Ezekiel

Ezekiel was a priest deported from Jerusalem to Babylonia in 597 BCE. His book dates his visions between 593 and 571 BCE. In chapter 1, by the river Chebar, he sees a storm cloud with fire, four living creatures with four faces and four wings, wheels beside them with rims full of eyes, a "wheel in the middle of a wheel," and above them a sapphire throne with a human-like figure. The wheels move because the spirit of the creatures is in them. Chapter 10 identifies the creatures as cherubim.

This vision became the foundation of merkabah ("chariot") mysticism, and the rabbis restricted who could study it. Later, the wheels (ophanim) were treated as a class of angels. Ezekiel also describes being lifted by a lock of his hair and carried to Jerusalem in visions (8:3), and a man of bronze who measures a future temple (chapter 40). Chapters 38–39 introduce Gog of the land of Magog.

Scholars read the creatures against Mesopotamian winged guardian figures. In 1974 the NASA engineer Josef Blumrich argued the vision described a spacecraft, a reading not accepted by biblical scholars.