The Wheel That Will Not Sit Still

Ezekiel 1:16 · Narrative peak · 2026-08-01

מַרְאֵ֨ה הָ אֹופַנִּ֤ים וּ מַעֲשֵׂיהֶם֙ כְּ עֵ֣ין תַּרְשִׁ֔ישׁ וּ דְמ֥וּת אֶחָ֖ד לְ אַרְבַּעְתָּ֑ן וּ מַרְאֵיהֶם֙ וּ מַ֣עֲשֵׂיהֶ֔ם כַּ אֲשֶׁ֛ר יִהְיֶ֥ה הָ אֹופַ֖ן בְּ תֹ֥וךְ הָ אֹופָֽן

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.

The English reader takes this as a tidy closing simile — the wheels looked like a wheel inside a wheel, case closed, move on to the next verse.

Every other verb of description in this verse is a plain noun-clause: 'their appearance... as the eye of beryl,' 'one likeness to the four' — no verb at all, just naming. Then, right at the hardest image to picture — wheel within wheel — the text suddenly uses a real verb: יִהְיֶה (yihyeh), 'it would be/was coming to be,' from the root היה, 'to be.' It's an imperfect form, not the flat statements around it. The tagging marks it as a peak-marking verb, a deliberate shift up from the surrounding description into something more animated, more unresolved.

The prophet has been cataloguing static features — color, shape, number — with simple noun clauses. But at the one detail that most resists a settled mental image, the grammar itself refuses to settle. 'As it were' becoming, not simply 'was.' The verb tense mimics the content: this thing cannot be pinned into a static picture. The peak isn't a plot climax — it's the moment where ordinary description breaks down before the sheer strangeness of what Ezekiel is seeing.

This is what happens whenever a creature meets glory honestly: language runs out precisely where the vision is truest. Ezekiel does not smooth this over with confident precision — the grammar visibly strains, shifting form because no flat statement will hold it. That strain is itself worship. A God who can be fully captured in noun clauses is not the living God. The one glimpse that made even the prophet's syntax move is the one glimpse worth having.

Today

When you pray today, let one sentence to God go unfinished — trailing into silence rather than a tidy conclusion — as an act of honesty before what words cannot hold.