The glory of God shining within the most holy place in the inner temple was one of the hallmarks of the religion of Israel: but that radiant presence, so full of brightness (Ezekiel 10:4), was about to depart.

In Ezekiel’s vision, the cherubim, in their four-sided formation and moving with their gleaming beryl wheel-within-a-wheel structure, moved always in unison in whatever direction they chose to move (10:9-11). “Then the glory of the Lord came went out from the threshold of the house and stopped over the cherubim” (10:18). “Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. And the glory of Lord ascended from the middle of the city, and stopped on the mountain east of the city” (11:22-23).

Centuries earlier, the wife of Phinehas had named her son Ichabod, meaning “the glory has departed,” when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant (I Samuel 4:21): but on that occasion Israel got the Ark back after seven months (I Samuel 6:1). In Ezekiel’s time, the ark was still there in the temple but the glory was gone, because God had decided it was time to leave the temple and Jerusalem.

The presence of God would not be gone forever: “Thus says the Lord God; I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered” (Ezekiel 11:17). But that would not be true for quite a while: for the next few decades, God would “disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries” (12:15).

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It is a fearsome thing, O Lord, to imagine that you might withdraw your presence from us: yet what right do we have to presume that you would never get angry at our stubborn refusal to follow you? Turn our hearts, we pray, that we may become steadfast in loyalty to you once again.

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