Ezekiel
c. 622–c. 570 BCE · Ancient Israel
“O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.”
The lineage through Ezekiel
Inspired(2)
who Ezekiel shaped
- Blake liked Ezekiel enough to invite him to dinner — literally, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where the prophet sits down at his table
- Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures and the eyed wheels became the engine of Blake's later prophecies, reworked all through Jerusalem
- He even painted it — Ezekiel's Vision of the Cherubim and Eyed Wheels — before rebuilding it into his own mythology
- Dante names Ezekiel by name in Purgatorio XXIX and stages Eden's mystical procession on the prophet's chariot vision
- The four winged living creatures of the Divine Pageant come straight from Ezekiel 1 — "by Chebar's flood"
- Dante tells the reader outright to picture them as Ezekiel painted them, departing only on the count of wings, where he follows John instead
Famous Quotes
“And their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.”
“And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.”
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
“So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”
About Ezekiel
Priest and prophet who received his visions while in Babylonian exile. His elaborate symbolic visions — the chariot throne, the valley of dry bones, the restored temple — became foundational texts for Jewish mysticism and Christian eschatology.