decisively denied. The form it has in 70 (without repeating leisch–lahennah) could have come from translation. If in wt. i.e. repeated words are added, then this addition does not affect the meaning and is made according to Isa. 6:1. In any case, thought 23b among the masses. and 70 one. Although this idea is not new, its repetition, in addition to emphasizing it, placing it in this connection, sheds new light on it. The cherubim only covered their body (torso) because they were under (thachath) the firmament and the throne of God, while the seraphim also covered their faces, p.c. were לוֹ מלמעל “above him.” Please contact us Home בְּעָמְדָם תְּרַפֶּינָה כַנְפֵיהֶן Καὶ ἤκουον τὴν φωνὴν τῶν πτερύγων αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτὰ ὡς φωνὴν ὕδατος πολλοῦ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἑστάναι αὐτὰ κατέπαυον αἱ πτέρυγες αὐτῶν. And when they heard a voice, they shouted and soared, like the voice of God Saddai; and whenever they walk, the voice of the word is like the voice of a regiment; and whenever they stood there, she screamed at them. Beneath the very firmament, where the wings of the mysterious animals stretched, those mighty flapping of wings must have occurred, which carried the entire - if it is not disrespectful to put it this way - the enormity of the phenomenon. And the flight of large birds makes considerable noise. And here winged lions and oxen flew. The Prophet does not indicate the measures of their wings. But they were hardly shorter than the wings of Solomon's cherubs. One can imagine the rumble that must have been produced by the uniform flapping of a row of such wings. The peals of this roar occurred right under the surface. As a result, the whole place positively thundered. The footstool of Jehovah was supposed to amaze all the senses with its grandeur—not just sight, but also hearing. “It is a very skillful device on Ezekiel’s part that he does not immediately follow v. 22. describes what he manages to see on the firmament, but once again looking at the bottom, he tells us what he sees under the firmament. Through this, the reader’s tension should increase, and indeed it reaches its highest point at that moment in which a phenomenon full of mystery no longer exerts its wonderful effect on the viewer’s eye, but on his ear; he is fully aware of it only when the sound of the wings stops when the chariot stops” (Bert.). “Before describing what is in the firmament, Ezekiel leads his reader in a very skillful way to this description by indicating a mighty noise that heralds the approach of the terrifying heights of God. In Art. 24 most closely describes how the prophet perceives the noise of the wings of animals flying closer and closer” (Kr.). The prophet does not find a sufficient comparison for the noise rushing from under the firmament. He goes through all kinds of the strongest earthly noise in order to give at least some idea of ​​​​what he heard. “I heard the sound of their wings, like the sound of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a great noise, like the noise of an army.” “The heap of comparisons in this first description of the indescribable is very understandable” (See). But these comparisons do not refer to exactly the same subject. Although all these comparisons are intended to give an idea of ​​​​the noise made by the wings of cherubs, this noise could be different. The wings can make noise when they are in action. And when the prophet says that the sound of the cherubim’s wings was like the sound of waters and the voice of the Almighty, he of course means the wings in their action, in flight. Several Greek codes (Venetian, 5 minus. with rec. Luke, Theodoret and Slav. trans.) make a successful addition to the Hebrew. i.e., putting in the first two comparisons ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι “always a hover.” When the cherubim flew, the sound of their wings was like the sound of many waters and like the voice of the Almighty. But cherubs did not always fly. They sometimes walked or otherwise moved along the ground, and sometimes they stopped completely. In both cases, the wings could not make noise, at least not as loud as during flight. The Prophet notes that when the cherubim walked (בלכתם cf. v. 21) a sound was heard from the wings (cf. Jer. 11:16; m.b. = המון Ezek. 7:11; 1 Kings 18:41; d.b. a kind of dull noise), like the noise in a military camp (מחנה כקול cf. Gen. 32:28). When the animals stopped, their wings were at rest and, of course, could not make noise (then the cherubim only sometimes flapped their wings at especially important moments, for example 10:5, which on their part was like applauding Jehovah. Book on 10:5). With this understanding of the verse, each of the series of comparisons used in it will receive its place and it will not be possible to say about the verse that it represents “a heap of comparisons that adds nothing to the elevation of the effect” (Bert.). If we do not divide the verse into these three natural parts, into the description of the noise from the wings when the animals 1) flew, 2) when they walked and 3) when they stood, i.e., if we follow the usual understanding of this verse, which sees in it a series of comparisons for one subject - for the noise from the wings, which was always the same - then the verse will present a series of inconsistencies, which rationalist criticism rightly pointed out to orthodox exegesis. First of all, the comparisons “do not cover each other at all. The first half of the verse, compared to the second (from the words: “when they stood”), is disproportionately burdened. Chamullach would be the second accusative of “heard” and its place is not here, but before kekol maim - before a series of comparisons. In other places (Isa. 17:12) the noise of the camp is explained through the noise of many waters.” (Gitz.). The unexpected insertion between the second and third comparison “when they walked” is incomprehensible. “Every defense of the present course of speech in Art. 24 (i.e., the course of speech assumed by the conventional explanations of this verse) amounts to a complete denial of literary ability to Ezekiel" (Bert.). Roughness reported 24 tbsp. misunderstanding of it, gave reason to suspect in it the authenticity of entire expressions. This was also favored by some codices that did not read this verse at all or read it with significant abbreviations. In 6 manuscripts of Kennicott, one of Rossi and in some lists there is no Pescito at all. 24 Art. In Vat. code. from this verse one can only read: ως φωνην υδατος πολλου και ἐν τω εσταναι αυτα κατεπαυον αι πτερυγες αυτων; That. from a series of comparisons of Vat. code. brings only one thing - with the sound of waters. Everything unnecessary stands against this in the March. code. under the asterisk and designated “Θε” (“from Theodotion”). In view of the fact that the reading of the Vatican Code stands alone (confirmed only by the Marsh. Code., and in other words agreeing with it), one can suspect this code, which generally tends to bypass difficult passages by skipping them, in correcting the verse according to 43:2, where in a similar case (not quite, however, there is talk about the noise of the wings of the cherubim during their movement) only one comparison is given - with sound of water On the same grounds, it is difficult to trust seven (out of 1200!) Hebrew manuscripts that do not read v. 24. Let us dwell on individual thoughts of the verse. “And I heard the sound (קול) of their wings, like the sound of many waters.” The biblical writers' favorite comparison for loud noise: Ezek. 43:2; Is. 17:12 ; Jer. 6:13; Apoc. 1:15; 14:2; 19:1. The sound of many waters can mean the sound of heavy rain, the sea or “a large stream that rolls quickly through rocks or collapses in a waterfall” (Petit). Which of these waters the prophet had in mind is difficult to say; M.B. and all together; but if one is something, then it is hardly rain, since, although such a comparison would be in harmony with the next one (thunder), the sound of rain is not so strong and the name “many waters” would least of all suit rain. The sound of the sea is also inferior in strength to the sound of a waterfall, and the latter could abound in the mountain streams of Judea. Whatever is meant by waters by many, the comparison in any case means that “when animals flew, the movement and flapping of their wings produced a large, but indefinite and vague sound” (Mald.). The roar heard by the prophet was not at all like the sound of many waters. He was stronger. If we look for comparisons for it, the prophet continues, then it can only be compared with the voice of God Himself שדי קול. “Why look for nothing, as the prophet says, for the likeness of a worthy thing and not find it anywhere: it is enough to point out the Acting One and show them the power of noise” (Blessed Theod.). This comparison is repeated by the prophet in 10:7: “The sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even in the outer court, like the voice of God, the Almighty (already שדי אל) when He speaks.” The repetition of this comparison in Chapter 10, where it appears in all codes and translations, serves as proof of its authenticity here, contrary to Vat. code. and Ethiopian. trans., omitting it (Cor. and Bert.: “comes from the inauthentic 10:5”). The “voice of God (Schaddaj)” can also be understood as His real voice (for example, heard at Sinai). This understanding is favored by the addition of 10:5: “when He speaks.” But among biblical writers such an expression (“voice of God”) is a common “periphrasis for thunder” (Mald.). Wed. Ps. 28:3, 4, 5: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; The God of glory has thundered, the Lord over many waters.” Job 37:2–5: “Hear, hear His voice and the thunder that proceeds from His mouth; under the whole sky its roar and its shining to the ends of the earth; a voice thunders behind Him, He thunders with the voice of His majesty.” That the present comparison can have such a meaning is confirmed by Apok. 17:2: “I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of great thunder”; 19:5, 6: “A voice came out from the throne, and I heard like the voice of a great people, like the sound of many waters, like the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia.” Man has always been so shocked by thunder that all nations considered it the best image for the voice of God Himself. Finally, the “voice of God” can also mean any great noise, a piercing and “terrible” sound (Pti), sonum fortem et vehementhem (Kimhi), “as the cedars of God and the mountains of God are great cedars and mountains” (Rashi). Wed. Is. 13:6: “He comes as the destructive power of the Almighty.” All these understandings can be combined. The comparison of the prophet wants to name the greatest noise possible on earth, reaching the degree that the Jew designated in various kinds of qualities with the high definition of “God.” But no noise can compare in power to the deafening peals of thunder, during which the universe seems to tremble. If anything could be stronger than this noise on earth, then is it theophanic thunder, which of course was stronger than natural and which is also referred to in the indicated places of the psalms, Job and Apok. Whatever kol Schaddaj means, in any case this epithet indicates a stronger noise than the first comparison. The second comparison complements the first, defining the noise heard by the prophet on the other side - by degree and strength, while the first comparison defines it by quality. It is not without purpose that God is called here by the rare name of Shaddai. God is called by this name on especially important and solemn occasions. This is how He calls Himself under the covenant with Abraham: “I am God Shaddai: be blameless” (Gen. 17:1). This is what Balaam calls him in one of the prophecies: “says he who hears the words of God, who sees the visions of Shaddai.” This name of God appears especially often in the book. Job: 30 times. Shaddai has the same root as the verb שדד, coll. to be strong, but the usual meaning is: to abuse force, to rob, to devastate. The ancients derived this name of God from ש abbr. אשר “which” and די “pleased”, why Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and here and there 70 translate it Ἱκανὸς (as here is a certain code). Now they produce Shaddai from the Assyrians. root שדד, “to be high,” hence schadu gora; in the Palmyra inscription the personal name שדי (Kr.) appears; with this meaning of the root Shaddai, El-Schaddaj would mean “God is my rock” (Fr. Rozhd.). Noldeke identifies Shaddai with the demon Deut. 32:17; Ps. 105:37, which of course can come from the verb schadad in its usual bad meaning (“to rob”). Based on all this data, we can conclude that Shaddai is some particularly mysterious name of God, expressing perhaps. mainly the elemental, world power of the Divine. Let us also note that שדי, as a noun, is found only in poetry (Jer. 13:6; Job); in prose it has אל in front of it: Gen. 13:1; 28:3, etc. On this basis and 10:5 there is something. Greek codes and glory. lane they read אל here before him too. “When they walked (בלכתם) the noise was like the noise of a military camp.” Hamullach is only here and Jer. 11:16: “at the noise of the hamullach He kindled a fire around it, and its branches were broken.” Hamullach in its root המל 90 is akin to the “Arabic word meaning torrential rain, which usually accompanies the most fierce storms. Its root can also be הם, which, generally meaning noise (= din), appears in various branches: המה “to make noise”, המם “noise”, הימר “boiling”, המכ “violence” (Geph.). Therefore, hamullach is considered a synonym for המון “noise” of 1 Kings. 18:41; Is. 17:12, “noisy crowd” 1 Sam. 14:16 (Gesenius, Keil, Tr. Toi suggests reading this word המור according to Jerome miltitudinis). Ancient translations shed just as little light on this word as philology. 70, Targ. and Feod. translated “speech”, “word” or by analogy with schamon, used about the talk of a crowd of people 1 Samuel. 14:16, or p.h. vocalized chammilah (“word”, “speech” in poetry instead of דבר: 2 Samuel 23:2; Job 32:18, etc.) λόγος 91. Peshito chammulah translates "speaker". In Jer. 43:2 70 the same chammulah translates περιτομή. What was meant by the translation “speech”, “word”, the Targum shows: “and the sound of their speeches, when they glorified their Lord, the living King of the ages.” But the speech of the cherubim is not mentioned anywhere in Ezekiel (not even in 3:12). The word undoubtedly means some kind of dull noise. By the time of Ezekiel, the word may have passed from poetry into common language and become a designation for some kind of noise. The noise it denotes should not be as strong as in previous comparisons, but, as the above parallels and synonyms show, it is quite loud, although unclear and vague - a hum. The Prophet gives a clearer idea of ​​the quality of this noise produced by the wings of animals while they walk, when he compares it with the noise of מחנה, a military camp (Ex. 14:20; Deut. 29:10; Josh. 6:11, etc.), with the noise “which is made by huge armies preparing for battle on both sides” (Ros.). “The comparison finds its explanation in Gen. 32:3 "(Cor.). Targum: “like the voice of the angels on high.” Sn. 43:2 to 70: κα φονη παρεμβολης (“shelf”; read instead of מחנה מים). Naturally, the procession of the heavenly army is accompanied by the noise of a military campaign. And this loud military noise, reminiscent of the noise of an entire camp, comes from only 4 creatures! The sound of the cherubim's wings had to stop when they stood (בעמדם); then they did not flap their wings, lowering (תרפינה) them. The last word was punctuated by the Masoretes as Piel from רפה “to descend,” meaning “animals” as its subject. But 70 and Vulg. They translate it κατέπαυον, “pochivakha.” demittebantur, next they put “wings” as the subject of it, vocalizing it obviously תְּרַפֶּינָה imp. Qal. Translation of 70 and Vulg. has the advantage over mas. that it does not make the subject of thirpenah chajjoth, which is too far: in v. 22, and “which with verbs in chapter 1 is always considered m.r.” (Bert. Kr.). Translation through κατεπαυον (according to Ex. 5:8; Deut. 9:14; Ps. 37:8; Neh. 6:9) is also convenient in that it eliminates the difficulty created by a literal translation: according to Art. 12 and 23, two pairs of wings of each cherub were constantly stretched out and supported or seemed to support the firmament; meanwhile, according to Masoretic reading 23c, the cherubim lowered these wings when they stopped. Please contact us תְּרַפֶּינָה כַנְפֵיהֶן Καὶ ἰδοὺ φωνὴ ὑπεράνωθεν τοῦ στερεώματος τοῦ ὄντος ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτῶν And behold, a voice from above the firmament of existence, above their heads, always stood before them, and their wings descended. The verse consists of two sentences, between which it is difficult to establish any connection. Moreover, the second sentence is a literal repeat of the end of verse 24. Such a connection is usually assumed between them. “When the animals did not walk, no noise was heard from their wings, since they were at rest, but a voice was heard in the firmament” (Mald.). What kind of true voice from the firmament this is, various assumptions are made about this. The first thing that comes to mind is the assumption that this voice “belonged to the One above the firmament, who indicated where the animals should stop” (Tr.). The second half of the verse could then mean that “at the call from above, the chariot finally stopped before Ezekiel and now the prophet could give a description of the throne and Him who sat on it” (See Or.). But many things hinder such understanding. Jehovah speaks for the first time in 2:1. The chariot was already standing when the voice sounded. And “the command to the cherubim, who were moved by the “Spirit,” was also not necessary, as in Isa. command to Seraphim to take coal. Moreover, hearing the voice of God constituted the final highest point of theophany itself” (Kr.). And the fact that the animals, obedient to the voice from the firmament, finally stopped, could not be said like this: “as they stood, their wings drooped.” All other assumptions about the purpose and origin of the “voice from the firmament” are given a concise listing and refutation by Gitzig. “The noise (kol) above the firmament could not be an echo coming from below, neither by the nature of things, nor by any means. Ezekiel, due to his location, would not have been able to hear him. He could not come from the throne that was at rest. It could not come from Jehovah himself, be the noise of His feet (Gen. 3:8), p.ch. Jehovah does not walk, but sits, v. 26. If it were thunder (Ev.), then it could be defined more precisely, it would be called by its proper name.” The mystery of the voice about which the verse speaks and the complete impossibility of establishing any connection between the two halves of the verse, as well as the literal similarity of 25b with 24c, led even older interpreters (Capellus, Hubigantius in Ros.) to think about damage to the text here. The manuscripts also support this idea. 9 euros handwritten and some Peshito lists omit the entire verse. Cheese. the codex marks it with an asterisk. The second half of the verse is not in Hebrew 13. code., into code. Al. Wat. lane Cop. Eph., thanks to which the verse takes on the following form: “and there was a voice from the firmament.” The grounds are apparently sufficient to conclude that the current form of the verse is Masoretic. t. requires amendments. The following amendments are proposed. According to Gitzig, the words “and there was a voice” must be separated from the following word “above the firmament” and connected with the end of v. 24, b omitted, just as the first words and v. 26 are omitted. “and above the firmament that is above their heads,” which is not in code 3. Rossi and Vat. and which are dittographies of the same words, 25 Art. The text will take the following form: “when they stopped, their wings dropped (24c) and there was a noise (from this), and (“and” must be added) above the firmament, which is above their heads (25b and 26aa descends), there was the likeness of a throne. Cornille goes even further. He crosses out קול, and changes ויהי (“and was”) into והנה “Behold” = 70, since the latter, in a truly Ezekielian way, would mark a step forward in the description. That. Of the entire verse, Cornelius has one word left, and that is changed: “and behold (v. 25) in the firmament, above their head is a throne (v. 26).” Although Wat. code. and others give a very smooth reading here, but this smoothness can be suspicious: how could it turn into the roughness that the current mass represents. t. and Greek codes that agree with him? Therefore exegesis must reckon with the possibility of the received reading and continue to search for its proper meaning. Actually, only 25b, which is such a jarring repetition of the recent 24th Art., cannot be explained. But it cannot be said that “the double succession of the expressions: “as they stood, their wings drooped” was unbearable” (Cor.). This repetition of final expressions in the spirit of Ezekiel and 1 ch. presents quite a few examples of this author’s technique (“they did not turn around as they walked,” “for the spirit of life was in the wheels”). This repetition replaces Ezekiel's current emphasis on expressions. Thus, the repeated expression cannot stand in very close connection with neighboring sentences (v. 9). In the course of thought, each of these repetitions is an almost unnecessary insertion and its purpose is not in another sentence, but in itself: the prophet uses a distant occasion to recall a previously expressed thought. You don't have to read these final repetitions, and the thread of description will not be broken. That's what you should do here. It is necessary in the first half of the verse (if you adhere to the accepted reading of this verse) to see the continuation of the description, and in the second half of it there is a break caused by the prophet’s desire to return to the thought expressed earlier. However, one cannot help but admit that, on the one hand, the lack of connection between both halves of the verse is especially sensitive here, and on the other hand, an important thought is repeated that is difficult to discern. Why was it really so important that the cherubim's wings rested when they stopped? Is it because the prophet spoke so much earlier about their outstretched wings? Be that as it may, the interpreter receives the right to read and explain the first half of the verse completely independently of the second. What kind of voice could the prophet hear from the firmament? We have previously indicated all the assumptions made and possible assumptions about this voice. This list needs to be supplemented with what was recently expressed and very good. with a witty guess - Kretschmar. “If they don’t want to go with Cor. Zig. If we cross out an entire verse as having arisen through an erroneous repetition of the previous and subsequent ones, which is a very radical means, then we can only understand by קול the noise caused by the conceivable circle of Jehovah, the army of the Lord. For he who sits on the throne is Jehovah, who follows. appears like a king, must be like one, surrounded by a countless crowd of servants, without whom an Eastern person cannot imagine a king. And then a new light falls on “the noise of hamillah, like the noise of a military camp,” which in v. 24 was out of place; it probably originally stood behind 25a, where it denoted the dull, trembling whispering (Turmeln) that ran through the multitude of heavenly armies when the divine chariot stopped and Jehovah had to begin to speak. There is then a trace. the same thing that Jacob saw in Mahanaim, Gen. 32:3; Wed further 1 Kings. 21:19, Isa. 6:3; Dan. 7:9 et c. Ezekiel does not dwell in more detail on the description of the Divine court, but hurries past those around him to the main Person.” And this assumption can only claim probability, not certainty. It would be too resourceful a thought for the prophet to assume in the reader, who must deduce from the existence of noise around the Lord the conclusion about the army surrounding Him. If we also accept the proposed Kr. amendment, i.e. to transfer from 24 to 25 col hamullach etc., to which permutation no code gives the right, then the explanation would be more probable. But in its pure form, 25 tbsp. would be an hardly accurate and accessible indication to most readers of the noise of the heavenly host. It is remarkable that there is no immediate definition for this voice from the firmament. No less remarkable is that here the verbum finitum is used for the first time about this voice: “and there was a voice.” These two circumstances can lead to the right path in explaining the verse. They give the voice from the firmament an exclusive place in the description of the vision. At the same time, the place for him is very high and honorable: “above the firmament” - a truly Divine place. At the same time, this voice, through its lack of any definition, is imparted with some mystery and incomprehensibility. Already for kol from the wings of cherubim, the prophet could hardly find a similarity between earthly noises. For a voice from the firmament, he doesn't even try to make any comparison. All this proves the divine nature of this “noise”. And in fact, why couldn’t God, by his appearance, produce, in addition to everything else, a special Divine noise? Such a “noise” (“voice” קול) was accompanied by His first appearance, described in the Bible (in paradise). The amazing noise from His appearance (קולות “voices”) is also spoken of in the description of the Sinai Epiphany. We can say that by noise, God, first of all, makes His appearance known to others. Noise, sound, voice, kol are the constant companions of His revelation to the world. God most closely and first of all reveals Himself in the world through kol, voice, His Word. And the cherubim “could not bear the voice of God Almighty resounding in heaven, but stood and marveled, and with their silence pointed to the power of God who sat in the firmament” (bl. Jer.). Please contact us אֶבֶן־סַפִּיר Καὶ ὑπεράνω τοῦ στερεώματος τοῦ ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτῶν, ὡς ὅρασις λίθου σαπφείρου. And firmly above their heads, as if The prophet now turns his gaze to the terrible space above the firmament, spread over the heads of the cherubim. In this space, what caught his attention first of all was not any object or figure, but the color. Above the firmament there was “the appearance of a sapphire stone.” “View” here is מראה, ὅρασις, while about the tharschisch of wheels in Art. 16, Veseke st. 13 and even chaschmal’e art. 5–עין, εἶδος. The second is applied to a smaller and more shiny surface. Mar'eh means a species with more vague outlines and with a more distant resemblance: in v. 27. mar'eh of fire next to hen chaschmal'ya; Art. 5: in animals there was “mar’eh of man.” Here this is a broad and vague concept with the particle כ, ὡς, “as if.” “The Prophet does not say “sapphire”, “throne”, “man”, but “the appearance of sapphire, throne, man”, i.e. the forms that he sees are not adequate to their objects, but are intended to make them (these objects) as perceptible as possible to the human intellect” (Geng.). For the color seen by the prophet in the firmament, only a very distant resemblance of earthly colors could be imagined. A sapphire could serve as such a similarity. This stone, “which bears the name of the brightness itself ספר=שפר Job. 28:13 "(Gitz.), considered one of the most beautiful stones (Isa. 54:11; Rev. 21:19), not inferior in price to gold (Job 28:6, 16), is a stone of “blue in any case” (Sm.) color. In Song. 5:14 The bluish veins on the snow-white body are compared with it. According to Pliny, he is aureis punctis collucet, caerulea raroque cum purpura (Nist. nat. 87, 9). It is impossible to say with certainty that it was also our stone, which received this Hebrew name or lyapus-lazuli (Gitz. See). To the light blue of the sky (Ex. 24:10; cf. Job 26:13), sapphire adds impenetrability, for which reason it is brought here for comparison. “As a crystal points to everything that is completely pure and luminous in the sky, so a sapphire points to the hidden, hidden and unattainable secrets of God, Who laid down darkness for His shelter” (Blessed Jer.). “This similarity indicates a mysterious and invisible nature” (Blessed Theod.). What exactly in the firmament or sky shone like a sapphire? The prophet does not give an answer to this question, at least absolutely clear and indisputable. The Masoretic text of this passage can still be understood to mean that the throne that stood in the firmament was sapphire-shaped. But text 70 leaves it unknown that in the firmament it looked like sapphire. To the Masoretic expression: “in the firmament that is above their heads, as it were the appearance of a sapphire stone, the likeness of a throne” 70 is added “on it,” i.e. on the sapphire there was a semblance of a throne. They have different attitudes towards the addition of 70. They consider it to be genuine, transferred from the Masoretes for the word אדם (“in the likeness of a throne, as if in the form of a person on it”), where indeed “on it” seems to be superfluous and is absent not only in 70, but also in 3 RKP. Ken. and Vulg. (Cor. Bert.). Or, on the contrary, 70 is suspected of arbitrarily adding this word: “reading 70 is obliged to Ex. 24:10 (where the sapphire is placed at Jehovah's footstool) and makes this latter description only more complete; and is it likely that Ezekiel describes the view of the foot of the throne, but did not say a word about the much more important thing - the view of the throne? The throne is imagined to be made of a huge block of sapphire, like the ancient pagan thrones of the gods” (Cor.). “If you need to express a particularly high degree of property or quality, here - brilliance, then in Hebrew. the object being compared to precedes: Gen. 10:9; Ps. 21:15 ; 2 Sam. 14:25 "(Gitz.); therefore in wt. i.e. it is not said: “the throne is like a sapphire,” but “like a sapphire, like a throne.” But it cannot be denied that the mass. i.e., it also allows for such a presentation of the matter that there was a sapphire on the firmament, and on the sapphire there was a throne, and the authority 70 authorizes such an understanding. So favorable to this idea, “on it” could sooner disappear from the masses. i.e. under the influence of considerations such as those given, than to be introduced by such accurate translators as 70. As we shall see, other considerations also incline us to understand 70. The prophet was now supposed to see that sky, that part of the sky (“third heaven”) where God dwells. From a prophet so precise and detailed in his descriptions, we might expect here at least a few cr.m. greater details in comparison with those given to us by the ancient seers. But St. Ezekiel does not add anything new to what is known to us from previous visions. In describing this sky, he repeats Moses. Just as it seemed to Moses and the 70 elders of Israel like a sapphire stone and the firmament of heaven (Ex. 24:10), so Ezekiel compares it with the appearance of a sapphire stone. And just as Moses and the elders do not say anything about the shape and outline of the “place of God’s standing,” so Ezekiel does not say anything about it. In Ezekiel this omission is especially sensitive. We learn from him what form the vision of the crystal had, which was spread over the wings of the cherubim (and on which the vision of the sapphire was located): it had the shape of a vault, a firmament, rakiah. We learn further that above the firmament there was a “vision of the throne.” And between this firmament and this throne there was something else that looked like a sapphire stone. But what it was, whether it was the foot of the throne, the steps to it, whether it was something like a magnificent floor or a platform in the palace of God, the prophet does not say anything about this. And the prophet clearly does not speak about this because he could not examine this sapphire object. If this were so, he would have expressed that he saw “something (מח) that looked like a sapphire.” His silence about the form of this object is more decisive: he clearly does not want to say anything about form here, he only wants to talk about color. In reality this is impossible; but in vision - we say - everything is possible. In vision you can see color without seeing form, moreover, feeling that it does not exist. Ezekiel's peculiar expression can only be explained in this way. Such an assumption may seem arbitrary unless all the circumstances of the case are taken into account. We have already noticed that now it is Ezekiel’s turn to talk about that heaven in the proper sense, heaven as the dwelling place of God, which, among the ancients, was known under the name of the heaven of heavens, the third heaven, the seventh, etc. The visible sky, the firmament, may still have a form. The Jew liked to compare its arched shape with the shape of a tent. Eastern antiquity, with its, as monuments show, a high degree of mental development, could not be so childish as to think that this “tent” would fall to the ground somewhere. Rather, there could be no talk of the limits, boundaries of this tent for that time, as for us. Moreover, for the ancient Jew there could be no talk of any outlines, boundaries, or shape of the sky in which God, unlimited by space, dwells. This sky could only be as boundless and formless as God Himself. In the vision it was impossible to express this more clearly and more powerfully than by giving color to such a sky, but not giving it shape. The second sky, that rakiah, which was above the heads of the animals, also had both shape and color: its shape was vaulted, but in size it was also unlimited, like the firmament, and in color it was as superior to it as the shine of kerach surpasses the color of the visible sky. The heaven on which the throne of God stands must, of course, be as superior in all respects to that heaven as it is superior to the “first.” That has an infinite form; the form of this is out of the question; there is no mention of it in Ezekiel. That is similar to kerach; it is like the best of gems, sapphire. But this stone only faintly resembled (kemar’eh, and not just mar’eh) the color of that sky. Its color was inexplicable, and it had no shape at all. Description of the sky in Chapter 1. Ezek. gives rise to one difficulty, about which the interpreters of the prophet say nothing, perhaps. without noticing him. Above the heads of the cherubim was, as we have already seen, heaven itself with the throne of God. The cherubim appear to be carrying all this on themselves. “The glory of God” came precisely to the prophet on them. But the cherubim flew and walked (moved) on the earth, as the prophet’s description shows, with extraordinary speed. In view of the fact that the prophet saw them from different sides, one might even think that with this rapid movement the cherubim often changed direction (ושוב v. 14). M.b. even they flashed before the prophet here and there in the sky. The question arises in what relation to this movement of the cherubim was the firmament resting on them with the throne of God on it. Did she also make the movement with the cherubim? If she did, did she really also rush back and forth with the same speed before the eyes of the prophet? But to imagine God quickly rushing through the air, and even flashing here and there before the eyes of man, is completely unworthy of the thought of greatness and God. M.t. such a conception seems urgently required by the whole course of Ezekiel's vision. In this vision, it is not only the “animals” that move, but also the Glory of the Lord, “which is above them.” This is especially clear from ch. 10 and 11, which describes the removal of the Glory of the Lord on the cherubim from the church. To eliminate this difficulty, you need to restore the picture of the vision before you. When a heavy lead cloud covered the entire horizon before Ezekiel, the prophet found himself in some mysterious twilight. Against the dark background of the approaching cloud, he noticed a bright place. As the cloud approached, the prophet began to look at this place. It turned out that it glowed differently in its different parts. Most of it was nothing more than a whole field of fire. But another part of him had a special kind of radiance, similar to the shine of chaschmal. This part was so small in comparison with the mass of fire under it that the prophet either stopped looking at it, or else. paid less attention to it than to the fiery part of the light space, especially since on this latter he soon noticed something that immediately and for a long time attracted his gaze. Out of the fire appeared before him the most strange and amazing images of four animals with no less amazing wheels next to them. While the prophet looked at these images and marveled at their majesty, the speed and strangeness of the movement of animals and wheels, the phenomenon came closer and closer to him. The bright place on the cloud should now have acquired significant dimensions if four large figures could fit in it. When this place finally moved apart very widely, it filled the entire space between heaven and earth, as the ladder seen by Jacob once connected them (that this is so can be seen from the fact that the wings of animals in any position of the latter - when soaring through the air and when walking on the earth - are brought under the firmament, the sky). When the cherubs, with that fiery background against which they were visible, occupied the place. the entire visible part of the horizon, above this huge fiery background the prophet could see only a small part of the firmament. When the prophet raised his eyes to this vault, the latter turned out to be completely different from how we always see it. He was incomparably purer, clearer, more beautiful than usual: he was like a kerach. The wings of the cherubs fell just under this firmament. Above the vault the prophet saw the throne of God “on sapphire.” Now it turned out that that chaschmal-like radiance that the prophet had previously noticed came from the One sitting on the throne. That. the firmament with the throne somehow suddenly appeared before Ezekiel. This explains why he says nothing about the movement of the entire upper part of the vision, while he describes the movement of animals and wheels in such detail. From this, however, it does not follow that this part of the vision does not participate in the general movement of the phenomenon. In 10, 11 and 43 ch. its movement is clearly stated. But its movement, of course, should not be exactly the same as the movement of animals. The firmament with the throne was at least as much larger than each of the animals as, for example. half of the visible sky is larger than any object on earth. Track. moving with the animals, she could, with the fast and variable movement of the latter, smoothly and barely noticeably move towards and move away from the observer. One cannot help but marvel at such a harmonious combination in the vision of two ideas that are opposite to the point of incompatibility - the idea of ​​speed and speed with which God accomplishes his intentions on earth, and the idea of ​​the majestic and solemn slowness and calmness with which He comes to earth for these intentions. דְּמוּת כִּסֵּא ו means אָדָם עָלָיו מִלְמָעְלָה Ὁμοίωμα θρόνου ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ ὁμοιώματος τοῦ θρόνου ὁμοίωμα ὡς εἶδος ἀνθρώπου ἄνωθεν The likeness of a throne is on it, and on the likeness of a throne, the likeness of a man from above. On the sapphire the prophet saw a throne, about which there could be no doubt whose it was. Rising to an unattainable height (cf. Is. 6:1), shrouded in flames and flooded with light unbearable to the eye, the heavenly throne, of course, barely allowed the prophet to see itself, and the prophet now had to mentally complete what he saw. Hence here demuth “likeness” with such a definite object as a throne; whereas about wheels, for example, wings, hands, the prophet does not say that he saw demuth, “likeness” of them. Hence the silence about the color and material of the throne. Throne (כסא) presupposes a king. So, God appears, etc. Ezek. first of all, as a king. God was not the first to appear to Ezekiel as a king. But the appearance of God in this form began shortly before Ezekiel. How did it arise and develop in V.Z. representation of God as a king? “The representation of God on the throne could naturally have arisen for the first time in the time of the kings. Moses is rewarded with the appearance of God in the form of a burning fire in a bush, Elijah in the desert wind, Samuel hears the calling voice of God. How did it happen that St. Isaiah introduces the appearance of God as a king? Such transitions in prophecy are not made suddenly and directly. And we actually have a vision of one of the ancient prophets, from whom only a few verses have come down to us, revealing, however, in him one of the greatest prophets. This is the vision of Micaiah the son of Imblaev. See 1 Kings. 22:8, 17–22. When the true prophet raised his warning voice in contradiction to the obvious intention and contrary to the desire of the king (who was sitting on the throne before the people 92), the spirit of God seized him, and his prophetic gaze came out of his usual position: above all royal and human glory, he saw, stands the Glory of God. The King also sits there in heaven and the council is also held there, but the decision there is completely different in comparison with the one that can be reached. limited human horizons. In the vision of Micah lies the grain of visions that further prophets developed each in their own way and according to their talent and divine inspiration" (Müller 8-10). Let us add that the development of such an idea could not but be influenced by the emergence and strengthening of royal power among the chosen people. There could not be a better image on earth for God, like a sovereign king in all the splendor of his greatness. But the Jew could only become acquainted with the real splendor of royal power with the loss of kings at home, in Babylon. The splendor of Nebuchadnezzar's court may have indirectly influenced the revitalization of the idea of ​​God as king. And in St. Daniel we find an even more complex representation of the heavenly King and His holy Court than in Ezekiel. See Dan. 7:9, 10, 13, 14. This whole picture could be some kind of reproduction of the ceremonial appearances and receptions of the Babylonian king, his courts, the transfer of power in his old age to the heir - the son, who became king during his father’s lifetime. The concept and idea of ​​God and heaven can be communicated to man only in earthly likenesses and images. But these similarities clothe ideas that are immeasurably superior to their imperfect forms. The appearance of God as a king also does not sufficiently express the real nature of His relationship to the world, like all other images under which God appeared. The Epiphany to Ezekiel is all the more superior to other Old Testament theophanies because it combines all the following images: (wind, storm, cloud, fire, light, lightning, throne), and each of them complements the others, revealing a new side in the Divinity. The throne in this vision transfers the thought to the heavenly kingdom, which is already preparing to descend to the earth, hovering above it. “In the likeness (repetition of the concept to strengthen) the throne” was “the likeness, as it were, of the appearance of a person.” This image was barely visible in the sea of ​​light with which it was flooded. If the throne on which this image sat was barely outlined (demuth), then the concept of visibility was almost not applicable to the One sitting on it. Hence this accumulation of restrictive words (demuth, ke and mar'eh). In this regard, St. Ezekiel, however, did not receive less than what was given to other God-seers. “The elders and Moses were shown only the foot of the throne of God (sapphire); Isaiah saw the seraphim surrounding the throne of God and covering their faces in awe before God; Ezekiel sees the bearers themselves, and the immediate bearers, of the throne of God” (Kr.). Actually, no one can see God anywhere. If Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel say that they saw the Lord (eg, "who sat on the throne"), then this brief expression of theirs must be understood in the light of Ezekiel's accurate and detailed description. They did not see the face of Him who sat on the throne, which could not have been shown to Moses (Ex. 33:23), seeing d.b. only the vague outlines of the image of God. But what they saw was, like Ezekiel’s, only a likeness, the image of God. About the greatest of the God-seers, Moses, it is said that he only “saw the image (תמונה) of the Lord” (Num. 12:8). The psalmist only hopes for this in the future life: “I will be satisfied with Your image,” 70: “I will be satisfied when I appear in Your Glory.” This image of Jehovah was presented to the God-seers in such unclear outlines that not one of them could describe it or give an approximate idea of ​​it; Ezekiel was the first to define it as a supposedly (=demuth kemar’eh) human image. Some biblical expressions seem to suggest that there have been cases of a more distinct and clear appearance of God to people, appearances in the form of a man clothed with a tangible body. This is for example there was the appearance of God to Abraham in the form of three strangers, the struggle of Jacob with God. If about such cases a person could say that he “saw God face to face” Gen. 30:30), then he could not have said this in the proper sense. In such cases, it was not Jehovah Himself who appeared to people, but some mysterious His Messenger, the Maleac of Jehovah, as is definitely indicated in the description of some of these phenomena (even such important ones as the appearance to Moses in the bush; and to Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac, only the Maleac of Jehovah appeared). All such manifestations of God, in regard to their immediacy, are inferior to those rare cases of this phenomenon when man came into such close contact with the Divine, which resembled the closeness of man to man and in which God showed him something of His very being. In St. Ezekiel we are dealing with this kind of theophany, theophany in the proper sense. Hence its vagueness and the prophet’s caution in describing it. This also explains the fact that, although God appears in undoubtedly human form, the prophet later prefers to remain silent about this: 10:1. Please contact us Please contact us Please contact us Καὶ εἶδον ὡς ὄψιν ἠλέκτρου ἀπὸ ὁράσεως ὀσφύος καὶ ἐπάνω καὶ ἀπὸ ὁράσεως ὀσφύος καὶ ἕως κάτω εἶδον ὡς ὅρασιν πυρὸς καὶ τὸ φέγγος αὐτοῦ κύκλῳ. And I saw like a vision of an electr, like a vision of fire inside around him, from the vision of the loins and above, and from the vision of the loins even down to the bottom I saw a vision of fire, and the light around him. If St. Ezekiel had ever seen the Babylonian king in all the unimaginable wealth and splendor of his attire (for example, at ceremonial exits), then what he saw could not be even a remote resemblance to what now appeared to his eyes. In the setting of the King who appeared to him, precious stones had already taken a very secondary position: they were relegated to such parts of this setting as the wheels of the throne, its foot, the firmament (platform) on which the throne stood. They did not decorate the one who sat on the throne. All their beauty and brilliance could not add anything to the light with which the Seated One shone and with which the radiance of the chaschmal unknown to us could only be compared (from this it is only quite clear what kind of jewel the chaschmal was and how mistaken the interpreters are when they assume that it is, for example, amber or some kind of copper). “It is noticeable that the prophet is very modest in this last part of his picture. He barely outlines the outline of the divine phenomenon; the radiance that it cast seems to blind him and hide details from him” (Reis at Tr.). “And I saw (for the first time after v. 4 and twice in this verse: the extraordinary importance of the moment) a kind of chaschmal.” He who sat on the throne shone like a chaschmal, but the prophet replaces the direct description of His image (for example: and the vision of Him was like the appearance of a chaschmal) with this cautious expression. On the throne was a barely visible human form; in fact, what could be seen on it was only light. However, it was not only chaschmal’s radiance that came from the throne. The light of the chaschmal was joined by a fiery light. The relationship in which the second, simply fiery light, stood to the first, to the radiance of chaschmal, is expressed by the following unclear phrase: “like the appearance of fire all around.” This expression is not in the code. Wat. and 606 Pars.; it is placed under the asterisk code. March. Cheese. and sire. hex. Judging by the absence of a connecting conjunction, the expression is the closest definition to “a type of chaschmal.” The word in which the whole essence is here, which denotes the relation of the fiery radiance to the radiance of chaschmal, is obviously בית־לה. And this word is an insoluble riddle for exegesis. Beth is actually a very famous and undisputed word. This is cs. constr. from baith "house". If so, then the phrase needs to be translated: “like the sight of fire, the house is all around for her (or him).” The question arises what is meant by “he” or “her” here, i.e. what does the pronominal suffix in לה belong to? If we relate it to אש “fire”, which w. p., like the suffix, then the phrase will have the following meaning: “fire having a house around it, i.e. a container, a box (Gehaüse), a closed fire, which stands out all the more sharply from the dark circle” (Gietz. See Kr.), “a fire separated by clear outlines” (Bert.). “Chaschmal shone like fire, having a certain outline, representing brightly outlined contours that clearly appeared in a dark perspective” (Kr.). It can be objected against such an understanding that the word בית is given a meaning here that is not confirmed by any other place, and is very doubtful for prosaic speech: the Hebrew baith is not nearly as flexible in its meanings as the German Haus, which in the form Gehaüse already has the meaning of “case.” Then cs. constr. there is no justification here. Parallels where "cs. constr. stands outside the relation to the genitive case: Ps. 58:5; 65:12; Eccl. 5:19 "(Gitz.), "unconvincing" (Kr.). בית clearly takes the place of a preposition here. Therefore, the ancient understanding of this word in the sense of the preposition “inside” is more likely. True, in this meaning (preposition) it is used with the prefixes מין, ל; but by the time of Ezekiel this pretext could have received such an abbreviated form. Puncturing it with Beth's masoretes when for cs. constr. there is no reason, it shows that the Masoretes already wanted to give it some other meaning than its usual meaning of “house”. 70: ἔσωθεν αὐτοῦ κύκλῳ. Targm: “and among it and everywhere around.” Arabic: “from the inside and around.” This meaning corresponds to the use of this word in colloquial Aramaic: it is used in the translation into this language of Matt. 28:15: “and this word spread among the Jews” (Ros.). With this meaning of beth, the expression will either have the following meaning: “she (the figure? electr?) seemed all fiery” (Tr.), or: inside the chaschmal a circular fire was visible” (Mald.). In view of the fact that pure beth is not found anywhere in the meaning of a preposition and that as a noun it is inappropriate here, Ewald, instead of beth, expects some other word here, in the genus nogah “shine” and admits that it = בץ, which, as akin to consonant Arabic and Syriac words, translates “shine”. Hitzig, Bertolet and Kretschmar see the gloss to chaschmal in all expression. In further words, Art. 27. the prophet more accurately describes the image of Him who sat on the throne. Like chaschmal and fire, the One who sat shone “from the vision of His loins and above,” and from the vision of His loins and below the prophet saw as if fire. “Again Ezekiel expresses himself as carefully as possible. The light body of God splits into two parts. If God were generally imagined in human form, then what people call loins (“the vision of loins”) would be the boundary between both parts” (Bert.), which shone unequally. Since the image was in a sitting position, the vertical part of it from the waist up shone like chaschmal and fire, and the lower part only like fire. “They have a different radiance, for clearly the shine of chaschmal speaks more than the shine of fire” (Bert.). “The lower part of the figure, located closer to the ground and primarily open to human eyes, shines with a more moderate light (ordinary, like simple fire? eh kemar’eh?) fire, perhaps. p.ch. shrouded in clothes falling in wide folds all around, cf. Is. 6:1. The upper one, probably imagined naked, shines with the most dazzling brilliance that we can imagine” (Kr.) - like chaschmal. This was the bright shining which Ezekiel noticed even then, v. 4, when the cloud had just risen to the horizon. But the upper part, next to the radiance of the chaschmal, also had the radiance of fire. M.b. He who sat on the throne, shining with a light similar to the brilliance of the chaschmal, was dressed in fire as a robe. “And His radiance is all around, לו”, i.e. Sitting on the throne. “לו with its suffix returns to the main subject of the verse, which, without any explanation, the prophet points to with the same suffixes in מתניו “His loins.” “Around the entire light figure of God is a bright sphere of light (ונגה), the appearance of which is more closely described in v. 28, like a rainbow” (Krech.). So, to the reader’s inquisitive question, what kind of appearance did God appear to the prophet have, the prophet can only answer that it was one continuous, unbearable Light. Please contact us Home page כְּבוֹד־יְהוָה Ὡς ὅρασις τόξου ὅταν ᾖ ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ὑετοῦ οὕτως ἡ στάσις τοῦ φέγγους κυκλόθεν. Αὕτη ἡ ὅρασις ὁμοιώματος δόξης κυρίου. Like the vision of an arc, when there is a cloud on the day of rain, like the standing of light all around. This is a vision of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord. If the crowns of kings, strewn with many precious stones, shine with all the colors of the rainbow, then in this case He who sat on the throne was surrounded by a radiance that had the appearance of a real rainbow, “in which form it appears on the clouds during rain.” "St. 28 more closely defines what kind of radiance (nogah) it was, which, according to v. 27 “it was all around”: it was a rainbow” (See). “The brilliance surrounding Him who sits on the throne, nogah v. 27, which still remains to be described, is summarized in Art. 28 not on the colors of the rainbow, but (as if = kemar’eh) on it itself and should be thought of in the form of an arc (קשת and “bow”), with which, however, סביב also agrees. The inaccessible Saint is in this way separated from the sphere surrounding him: while He Himself shines with unsurpassed brilliance, the circle circled around him flickers, as it should, with a more softened, gentle light” (Gietz.). “The bright light from the throne of God is refracted in the colored radiance of the rainbow, which surrounds the Glory of God, softening and tempering it” (Kr.). The rainbow was chosen, of course, to “denote the variety of colors, both the most beautiful and gradually transforming into others: iris mille jacit varios adverso sole colores, Aen. 4.899" (Rose). She is truly “majestas Die, refulgens in coelis” (Calv.). In other cases, the rainbow also comes into the context of theophany. In Apoc. above the throne of God, surrounded by 4 animals - cherubim, like in Ezekiel, there is also a rainbow “in appearance like emerald” (4:3). The last Angel of the Apocalypse, heralding the final advent of the kingdom of heaven, has a rainbow on his head (10:1). The presence of the rainbow in all these cases is determined by the meaning it acquired after the flood. The appearance of the rainbow, which is a sign of God's covenant with Noah regarding the preservation of humanity, is hope that God will fulfill the promises of this covenant. It serves as a sign of God’s mercy and covenant” (Bl. Jer.), reminds of God’s mercy: “I will put My rainbow on the cloud, so that it will be a sign of the eternal covenant between Me and the earth; and it will come to pass, when I bring clouds over the earth, that My rainbow will appear on the cloud, and I will see it and remember the covenant” (Gen. 9:13, 14, 16). Its appearance was significant among other peoples, “and in ancient Semitic religions, as a sign of the deity’s better disposition towards people” (Bert. Kr.). That. “The impressive and terrible theophany is resolved marvelously mercifully. A cherubic chariot rushes through a stormy cloud; in the form of a rainbow that shines in the sky after a thunderstorm, Jehovah stops before the eyes of the prophet. Let us remember at the same time the vision of Elijah, where Jehovah is ultimately not in the stormy wind, but in the quiet rustling” (Bert.). The rainbow shows that the God who now appears, who appears ch. arr. to judge his apostate people, “does not want to put an end to his people in court, but looks at the court only as an intermediate step leading to times of harmonious unity between himself and people” (Kr.). Likewise, in the Apocalypse, the last angel wears a rainbow on his head, undoubtedly “with reference to the content of his announcement about the fulfillment of the plan of salvation” (Geng.): “and he swore by the Living that there would be no more time, but in those days... the mystery of God would be accomplished” (10:6. 7) 93 . “Behold a vision of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord,” the prophet concludes his description. What is meant here by the Glory of the Lord: only the One sitting on the throne or the whole appearance? 9:3; 10:4, 18, 19:11, 22 favor the first understanding; This is also supported by the similarity of the expressions of this sentence with v. 26: mar’eh demuth (vision of likeness) is very close to demuth kemar’eh (likeness is like appearance) art. 26, which is used specifically about Him who sits on the throne (Bert. Cr.). But 43:2 kevod Iehovah (“The glory of the Lord”) calls the whole phenomenon. And here the reader expects a conclusion to the whole picture of the vision, and not just to the last section of it. “By the glory of God” in V.Z. every image or method of the manifestation of God is called, no matter what it consists of; in this sense, the cloud is often called the Glory of the Lord. But the name “Glory of the Lord”, applied to the whole phenomenon, is also applicable to Him who sat on the throne. With these final words, the prophet once again warns the reader about the true meaning of those images that fill the vision. They are only “likenesses,” “visible” likenesses of the Glory of the Lord. The Glory of the Lord itself, not to mention God Himself, is invisible and unshowable. Ave. Ezekiel already clearly distinguishes the Glory of God from God Himself. If anything in God can be seen, although imperfectly and insufficiently, in images and likenesses, then only the Glory of God, but not God Himself. How the Glory of God can be conceived as something separate from God and appear to man besides Himself, this became clear after the perfect revelation on earth of the Radiance of the Glory of God and His Image (hypostasis). This is how God appeared or revealed himself to the prophet Ezekiel. There were many new aspects to this revelation, many things that other prophets and seers of God did not see. Ezekiel could say of himself with some justice that he saw God differently from how others saw Him. And since the revelations of God are consistent with the acceptability of man and time, it was precisely during the time of Ezekiel and in the person of himself that the opportunity for such a revelation of God arose. Comparing Ezekiel with other prophets we show what was new in the revelation of God to him, more particularly in the appearance of God to him on Chebar, and this phenomenon can be looked at as a summary of the book and sermon of the prophet. Ezekiel's vision and book added a lot to the concept of God that an orthodox Jew could have had before him. He raised God to such an unattainable height above the world and man, from which He was never again brought down by the religious consciousness of the Jews into the realm of created existence. The Jewish people owe much, if not most, to Ezekiel for the complete eradication of paganism and pagan ideas about the True God in their midst. The final words to the Khobar vision: “this vision of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord” must have sounded strange to the ears of every Jew of that time, familiar with former vices. If what Ezekiel saw was not a manifestation of God in the proper sense, but only a manifestation of His Glory, then what is God Himself? This question, which persistently arose after the vision of Ezekiel, the most complete and clearest of all the visions that anyone had, remains unanswered by the prophet and by this circumstance leads into involuntary trepidation every reader of this vision. Consequently, nothing can be said about God in His essence. Every thought and idea is lost before this being. What the seers of God had hitherto seen and what Ezekiel himself saw was far from being the being of God. Ave. Ezekiel taught man's thought to shrink and become numb before the incomprehensible being of God, clearly distinguishing the appearance of God, His activity in the world from God himself. While other prophets contemplated and viewed God more as a Provider of the Jewish people and humanity, as a Creator in the broad sense of the word, Ezekiel looked at God as God, and this contemplation led him to holy horror. God revealed Himself to each of the prophets from that side of Himself from which the prophet and his time were most able to know Him. In this regard, we can talk about the God of this or that prophet, of course, not in the sense that negative biblical science gives this concept. You can get an idea of ​​Ezekiel’s God, reveal his understanding of God, by comparing him with a prophet not far from him in time and competing with him in importance and significance in the history of Israel - with Isaiah. Such a comparison is made by Doom (Die Theologie der Propheten, Bonn 1875, 252–263) and, although it has a rationalistic overtones, even the orthodox can use some of the thoughts from it. “Just as in rabbinic literature,” says Doom, “religious ideas are all up for grabs,” so in Ezekiel there is actually one such idea—the absolute power of Jehovah. Ezekiel's idea of ​​God has similarities to that of Isaiah, but the predicates כבוד (Glory) and קדש (Holy) have a completely different meaning in the former than in the latter. In Ezekiel, the height of God is an object of horror, plunges man into the dust and pushes God into the unattainable distance of transcendence. Isaiah calls the Holy One of Israel with reverence, but at the same time with joyful hope; Religious warmth, moral fidelity and devotion are combined with a feeling of humility; The Holy God of Ezekiel makes himself terrible to the nations, content only with the involuntary recognition of His power on the part of the pagans. --- The holiness of the name of Jehovah was in danger of being desecrated by the pagans; hence the need for judgment on Israel and its punishment. – For the sake of this same holiness of His name, Jehovah must destroy the pagans and ultimately save Israel, since in Israel alone His name is hallowed (He is the sanctuary of Israel: 37:26). The restoration of Israel is the work of Jehovah alone and for Jehovah’s sake (only a few people can be saved by human effort: cf. 3 and 33). ---Ezekiel is a spiritualist for whom human things are worthless. The idea of ​​the people of God no longer exists for him; it does not inspire him with any warm feeling. Ezekiel's particularism is such that it has nothing to do with the natural narrow-mindedness of national self-consciousness, but is dogmatic, which therefore cannot turn into universalism; it has less religious value than the particularism of other prophets (more coming from love for Israel), but for that it has more consistency and clarity.” Ave. Иезекииль, как показывают места его книги в роде 9:8; 11:13, loved his people no less than Isaiah. And no less than Isaiah, he “hopes joyfully” and looks to God, from whom he expects an even more brilliant future for his people than Isaiah. But his attention is not directed to this, not to the people and not to this side of the Divine attitude towards Israel. He looks at God, like the former prophets, as the God of Israel ch. o., but from all the properties of God he chooses one to consider in relation to Israel. This is precisely the holiness of God. Для него Иегова это прежде всего Святый. He contemplates God from the side of His holiness. From this side of His, God revealed Himself to Ezekiel in the Khobar vision, and this property of God was constantly presented to the mind of Ezekiel in his speeches about God. The vision on Chebar has, among other things, the purpose of showing how it is possible for God, with His holiness so elevating Him above the world, to have a close providential relationship with the world, the appearance in the world, if not of Himself, then of His Glory or the likeness of this Glory. This is possible through the medium of the cherubim, as they prepare a place for the Divine in the world for His appearance, and is possible only on these perfect bearers of the Glory of God. The glory of the Lord can only be revealed through the cherubim covering it with their wings at a certain time and in a certain place with a fullness accessible to the earth. This is how it was discovered in ancient Israel. This discovery did not end with the Babylonian captivity, but there was a break in it caused by the wickedness of Israel. The wickedness of Israel increased to the point that even the cherubim could not sanctify and cleanse the place for the Glory of God in Israel. The holiness of God's name was in danger of being desecrated and desecrated in the eyes of the pagans if God continued to dwell longer in Israel. “They set their threshold at My threshold, and the railings of their doors at My door, so that one wall was between Me and them, and they profaned My holy name with the abominations that they did, and therefore I destroyed them in My wrath” (Ezek. 43:8). “They have profaned My holy name.--And I have had pity on My holy name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they came. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord: I will not do this for you, O house of Israel, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned. - And I will sanctify My great name, which was disgraced among the nations among whom you have profaned it, and the nations will know that I am the Lord, when I show My holiness to you before their eyes" 36:20-23). Because of the holiness of His name, God had to leave sinful Israel until his sin was diminished, until he (Israel) accepted his sins from the hand of the Lord. By this temporary abandonment of Israel, God at the same time showed that He was not connected with Israel on the basis of the covenant concluded with it, and the pagans called Jehovah nothing other than the god of Israel. This abandonment showed Israel and the pagans in full force the superiority (transcendence) of God, a property that could not previously be comprehended by a divinely enlightened consciousness to the extent that it could be comprehended in those difficult times for Israel. The Prophet Ezekiel was given the opportunity to recognize in all its amazing power this property of God, which in Hebrew could only be expressed in the concept of “holy” (excommunicated from all worldly things). And it took possession of his entire mind, determined the content of all his preaching and all his visions. The God of Ezekiel inspires, first of all, a feeling of sacred awe before Him, with his height above the world and inaccessible mystery and holiness. This is God ch. O. hating everything evil, before whom evil cannot exist and is destroyed (chap. 38–39). He can only be close to the pure and holy. In real, immediate proximity to Him stand only the highest spirits, terrible in their purity and with their very appearance burning everything corruptible and sinful on earth (1:13 cf. 10:2). Such a God cannot dwell in present humanity, but only in future humanity, with completely different hearts and souls (36:25–28). Not every mind could understand such a God (as far as we can talk about the comprehension of God by man), but only such an exceptional person as Ezekiel. Ezekiel, for example, as Doom noted (I. p.), “does not know the middle step between the strict fulfillment of God’s commandments and atheism; he judges from the harshest point of view of abstract law.” To such a prophet God could reveal himself in all His opposition to the world and creation, in abstraction from the world, as an end in itself. Not obscured by the world and man, without relation to them, God could be seen simply as God, and such pure contemplation of His being could not but be terrible for man, could not pass without ecstasy (sacred horror, frenzy). “And you will know that I am the Lord” is the content of the entire book of Ezekiel, the idea of ​​which is symbolically expressed in the first vision of the prophet. And was not this new era in the divinely enlightened knowledge of God the main reason for the beneficial change in Israel’s later attitude towards Him, the reason that paganism, this confusion of God with creation, became unthinkable for Israel? Consequently, such a beginning of the book of Ezekiel does not give reason to conclude that at the beginning of the book there was some lost section, for example. a story about another vision (Spinoza, Tract. theol. ro1. p. 10) or information about the former life of the prophet (Glostermann. Ezechiel, ein Beitrag zur bessern Wurdigung seiner Person u.g. Schrift. Studien u Kritiken 1877, 391, etc.). Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, Berlin 1825, 356. Hieronymi Pradi et Jo. Baptistae Villapandi in Ezechielem explanations, 1596. Lambert. La premiere date dans le livre d’Ezechiel, in Journal Asiat. soc. 1899. One may ask, and some interpreters have raised the question, why the prophet does not name the month in which he had the vision: the Jews had names for the months. To this it must be answered that other sacred writers rarely use the names of the months and prefer numerical designation. Only the first and seventh months, the most important for their sacred memories, are usually called by their proper names (Aviv, Tisri). In particular, for the fourth month the holy books did not preserve its ancient Hebrew name at all. Later they began to call him תַּמּוּז Fammuz. This name also applies to Ezek. 1:1 in the Targum and Ephraim the Syrian. But this name is of Babylonian origin (Babyl. Duuzu. Kr.), like all later names of the months. At the time of Ezekiel, the Babylonian names of the months, of course, had not yet become widespread among the Jews, which could be the reason why the prophet could not use this name. But if we remember with what indignation the prophet denounces the cult of Tammuz in the 8th chapter of his book, then it will become clear why the prophet could not use this name, even if it was used in his time. as translated in the Vulgate: in quarto in quinta mensis. In LXX only the word “day” is omitted, and “month” is read; but it is clear that the last word was inserted by the translator for clarity: this will be revealed if we compare the present date (according to LXX) with others, for example. with the date of Chapter 24: in the present place (Chapter 1, Art. 1) it reads ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ μηνὶ, and in Chapter 24. 1 tbsp. ἐν τῷ μηνὶ τῷ δεκάτῳ - a completely different word arrangement: there it is Hebrew, here it is purely Greek. So, the original Hebrew text of this passage is correct: despite the strangeness of such an expression to our ears. The reading of the Hebrew text is confirmed by other places in the Bible containing the designation of the month and day. However, among other sacred writers only the day of the month is designated by one numeral without “day,” but the word “month” is not omitted: Ex. 12:3; Jeremiah 52:4, 12. It should not seem strange that in the Hebrew text the month is designated by an ordinal number, and the day by a cardinal number: to designate days (as well as years) of the latter kind, numerals are for some reason more accepted in the Hebrew language (cf. 2 Chron. 29:17; Ros.). "That anyone was with the prophet at the time of his vision on Chebar does not allow one to think of a manner of expression here other than 8:1." Kr. Most interpreters of Ezekiel are inclined to believe that Tel Aviv, mentioned in 3:15, where the prophet was transported by the “Spirit” after his first vision, had previously served as the prophet’s permanent residence. This Tel Aviv, it is assumed, was the only colony of prisoners on Khovar. The prophet has his vision near the settlement and in 3:15 he only talks about how he returned to his village after the vision. “Or perhaps, says Winkler (95 approx.), during some trip he casually stopped at a camp near Khovar and there received a calling, after which he returned to preach in his native Tel Aviv.” Kretschmar rightly opposes this presentation of the case. In 3:15, he notes, the prophet says that he came, and did not return (which verb is arbitrarily substituted here by Kuenen, Einleit. 264, Bert. etc.) to Tel Aviv, therefore Ezekiel previously lived not in Tel Aviv, but in some other of the many colonies of Judah in Babylon. At 3:23, the river Chebar and its colony are clearly distinguished from Tel Aviv and the valley on which it was located. The Prophet says that in the valley of Tel Aviv the glory of God appeared to him in the form in which he saw it at the Khobar River. Consequently, Tel Aviv did not stand on the banks of the Chebar River, near which Ezekiel lived before his calling. That Ezekiel did not by chance stop at the Chebar colony during his calling (Winkler), but lived in it, is shown by the image of expression in 1:1, reminiscent of Nehemiah. 1:1. – One may ask why Ezekiel, following the generally received command - “go to gol’e” (3:11), did not begin preaching from the place in which he lived and where he was also beththoc laggolah (among the captives), but went to Tel Aviv for this purpose? The basis was probably that Tel Aviv was the main city and center of the captive Jews, where there was government of the captives in the form of some kind of council of elders (8:1; 14:1). “And just as Amos of Tekoa, after his calling, went to Bethlehem, Jeremiah from Anathos to Jerusalem, so Ezekiel, after his prophetic consecration, went from the insignificant captive settlement on Chebar, in which he had lived hitherto, to Tel Aviv, where he could more likely have influence on the religious and political leadership of his captive brethren” (Kr. on Ezek. 3:15). The Masoretic text does not have the conjunction “and” before “opened”, which is found in the LXX and Peshito and which is apparently necessary. But it is possible that here the phrase asyndeton ויהי precisely allows an asyndetic addition to itself: Ex. 12:51 . In the book of Ezek. Cor. has 8 cases of adding a subsequent sentence to ויהי without a conjunction. It is possible that LXX and Pescito sacrificed accuracy of translation for smoothness. אלהים מראות can mean visions that God produces (genitives subjecti), as well as visions in which God is seen. (gen. obj.) Kr. There is a lot of evidence in favor of the proposed understanding of the first verse. number of the word “vision”: if we were talking here only about the Khobar vision, it would be more natural for the prophet to say: the heavens opened and I saw the vision of God, and not the visions of God. If Ezekiel sometimes uses plurals. the number of this word in relation to one vision, then only when the vision is too complex and extensive, which is the vision of chapters 8–11. and 40–48 ch. (and then 40:1 and 11:24 only according to some Greek code.). Plural the number in 1:1, apparently, has always confused readers and therefore, perhaps, in some Greek codes it is replaced by a single one - ὅρασιν Θεοῦ, but in most Greek. manuscripts, in all Hebrew and in Pescito, are numerous here. number. LXX, probably by analogy with subsequent verses, also has this verse with “and”. In the prophet Ezekiel this name is written יויכין (Ioachin); this is a shorter spelling instead of the full יהויכין (2 Kings 24:6; 2 Chronicles 36:8 etc.). This king is called in the same way as in Ezekiel in 2 Kings. 25, 27, and LXX there they convey it Ιωακεὶν, in Slavic Joachin. This is how it should be written here too. The spelling “Joachim” is erroneous and probably arose from confusion between this king and his father Joachim. In the book of St. Jeremiah this name is already written יכוניהו, in LXX Ιεχονίας (24:1). The difference occurs because the name of God, which is part of this word (it means: “God will strengthen”), is placed here at the end of the word, and there at the beginning. The latest edition (“Jechoniah”) has become commonly used even now. But we cannot agree with Smend that, by choosing such a chronology, the prophet Ezekiel wanted to elevate Jehoiachin at the expense of Zedekiah for partisan purposes. Nowhere in Ezekiel can one discern any non-recognition of Zedekiah as king. The Prophet Jeremiah denounced this king even more strongly than Ezekiel, but with what heartache he speaks of his death in Lamentations. For all the Jews, Zedekiah has always been and was considered their last king. This is Quintilian’s so-called emphatic turn, emphasis, used to convey special strength and expressiveness to speech. Therefore, Spinoza (1c.), who conveys it saepe fuerat, and Klosterm., who thinks that Inf. are wrong. Abs. attached to היה so that Art. 2, as a subordinate definition of time, extracted from a possible connection with Art. 1 (Kr.). According to Krech. this phrase, if not Ezekiel's, comes from the editor. It is consistently transmitted by all Hebrew manuscripts with the exception of one (No. 384 Ken., where there is one היה); but in all the Greek codes there is one ἐγένετο; also in the Targum, Peshito, Vulgate and Coptic translation. Translators could omit the first היה as, in their opinion, indifferent to the meaning. Cornille makes a rather arbitrary assumption that instead of the first היה there was יהודה “Jewish”, the definition of מלך - “king” v. 2, which definition actually exists in Pescito and Ostrog. bible. The prophet's repeated reference to the place where his calling followed serves as one of the main grounds for criticism to suspect the integrity of verses 1, 2 and 3. One cannot help but admit that in verse 3 this indication is somewhat unexpected. Ewald explains this repetition by saying that when the book was written, the prophet was already living in a different place. To the word “in the land” the Targum makes the following addition: “Israeli; then (God) speaks to him a second time in the region of the land of the Chaldeans.” This increase is explained by the opinion of the Jews that in a pagan land a prophetic gift could not be given to a Jew; Therefore, it was concluded about Ezekiel that he was called to prophecy while still in Judea. Not all monuments here have the 1st person “on me”: from Jewish manuscripts in 5 codices by Kennicott and 8 by De Rossi; then in Arabic and Syriac translations and in all Greek codes. In other manuscripts - 3rd person: “on him”. Kretschmar sees in this discrepancy between the codices a strong proof of his assumption about the combination of two reviews in the book of Ezekiel: LXX and the codices with 1 person preserved the original review of the prophet. In addition to any combination of reviews, the Masoretic first person could be corrected to the 3rd in view of the fact that the prophet in this verse calls himself by name, and not “I”, as in the 1st verse. The fact that the prophet speaks of himself in the first person everywhere in the book speaks for the 1st person. In the Masoretic text in all its manuscripts, after the words “on it,” another שם “there” is read: “and the hand of the Lord was on him there”: this addition is not in the Greek codes (with the exception of the Alexandrian, Venetian and one minuscule Pars. 62), in the Coptic, Ethiopian translations; in the Syrian hexaplas, in the Marshalian and Cisian codices, this word is under the asterisk. And here is the Masor. the text is more correct for the sole reason that it was easier to omit a word that was rather indifferent to the meaning in the translation than to add it in the original. In addition, שם is very common in Ezekiel, as in Hosea: 3:22, 23; 5:3; 8:1, 4; 13:20, etc., and often the LXX-th is omitted, as in 3:22; 8:1. This is simply a pleonasm of the prophet and, as such, has a weakened meaning in Ezekiel. Therefore, this “there” cannot be understood in the sense of Knab. Gauthier et al. “in wicked Babylon - that’s where the word of the Lord came to me.” Kr.: “the prophet wants to say that during the vision the hand of God seemed to grab him, overcome, break (?) his freedom, so that he could not do anything else except what God commanded him. This phrase is always in Ezekiel about being placed in a state of ecstasy, b.m. to receive especially important revelations associated with vision: ecstasy without subsequent vision and hearing - 3:14; 33:22." "Parenthesis" Quint.: placement of extraneous words between other words. Kretschmar's opinion about the connection in the first three verses of two reviews of the book (Article 1 is the title of the prophet's own manuscript) was indicated earlier. “The power of knowledge and insight does not suddenly dawn on him, but penetrates and takes possession of him slowly... Thought grows and turns in all directions.” It must be remembered that both here and in the following §§, we are not talking about each and every appearance of God on earth, but about appearances in glory, in which God comes to earth, precisely as God (without humbling himself). In the Masoretic text there is no “and” here, which is found in the LXX, in the Vulgate and in Hebrew 8. handwritten at Ken's. It is necessary here due to its Jewish nature. language and context. It is inserted by Cor. Tone, Kr. Critical vigilance in this case betrayed Cornille: he sees an arbitrary omission on the part of LXX and proves the fidelity of the Masorah. t. - by the fact that in Ezekiel one mitthoc is not used without a suffix or noun. Wellhausen attributes to St. Ezekiel the introduction of this word from Aramaic into the Hebrew language (Pgol., 407). This refers to the theory of the post-exilic origin of some parts of the Pentateuch. The word demuth in this sentence can also be given the meaning of a conjunction, which it has, for example. at Is. 13:4, meaning after demuth mar'eh: “and such was their appearance - like the appearance of a man” (Mald.). The Slavic text provides some basis for this understanding: in it this expression has an extra meaning against the Greek. current conjunction “as”: “and this vision of them, as the likeness of man is in them,” whereas in Greek. before ὁμοίωμα there is no ὡς. Of course, this “yako” could be a simple addition by the Slavic translator, caused by the analogy with the first half of the verse, where ὁμοίωμα stands with ὡς. But in view of the fact that the Slavic text is considered a representative of an entire review of the Greek text, and a particularly valuable representative because besides it this review has lost almost all of its monuments, in view of this it is possible “as if” Slav. The text should be considered a remnant of the ancient Greek translation of the word demuth, which was subsequently supplemented in some reviews by the word ὁμοίωμα, and in others replaced by it. This assumption is somewhat favored by the appearance of this sentence in the Elizabethan Bible. There it read: “and this vision of them is like the image of a man in them.” Here there is absolutely no concept of “similarity”; it is included in the conjunction “as”, and the definition of “man” is preceded by the word “image”, which may be a translation of the Hebrew “mar’eh” rather than “demuth”. The Greek text inserts ὡς before the first ὁμοίωμα, concerning animals, but not before the second, concerning man. Is this not for the purpose of increasing the likeness of man? “The four faces signify (in the cherubim) something divine” (Rom. 21). “Cherubim see like God, πρόσσω καί ὀπίσσω Ap. 4:6 and are thus participants of a specifically divine quality” (Gietz.). Equate Ezek. 1:6 with Isa. 6:2 Cornelius is forced by the appearance of the 6th verse in the Targum. The Targum gives the following paraphrase to this verse: “and one had four faces, and each (of these persons) had four faces; each of the animals had 16 faces: the number of faces of the 4 animals was 64 faces. And 4 wings for one, 4 for each face, 16 wings for each face, 64 wings for each animal: the number of wings for 4 animals is 256 wings.” Rashi interprets this verse in the same way. The emergence of such reading according to Cor. can be explained by the repetition of the words “4 faces” and “4 wings” in the original text, which should have looked like this: “4 faces, 4 faces in one; 4 wings, 4 wings for one." Therefore, it is incorrect to understand Art. 6 that the prophet describes one cherub, since they are all exactly the same, or because one was more before the eyes of the prophet than the others (Mald. et al.). There were interpreters who thought that the animals had 4 heads. But this opinion is based on a direct misunderstanding of the word panim, which means only the front of the head, and not the whole head; head in Hebrew is ראש. De Rossi says: “this replacement and confusion of genders in Ezekiel is so frequent, and there is such inconstancy and difference between the codes, especially in pronominal suffixes, that it becomes annoying to work (i.e., in comparing codes), and I could with great right attach to the entire book of Ezekiel the impatient exclamation of Nortius about one (11:5) verse of Zechariah: “the soul is oppressed.” I have many options and my face turns away from them.” Often this confusion of genders occurs in the same verse, of which the first chapter of Ezekiel gives many examples” (according to Rose). It is remarkable that of the later rabbis who generally slavishly followed the Masoretic text, some, for example. Rashi, they also read hagol “round” here. From ancient translations, the same concept (sparks) is here in the Targum and Vulgate; Peshito and Symmachus – the concept of “lightning”. To reglehem, despite its remoteness, the participle nocecim could be treated as the main subject of this entire verse, if regel were not wives. r. Indicate two places where 3 l are consistent with the regel “leg”. plural h. verb in husband. r.: Jer. 13:16 and Ps. 72:2. But the 3rd person is plural. numbers do not have a separate feminine ending in all verbal forms, which is why this person does not agree as strictly with the noun in gender as the participle, for which deviation from agreement hurts the ear just as much as for an adjective. Keri (“pronounce”) means how a word should be read if it is not to be read as it is written; the written word in this case is called “ketib”. “When that man came in,” the Hebrew expression is “when he came in, that man.” Ewald accepts ketib, but considers vav to be a non-pronominal suffix, the character of the ancient casus constructi instead of the later iota. Many codes (Babyl code prophet, 10 Ken. and 20 Rossi) read this word with nun at the end, i.e. with wives suf. No matter how vague the boundaries of this similarity should remain, it is impossible to narrow them with some (see Mald.) to the point that the similarity of the cherubim to a lion and an eagle is assumed only in the fact that their 4 faces were all human, but, while one was completely human, the other contained something lion-like in its expression, etc. (something that, according to the observations of Aristotle and Plato, also occurs in human physiognomies). Gitzig’s opinion that Ezekiel could take the symbol of the ox “from” Egyptian-Ephraim idolatry, as a symbol of Jehovah, is not based on anything; there also as in the service of Siwa, the ox was a symbol of productivity and creation; perhaps Moloch had a bull's head not only in Carthage and Crete, but also in Phenicia and Ammon; thus, the ox's head could symbolize destruction here; Jehovah could be designated by this as the one who kills and calls to life.” Nowhere in the Bible is the ox a symbol of destruction. The text reads: “the face of a man (where it is not said), and the face of a lion to the right they have four, and the face of an ox to the left they have four, and the face of an eagle (where again it is not said). Accents in Hebrew language the same as our punctuation marks. There are a lot of them, but they are divided into two main classes - separating and connecting. There are especially many disjunctive ones, so that grammarians have invented a whole hierarchy for them, in which there are imperatores, reges, duces and comites. Sackef – gadol belongs to reges and traces. somewhat weaker than our period, but stronger than the semicolon. As we noticed, the prophet for some reason does not want to use the words nagah and paras - “touched” and “were stretched out” about the wings of mysterious animals, which, as used about the cherubim of the tabernacle and church, should have been asked on his tongue. “אש stands only here so bare,” (cf. Ev. 301. See). But on this basis it is impossible with Cor. consider it syntactically completely inappropriate here and cannot mean “between each other.” LXX boldly translates it πρὸς αλλῄλοα. In LXX, before “body” there is also a preposition ἐπάνω (and two coverings on top of their bodies); maybe their original had milmahlah; Cor. introduces this preposition into the text. Thus, according to LXX, cherubs covered only the upper part of the body with two wings (Cor. Kr.), whereas for example. the soles of the feet remained open. Since this is said, then in Art. 23 one could directly say: “covering their bodies,” according to this last place the Masor could be changed here. t. (Cor.). But it is possible that ἐπάνω LXX is simply a pleonastic license of translation. It is also unlikely that this ἐπάνω can indicate the upper part of the body. “οὗ ἂν ᾖν τὸ πνεῦμα πορευόμενον” is a free translation, as it sometimes occurs in the LXX. Therefore, Gitzig is wrong when he restores here according to LXX הולכת: cf. lack of ἐκεῖ, which in other places is always put by the LXX as Hebraism (Kor). – “Shli 2” is not in Pescito. Doom: “haruach – decent laconicism.” It is not for nothing that the LXX were so careful in transferring the Hebrew. ruach. Having in their language the exact ἄνεμος - for the concept of “wind”, they use it very well. rarely, when there can be no doubt that in this case it is a simple wind (as Ex. 10:13: Job 1:19; 16:3: Eccl. 5:15. Ps. 1:4, etc.). In the vast majority of cases, they prefer the similarly vague Greek πνεῦμα, and this even in such apparently undoubted places as Gen. 8:1; Ref. 15:10; Jer. 4:11; Is. 27:8; Ps. 147:7, etc. In this regard, the difference in the LXX translation of literally the same expression in Ezek becomes very significant. 1:4 and 13:11; in the current edition of the Greek. The Bible does not exist, but our Slavs do. lane must have retained the original Greek. reading, when ruach seharah in 13:11 translates simply “the wind is raised up,” and “not the spirit is raised up,” as in Chapter 1. Did similar facts from apostolic history find an echo in the well-known church tradition about the miraculous meeting of the apostles at the bedside of the dying Mother of God? Blzh. Jeremiah: “From among the animals, the brilliance of fire and lightning. For if you bring the Gospels together between the letter and unimportant history, you will reveal the mysteries of the Spirit.” So, it cannot be said that היא defies any understanding and does not fit in with the flow of speech at all. Track. there is no need to consider a sentence beginning with hi as a gloss, as Kretschmar does: “the insertion of hi rather indicates the hand of the glossator, for which the sentence from hi to hachajjot with Peters in the Journal of Biblical literat seems best. II, 40 and Toi should be considered as a gloss, which, belonging to אש, was misplaced in the text; this speaks for itself, especially since the fiery mass between the cherubim in 10:2 should be imagined as calm (why?), and not as a flame moving back and forth.” How convenient is the prefix σον, slavishly adopted from Greek, for expressing the most diverse and enormously wide-ranging concepts? in Slavic language, shows the expression in the kontakion of St. Thomas's week: “as if you entered with a door like a prisoner.” Here, the prefix “so” expresses no more and no less than the fact that when Christ appeared to Thomas, the doors were locked in the same way as they were locked when he appeared to the apostles without Thomas. Track. This prefix expresses a thought, the complete transmission of which requires several not words, but entire sentences. Gitzig: “συστρεφομένων decently in the sense of “pile up” belong to ἀνθράκων; and indeed, how מתהלכת allows us to see what originally stood here has passed into the non-lappidim ending ות: should probably read מתחתות “works” cf. Proverbs 25:22, with which, as before with the bare בנית “between,” they could easily be embarrassed.” “Carry the hidden lightning under the flesh of Your being” songs from the service of the Transfiguration. According to Smend, the verb schuv in conjunction with the verb of movement can mean movement in general: therefore, the words razo vashov do not indicate the image and method of movement. But Smend does not provide an analogy for this use of schuv; and such a name for the movement would be too verbose Ewald draws on Persian philology to explain basac: in Pers. in the language it is called a similar word as a hawk for its majestic flight. Cherubim circled over the fire v. 13 like hawks. But Persian cannot be considered akin to Hebrew. Full of such deep symbolism, the wheels of the present vision do not deserve the reproach made by Bertholet: “without a doubt, of all the elements of Ezekiel’s vision, the wheels are the most prosaic element, and if he invented them, then from this we can conclude that he had more mechanical than strictly poetic imagination.” This same high symbolism of the wheels prohibits any comparison of them with the wheels of the church laver and does not allow us to explain their appearance in the present vision from their presence in that laver. Comparison of the wheels of Ezek. the vision with the wheels of the laver is done on the basis that “the emblems of prophetic visions are often borrowed from the church, its furnishings and accessories: so from Zechariah, John; the laver rested on cherubim and wheels” (Ros.), as in the vision of Ezek. firmament (= glassy sea Apok 1:6): “both there and here we have cherubim connected to wheels, and the wheels occupied the lower place, and the cherubim the upper place. Wed baarez 1:15; both there and here the cherubs are connected to the wheels so that one corporation cannot move without the other” (Virtinga Observationes sacrae IV, I. ​​17). “What do Eze have. the wheels of the laver were meant (1 Kings 7:30, etc.), this assumption is all the more incredible since the purpose of the latter does not have the slightest relationship with our vision and their position and purpose in the church is extremely subordinate” (Geph.). In Eastern mythology and symbolism, which sometimes turns out to be so close to the Bible, the wheel often serves as an image of the world. In particular, in Babylon a wheel (a ball in perspective) meant the sun. The ball suspended above the altar at Sipara represented the sun god. If St. Ezekiel knew and had this idea in mind, then in his vision the sun appears under the feet of Jehovah (Pti). “It is worthy of note that the ancient Persians represented the whole totality of things, governed and directed by the supreme god, driven by the sacred chariot, according to the testimony of Dio Chrysostom in Orat 35.1: "(Roz.). Ezel is compared (Vnik. 62) with Arabic. asilat “society”, “meeting”, or (Barth Amer. journ. o Semit. lang. 18, 267 etc. in Kr.) aslan “completely”, “certainly”. But it stands here in its usual meaning of a preposition. New confirmation for mahasehem in a. and next and for umarehem in b. Pescito has art. 17 in the following “explicitly extended according to 10, 11” (Cor.) form: “they walked on their four sides and did not turn around: to whichever place their front part was facing for walking, they walked towards it and did not turn around.” We cannot agree with the opinion of some old (Prad. Corn. Lap., Calmette) and the newest (Viguru, Knab.) interpreters, according to which what is meant here is not an eye in the proper sense, but spots on the shiny surface of the wheel in the shape of an eye, similar to the eyes on the tail of a peacock. It is in vain that in support of this opinion they cite the fact that עין is not always used about the eyes in the proper sense. It can only mean “appearance” (Ezek. 1:5, 16 and many others), but nowhere is the meaning of the Latin acquired. ocellus or rus. "peephole" But it cannot be said that “Ezekiel, as the context shows, imagines the firmament not in the form of a ball, but in the form of a straight, hard surface, a movable stone floor on which the throne of Jehovah stood” (Kr.). To place the throne of God, all the material conditions under which an ordinary throne can stand on a certain surface were not required. The floors in the richest palaces of the ancient East were covered with crystal or glass. In the Koran (Sur. 25 v. 44), the Queen of Sheba mistakes the crystal platform under the throne of Solomon for water (Rose). Excess against wt. i.e. the word συνεζευγμέναι is found only in the code. Al., 5 minus. with rec. Luciana, trans. Ef. and Arab. In Explanatory prophecies, in other cases agreeing with the code. Lucian's review, he is not there. This word is not essential for the meaning, but it contains the correct idea: even if it did not exist, it would still be necessary to assume that the wings of the cherubs covering their bodies were in contact with each other (Fr. Rozhd.). The word might be taken from v. 11 (Cor.). - Code. Al. and 2 Pars. (82 and 233) add in 23 b τῶ σώματι τὰ πρόσωπα (“covered the body of their face”); this is a clear borrowing from Isa. 6:3 and contradicts the fact that the faces of the cherubim were visible to the prophet. As the Babylonian Code of the Prophets shows. Dagesh is added after the Masoretes. Ef. lane for some reason this word translates as “army”; probably in his Greek original he took λογου for λαου or λεγεωνος (Cor.). “The king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah sat each on his seat, dressed in royal robes, in the square at the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets prophesied before them” v. 10. Code. Al., Vat., March., Kop. lane instead of ορασις (Ven. Code., Lucian, Theodoret) they have οτασις; this is “internal Greek damage” (Cor.) from ορασις (OR=ST). You might be interested in: