Our commentary
What was Ezekiel's wheel?
Our own look at a common question, by David Dell. The background on this page is ours, not a summary of the book.
During the Babylonian exile, by the river Chebar, the prophet Ezekiel recorded one of the strangest scenes in the Bible. It opens with a storm and fire, and then come four living creatures with wheels beside them.
“Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” Ezekiel 1:1 (KJV)
“And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.” Ezekiel 1:4 (KJV)
“The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” Ezekiel 1:16 (KJV)
“As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.” Ezekiel 1:18 (KJV)
Why people call it a UFO
Read cold, the description sounds mechanical: rings, rims, fire, movement in any direction without turning, and lifting off the ground. In 1968 Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? popularized the “ancient astronaut” idea and treated Ezekiel's vision as a possible encounter with visitors. A few years later, NASA engineer Josef Blumrich went further in The Spaceships of Ezekiel (English edition 1974), arguing that Ezekiel saw a spacecraft.
What the text itself says
Ezekiel doesn't leave the identification open. He calls the whole scene “visions of God” (1:1), ends chapter 1 by naming it “the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (1:28), and in chapter 10 he names the creatures himself:
“This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims.” Ezekiel 10:20 (KJV)
“As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.” Ezekiel 1:28 (KJV)
So the prophet's own answer is cherubim, the angelic attendants of God's throne, and not visitors from another planet. Read that way, the wheels are a picture of a God who isn't stuck in one place: the Lord's glory was present with the exiles in Babylon, far from the temple in Jerusalem.
Where that leaves the UFO question
Both readings agree on one thing: Ezekiel saw something that wasn't of this world. The difference is whether that “something” is a machine or the unseen realm breaking into view. For a Christian, the text settles the source of this vision. Whether anything people see in the sky today belongs to the same unseen realm is a separate question, and Scripture's counsel there is to test, not to assume (see UFOs and spiritual deception).
Sources: Ezekiel 1 (KJV) · Chariots of the Gods? · The Spaceships of Ezekiel