THE secessionist priestly literature treated Ezekiel's Merkavah as a prototype of sacred heavenly space, because the Merkavah was portrayed and interpreted as a visionary, mystical transformation of the Holy of Holies, a composite of details from the Temple which expressed the very essence of the sacred precinct. The roots from which Jewish mysticism sprang lie in the Merkavah vision of the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, composed in exile while Nebuchadnezzar was laying waste to Jerusalem and the First Temple. The prophet-priest, exiled from Jerusalem together with King Jehoiachin, envisioned the ruined earthly Temple as an eternal, heavenly Chariot Throne, transcending the bounds of time and place. The four-winged cherubim of the Holy of Holies, the copper wheels of the stands in the Temple court, the four threesomes of creatures on all four sides of a square structure (facing all four points of the compass), the lions, oxen, cherubim, and ofanim—all cultic objects, made of burnished bronze—became four sacred winged creatures, sparkling with that same bronze lustre, with the faces of lions, oxen, eagles, and human beings. They stood on four wheels (Heb. ofanim) which had the appearance of ‘two wheels cutting through each other’ and faced all four points of the compass, like their counterparts in the Temple.

The gold-plated winged cherubim in the sanctuary, whose wings were extended and ‘touched each other’, and which stood on their feet, were transformed in Ezekiel's vision into sacred, sparkling, winged creatures, ‘each of whose wings touched those of the other’ and whose legs ‘were fused into a single rigid leg’; their appearance was ‘like burning coals of fire … torches’. The cherubim, lions, and palms referred to in the biblical account of Solomon's Temple also figure in Ezekiel's vision, as do the sapphire and beryl (tarshish) associated with the image of the Deity and his seat in the Temple rites. There is thus a whole system of correlations between the ideal picture of the destroyed earthly Temple and the visionary Temple revealed in heaven.