The Glory Leaves and Returns

A brilliant light hovers over the doorway of the temple. Wings rustle like a roaring river. Then, slowly, the light lifts. It moves to the eastern gate. It pauses. And it is gone.

It is the sixth year of the exile, around five hundred and ninety-two before Christ. The prophet Ezekiel is sitting in his house in Babylonia, with the elders of Judah sitting in front of him. Jerusalem has not yet fallen. Many back home believe that as long as the temple stands, God will never let the city be destroyed. Then the hand of the Lord comes upon Ezekiel. In a vision, God lifts him up and brings him to Jerusalem, to the temple courts. And there God shows him what is really going on: idols in God's house, leaders bowing to images in secret, people worshipping the sun with their backs to the temple. God's people have pushed him out of his own house.

Then Ezekiel sees the same astonishing beings he saw by the river at his call. Cherubim, mighty living creatures with wings, and beside each one a wheel that gleams like precious stone, as if a wheel were inside a wheel, rims full of eyes. Above them is something like a throne of sapphire. A man dressed in linen walks in between the wheels and takes burning coals from among the cherubim, to scatter over the city, a sign of the judgment to come. And then: “Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house.” The cloud fills the temple. The courtyard blazes with brightness. The sound of the cherubim's wings is like the voice of God Almighty.

Then the glory of the Lord leaves the threshold and rests above the cherubim. They spread their wings and rise from the ground, with the wheels beside them, and stop at the entrance of the east gate of the temple. Ezekiel is watching God move out, step by step, slowly, as though he is reluctant to go. A little later in the vision, the glory rises from the city altogether and stops above the mountain on the east side of Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives. And then it is gone. A few years after this vision, Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple, just as God had warned. The building had become an empty shell.

But that is not the end. Years pass. It is now the twenty-fifth year of the exile, fourteen years after Jerusalem fell. And God gives Ezekiel another vision. He is taken to a high mountain and shown a new temple, measured out in every detail. Then he is brought to the gate that faces east, the very gate the glory had left by. “And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory.” Ezekiel falls on his face. The glory enters the temple through the east gate. The Spirit lifts Ezekiel up and brings him into the inner court, and he sees it: the glory of the Lord filled the house. God tells him, this is the place of my throne, where I will live among my people for ever. The God who left has come home.

Ezekiel dates his visions by the years of King Jehoiachin's exile, which lets historians place them, about five hundred and ninety-two and five hundred and seventy-three before Christ. Jehoiachin himself turns up in Babylonian records. Clay tablets found in the ruins of Babylon list oil rations given to captives at the royal court, and they name Yaukin, king of the land of Judah, and his sons.

You'll find these visions in Ezekiel chapter ten, and chapter forty-three, verses one to five. The glory that left by the east gate, and came back the same way. So here is a question to carry with you. If God wants to live among his people, how can you make room for him in your life?