Ezekiel 10:12,13 - Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible

Bible Comments

‘And their whole body, and their backs and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, the wheels that they four had. And as for the wheels, they were called in my hearing “the Whirlers”.'

In Ezekiel 1:18 it was the edges of the wheels that were full of eyes. Here Ezekiel sees them more closely and the whole of these beings are full of eyes, their bodies, their backs, their hands and their wings, including the wheels. They see all and are aware of all. They are possibly ‘the Watchers' of Daniel (Daniel 4:17). And the whirling wheels stress the continual activity and power. They are ‘the Whirlers'.

Alternately RSV translates, ‘and their rims, and their spokes and the wheels were full of eyes round about' but agrees in the margin that the Hebrew also reads ‘and their whole body' (which LXX omits but reads ‘their backs and their hands and their wings'). This was to square with Ezekiel 1:18. But there is an expansion whichever way we look at it and therefore the former is preferable. In the end the wheels and the cherubim are as one (Ezekiel 10:17).

Ezekiel 10:12-13

12 And their whole body,d and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had.

13 As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel.