The Literary Structure of the Book

Three visions provide a complementary structure: chapters 1 to 3, 8 to 11, and 40 to 48. The first depicts the prophet's call, the second is the judgment against Jerusalem and the Temple, and the third is the restoration of the Temple and the arrangement of the holy land. Ezekiel 43, 3 expressly relates the three visions: "The vision was like that which I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and like that which I had seen by the river Chebar." Although there are visions in other prophetic books (Zec 1-6), only in Ezekiel are they woven into the architecture of the book. In the first vision, Ezekiel sees the glory (Hebrew kabod) of God that dwelt in the tabernacle in the wilderness and in the Temple in Jerusalem. Phrasing carefully in order to safeguard the sacrality and otherness of the glory, the prophet describes only the wheels of the divine throne. The throne is mobile; it is in Babylon rather than Jerusalem.

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