Ezekiel 8:2
Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber.
Ezekiel 8 belongs to the assigned reading of Ezekiel 5-8 and to an open vision given among the captives in Babylonia, when Ezekiel sat in his house with the elders of Judah sitting before him and the hand of the Lord fell upon him there. The likeness seen was as the appearance of fire, from the loins downward fire and from the loins upward as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. That brightness surrounding the divine person is the glory of the Father and the Son, greater than the brightness of the sun.
The visions were revelations of God's glory and of His overruling providence over the nations, with ordered symbols such as living creatures and wheels representing might, patience, wisdom and glory to show that God was ruling. Ezekiel 1-10 gives a visible representation of the sanctuary and true tabernacle in heaven which the Lord pitched and not man, showing the earthly sanctuary was a shadow and example of heavenly things. This revelation of glory prepared Ezekiel for his prophetic work and gave him courage to deliver warnings and reproof.
After seeing the fiery likeness, the form of a hand took him by a lock of his head, and the Spirit lifted him up between earth and heaven and brought him in the visions of God to Jerusalem to the door of the inner gate toward the north, where the glory of the God of Israel was. There the verse introduces the exposure of Judah's gross idolatry and abominations committed in the dark in the chambers of imagery. Especially exposed was idolatrous sun-worship and nature-worship, in which people turned from the Creator to the sun and made worship serve lust rather than righteousness, including women weeping for Tammuz and other heathen rites familiar at Nippur, a center of Babylonian worship.
Under the second commandment the verse means that transgression does not require carving, molding, casting, or bowing to a graven image, because the image concept is in the mind before it is made in concrete form and God sees the cherished imaginings of sins and lusts in the soul. Those who daily bow in homage to farms, houses, automobiles, art, books, and their own handiwork are truly idolaters, since whatever object a man daily serves in this way he worships even when he does not make it a caricature of a man or an ox or a goat. The vision in Ezekiel 8 and 9 presents the same work as Revelation 7:2-3, the sealing of God's servants in their foreheads before judgment falls. The faithful who grieve over sin are marked within God's effort to turn the people back to true worship, while judgment falls on those who refuse to turn, and the seal is placed in the forehead because the forehead is the seat of the mind with which the law of God is served.
The chapter belongs to prophecies about the future in which Israel is used as a symbol of the last days. Its sealing message is directed not to those who do not know God but to people already serving God whose practice on a point of faith is not right, to set them right on the part of the law that is the seal of His authority. From this heavenly vision is learned the exalted position once occupied by a covering cherub and consequently the great power possessed by a covering cherub. It shows how great is the power for evil of Satan as a fallen covering cherub, far greater than the power of men, who once walked in this blazing glory before he departed through sin.