Description
The Prophet Ezekiel was a priest, the son of Buzi, and lived at the time of the captivity of Israel into Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. He served as a prophet for 22 years and had many vivid ecstatic and Heavenly visions. His vision of the four living creatures (Ezekiel 1:10) parallels that of St. John the Theologian (Revelation 4:7). The Church teaches that the creature with a human face signifies God Incarnate as a man, the lion’s face His Divinity, the calf’s face His sacrifice, and the eagle’s face His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. The Prophet Ezekiel also had a vision of dry bones being brought back to life (Ezekiel 37:1-28), which is seen as a prophecy of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. As with all prophets, they preach a return to faith in God.
This is an early 15th century Byzantine icon and resides in the Resava Monastery, in Manasija, Serbia. The Holy Prophet Ezekiel, dressed in white robes, raises his right hand while he holds a scroll in his left. There is an innate dynamism in the iconographic form shown here indicating that Heaven is dynamic, not static, and if we reach Heaven, we will grow towards God continuously.