‘And so it was in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord Yahweh fell there upon me. Then I beheld, and lo, a likeness of the appearance of fire. From the appearance of his loins and downward, fire, and from his loins and upward as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of shining metal.'
This occurred fourteen or fifteen months after his first call (Ezekiel 1:1-2) in or around September 592/1 BC. His first prophetic ordeal was probably over and he was now sat in his house with the elders of Judah gathered before him. This is only the second mention of Judah (see Ezekiel 4:6) to this point. Ezekiel's message was generally to the whole of ‘Israel' seen as one people. But the description was technically correct. These elders were elders of the southern kingdom.
They ‘sat before him'. They had come to seek advice or to hear what word he had from Yahweh. They had begun to recognise him as a prophet of God.
‘That the hand of the Lord Yahweh fell there upon me.' This is regularly in Ezekiel evidence of some remarkable event which will follow. He was taken over by God. It is probable that the elders saw nothing except that he was clearly in some ecstatic state.
‘Then I beheld, and lo, a likeness of the appearance of fire. From the appearance of his loins and downward, fire, and from his loins and upward as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of shining metal.' Compare Ezekiel 1:27. There this was a description of Yahweh, and we have no reason therefore to doubt that this too was Yahweh in vision, in the same glorious splendour as in chapter 1.