Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

EZEKIEL was set down outside the northern gate of the temple, where the Lord waited, already incandescent with fury.

“Man!” he said. “Raise your eyes to the north!”

Ezekiel did as he was bidden, and saw an idol north of the altar gate, close to the entrance.

“Man, do you see what they are doing? The abomination the Israelites are committing here is so great that I must travel far from my sanctuary. But you shall see more of such abominations.”

The Lord took him to a hole in the wall in the temple court. Inside was a door, and when he opened it, Ezekiel saw that there were all sorts of awful pictures of reptiles and beasts and idols on the walls in the room. Before them stood seventy of Israel’s elders, and in the middle was Jaazaniah, son of Shaphan. Each of them carried a censer, and the smoke that rose from the censers darkened their faces.

“Man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the dark?” asked the Lord. “‘The Lord cannot see us,’ they say, ‘he has gone away from the country.’ But you shall see even more of the abominations they practice.”

The Lord took him to another gate, and showed him some women who sat within it weeping over Tammuz, the Babylonian god of fertility.

“Do you see, man? But you shall see abominations worse than these,” he said, and took Ezekiel to the inner court of the temple, where between the porch and the altar were some twenty-five men, all with their backs to the Lord’s temple and their faces turned to the east. Before their very eyes they prostrated themselves and worshipped the sun.

“Do you see, man?” said the Lord. “Isn’t it sufficient that the Jews have practiced all the abominations here? They fill the country with violence, and so arouse my anger again. See how they seek to appease me. I will show no pity or compassion. No matter how loud they shout into my ears, I will not hear them.”

When he had said this, the Lord turned and shouted in a loud voice:

“Come here and let the city be punished! Everyone must have his weapon of destruction in his hand.”

In through the northern gate came six men, all with swords in their hands. Between them walked a man dressed in linen and with writing instruments hanging at his belt. Ezekiel followed them with his eyes as they crossed the square and halted by the bronze altar.

Only then did he notice the cherubim. They stood by the south wall with wings lowered and their wheels by their sides. The ground between them was strewn with live coals. He realized that they must have been there all the time. But so powerful was the Lord’s presence, everything else had been eclipsed. And when the next moment he shouted an order to the man dressed in linen, Ezekiel couldn’t help taking his eyes off them, and looking up at the Lord instead, who now stood on the doorstep of the temple.

“Go through the city, right through Jerusalem, and place a mark on the foreheads of all the people who sigh and complain about all the abominations practiced here,” he shouted, and turning to the six others:

“Go through the city after the man and kill! Show no mercy, and spare no one! You shall kill and destroy old and young men, young girls, women, and children. But you shall touch none who has the mark on him. Begin at my sanctuary.”

The six went out and slaughtered the old men who stood outside the temple, to the Lord’s satisfaction.

“Defile the temple!” he cried. “Fill the temple with dead! Off with you!”

When they went on into the city, Ezekiel threw himself down in front of the Lord and begged for mercy for the people of Jerusalem. But to no avail, the Lord merely repeated everything he’d said.

“The sins of Israel and Judea are great. The land is full of murder, and in the city there is constant injustice. For they say: The Lord has gone from the land; the Lord sees nothing. And so I shall not show compassion or mercy either. I shall repay them for their behavior.”

He turned his back on him and looked down on the city beneath them. Ezekiel got up again, and remembered the cherubim. When he turned to them, they were standing precisely as they’d been before. Not the slightest expression that could betray what they thought, or if they thought, showed in their faces.

He looked at the ground between them, the piles of glowing coals that lay there, then up along their shining bodies, the hands that were just visible under their wings, the flames that licked up the wall.

Then one of them turned and met his gaze. Its eyes were completely pure and clear. The light from them revealed to Ezekiel his own soul’s bottomless depravity. It was as if all his vileness and impurity, all his hate and lust, all his petty thoughts and miserable self-dissimulation were rising up within him. And in some strange way it was as if the angel knew that. The knowledge felt like grace, but it wasn’t, for just as the perfect purity of the angel’s glance was born of not coveting anything worldly, it felt nothing for anything worldly either.

Ezekiel picked all this up in the brief second he looked into its eyes. Even though he immediately lowered his gaze, everything they had revealed remained within him, in much the same way as sunlight continues to dazzle the retina long after one has turned one’s eyes away from the sun. The only thing he wanted to do was get away from there. To be on his own. Never be seen by anyone again. But behind him the man dressed in linen was returning, and when next the Lord’s voice spoke to him, Ezekiel couldn’t withstand the temptation to turn toward them. Just as he did so and as he again saw the countenance of the Lord, all thoughts of who he was were thrust out of his consciousness by what was taking place around him.

It was an inferno. The outer courtyard was filled with smoke, at the entrance there were piles of fresh corpses, from the city beyond arose fearful screaming and wailing.

“Go in between the wheels, under the cherubim!” said the Lord. “Fill your hands with the coals between the cherubim, and strew them across the city!”

The linen-clad man turned and walked across the temple courtyard, past Ezekiel and on to the cherubim. Strangely enough, Ezekiel still had the presence of mind to memorize each individual action. Then he told the man dressed in linen to take fire from between the circling wheels and among the cherubim , he wrote. The man came and stood by a wheel, and a cherub put its hand into the fire that lay among them, and, taking some fire, gave it to the man dressed in linen; and he received it and went out. Under the wings of the cherubim there appeared what seemed a human hand .

Apart from the tiny inclination of the head when one cherub had let its gaze pass over Ezekiel, this was the first time they had made a movement in there. But the lowering of the hand toward the ground, the picking up of the glowing coal and the handing of it to the man dressed in linen were soon followed by further and much bigger movements, as the four cherubim stepped away from the wall, spread their wings, and with slow beats rose into the air.

Even though to the distant din of the massacre had now been added the roar from the buildings burning beyond the temple, Ezekiel couldn’t take his eyes off them. The cherubim lifted their wings and raised themselves from the ground , he wrote. I watched them go with the wheels beside them. They halted at the eastern gateway of the Lord’s house, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them . (. .) Each had four faces and four wings and the semblance of human hands under their wings .

Shortly afterward Ezekiel was taken by the Lord to the outside of the temple, where twenty-five of Israel’s leading men were standing, including Jaazaniah. At the Lord’s command, he prophesied to them, and when that was done, the Lord and his four cherubim departed. Above, the Lord on his throne, the four cherubim beneath him, which in a deafening rush of wings rose side by side into the air, with their wheels just under them. Higher and higher, farther and farther away they flew, until the terrified onlookers saw them land on the summit of the mountain east of the city.