The likeness of four living creatures next appeared from this centre of the fiery cloud. The word “likeness” is not without significance. The prophet would make it plain that this was a vision, that these were symbolic, not actually existing creatures. Their prominent characteristic is that they were “living.” This word is used over and over again in connection with them (see Ezekiel 1:13-15; Ezekiel 1:19; Ezekiel 1:21, &c.); and in fact, in Ezekiel and Revelation (Ezekiel 4:6, &c., where it is mis-translated beasts) it occurs nearly thirty times. The same characteristic is further emphasized in Ezekiel 1:14 by the speed, “as of a flash of lightning,” with which they “ran and returned,” by the multiplicity of eyes in the wheels connected with them (Ezekiel 1:18), and by their going instantly “whithersoever the spirit was to go” (Ezekiel 1:20); while in Revelation 4:8 it is said that “they rest not day and night.” Their life is represented as most closely connected with the source of all life, the “living God,” whose throne is seen in the vision (Ezekiel 1:26) as above the heads of these “living creatures,”
Ezekiel does not here say what these living creatures were, but in a subsequent vision, when he saw them again in connection with the Temple, he recognised them as the cherubim (Ezekiel 10:15; Ezekiel 10:20). Cherubim, whether here, or in the Temple overshadowing the mercy-seat, or in the garden of Eden keeping the way of the tree of life, always indicate the immediate presence of the God of holiness. The prophet again mentions these composite symbolic figures in connection with the vision of the Temple in Ezekiel 41:18-20. The origin of such ideal figures has been variously ascribed to the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Phœnicians, and the Arabs; but this symbolism was, in fact, almost universal throughout the East. Dr. Currey (Speaker’s Com., note on Ezekiel 1) points out the striking difference between this symbolism and that of the Greeks. They tried to delineate the Divine attributes with the utmost beauty of form and harmony of detail under some human figure in which those attributes were conspicuous. In consequence, the mind of the worshipper lost sight of the ideal, and became absorbed in the sensuous imagery by which it was represented; while here, by the very strangeness, and sometimes grotesqueness, of the imagery, its purely symbolic character was kept constantly in view. Cherubim are associated in the Old Testament with that tree of life of which man might not partake save through Him who is “the life,” and with that typical holy of holies which man might not enter until the true Holy of Holies was entered once for all by Christ through His own blood (Hebrews 9:8; Hebrews 9:12).
They had the likeness of a man. — With all the strange variety of details to be described immediately, they had yet a general human form, and are to be understood as like man in whatever is not specified.