LIFE-STUDY OF EZEKIEL
Read and pray:“For it is not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert that help comes. God is the judge; He puts down one and lifts up another.” (Ps 75:6,7)
THE TEMPESTUOUS WIND
Coming from the North
The first part of Ezekiel 1:4 says, “I looked, and behold, a tempestuous wind was coming from the north.” The New Translation by John Nelson Darby and the American Standard Version both translate the Hebrew word whirlwind as “tempestuous wind,” and I feel that this translation is preferable. Therefore, this verse is saying that a tempestuous wind came from the north.
Why did the tempestuous wind come from the north and not from the south, east, or west? The answer to this question is found in Psalm 75:6–7a: “For promotion comes neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert. God is the judge.” Here, the north is replaced by God. This indicates that God is in the north¹.
In geographical terms, the north is commonly considered to be above, and therefore, to go north is to go up. God, who is in the north, is always above. Spiritually speaking, this means that when we are going north, we are going to God.
The fact that the tempestuous wind came from the north means that it came from God. The place of dwelling, the abode of God, is the source of all spiritual things. The tempestuous wind came from the north, from the dwelling place of God. God, therefore, was the source of the tempestuous wind.
It Typifies the Spirit of God
The Hebrew word for wind is ruach. Ruach can be translated as “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.” In Ezekiel 37, in the King James Version, this Hebrew word is translated in all three ways: “wind” in verse 9, “breath” in verses 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10, and “Spirit” in verses 1 and 14.
It is difficult for translators to decide whether in a given verse ruach means wind, breath, or spirit. The decision must be made according to the context. In 1:4, ruach denotes a wind, a tempestuous wind that signifies nothing less than the powerful Spirit.
On the day of Pentecost there was a rushing, mighty wind that filled the house where the one hundred twenty were sitting. Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2, 4a). Undoubtedly, this rushing, mighty wind was the powerful Spirit.
In John 3:8 the Lord Jesus said, “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Some versions indicate in a footnote that the word wind in this verse is a translation of the Greek word for spirit, pneuma.
The Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma have exactly the same meaning. Like ruach, the word pneuma can be translated as “wind,” “breath,” or “spirit.” Thus, in this verse, the Greek words translated “the wind blows” can also be translated as “the Spirit blows.” In Ezekiel 1:4, the strong, tempestuous wind is a figure, a picture, of the powerful Spirit of God.
In the Bible, wind has both a negative and a positive meaning. In its negative meaning, wind is a symbol, or sign, of God’s judgment upon man. This is the meaning of the wind in Daniel 7:2 and in Revelation 7:1. In its positive meaning, wind is a symbol, or sign, of the breath of the Holy Spirit upon man or the descent of the Holy Spirit upon man to care for man.
This, of course, is the meaning of the rushing, mighty wind in Acts 2. In the book of Ezekiel, the wind also has this twofold meaning: the negative meaning—the judgment of God in raising up circumstances through which He judges those who rebel against Him; the positive meaning—the coming of the Spirit to man to bring him into the life of God. The tempestuous wind in Ezekiel 1 has this positive meaning.
Our spiritual experiences always begin with a spiritual storm. According to the history of the church, throughout all generations, the Spirit of God has blown as a powerful wind to move people to repent of their sins, to believe in the Lord Jesus for their regeneration, to abandon the world in order to follow the Lord, and to be desperate in heart and burning in spirit to serve the Lord.
Have you not had this kind of experience? Did you not sense the wind of God blowing upon you? Were you not touched by the Spirit of God? Did you not feel, at least once in your life, that a certain power—the tempestuous wind of God—was moving upon you, causing you to hate sin, to have a different attitude toward the world, or to change your view of your life? If you have never had these experiences, you need to seek the Lord and pray for His north wind to blow upon you.
A certain promising young man, who was a strong member of a political party, experienced this north wind at the time of his conversion. One day, he entered an idol temple and saw a Bible on the table that was used for offerings. He walked over to the Bible and read a few verses.
Suddenly, the Holy Spirit blew upon him, and he was convicted of his sins. As the wind of the Spirit continued to blow upon him, he began to repent of his sins and to make a full confession, weeping bitterly as he prostrated himself and even rolled on the ground. He was saved through the breath of a powerful north wind.
The visitation of God always begins with the blowing of the wind of God upon our being. Did you not experience a storm, the breath of the Spirit of God, when you were saved? Perhaps you were a young student with nothing to worry about except going to school, studying, and playing.
Then one day, a storm came to you. A tempestuous wind blew upon you and turned you upside down. This led you to consider the meaning of human life, and you began to ask yourself where you came from and where you were going. This was the result of the blowing of a tempestuous wind. I believe that every saved person experienced a storm at the time of conversion.
I cannot forget the storm that I experienced on the day I was saved. As a young man under twenty years of age, I was full of ambition and was studying diligently, seeking the knowledge of the world in order to have a good future.
But one day I heard about an evangelistic meeting and decided to attend. At that meeting, as I listened to a strong message of the gospel, a tempestuous wind blew upon me and turned me completely upside down.
A storm comes to us from the Lord not only at the time of our conversion but also after we have been saved. Whether young or old, we all experience the tempestuous wind.
For example, certain brothers among us in the church life were formerly missionaries or Christian workers. One day, a storm came to them from the north and turned everything upside down. This led them to seek the Lord desperately, and eventually they came into the church life.
Actually, a tempestuous wind blows upon us at every step in our spiritual life. This tempestuous wind is God Himself blowing upon us to bring a storm into our life, into our work, and into our church.
It is truly a grace to have storms come to us from God. As we are following the Lord, we will experience storm after storm. I cannot say how many storms have come to me, but I can testify that every storm is worth remembering. Every storm has become a pleasant remembrance. I believe that when we are in eternity, we will recall the storms that we experienced.
Whenever God visits us and revives us, His Spirit blows upon us as a powerful wind. We need to experience the Spirit in this way—the stronger, the better. I have a deep desire that in these days the Spirit of God would blow strongly upon us as a powerful wind.
THE CLOUD
The cloud always follows the tempestuous wind. If we have the wind, we will surely have the cloud, because the cloud is the result of the blowing of the wind. Like the tempestuous wind, the cloud signifies the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit touches us, He is like the wind. When the Holy Spirit visits us and shelters us, He is like the cloud. First, the Holy Spirit blows upon us as the wind to move us; then He remains with us as a cloud to cover us.
The cloud in Ezekiel 1:4 is a figure of God covering His people. We may use the word covering and say that the cloud was God covering His people. The cloud, therefore, was nothing less than God covering.
God comes as the wind; however, He remains as the cloud. By remaining as the cloud, He covers us, shades us, and hovers over us to give us the enjoyment of His presence, thus producing something of Himself in our daily life. How wonderful! This is the covering God typified by the covering cloud.
By considering the history of the people of Israel, we can better understand the meaning of the cloud. Innumerable times God appeared to them and visited them as a great cloud that covered them. For example, after the Israelites came out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea.
Concerning this, Paul says, “Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:1–2).
The cloud that covered the children of Israel typifies the Spirit of God. Eventually, the children of Israel came to Mount Sinai and camped there. In Exodus 19:9 the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud,” and “a thick cloud covered the mountain” (v. 16).
In chapter twenty-four we are told that “a cloud covered the mountain,” that the Lord “called to Moses from the midst of the cloud,” and that “Moses entered into the midst of the cloud” (vv. 15, 16, 18). Later, after the tent of meeting was established by God, the glory of God filled the tent, and a cloud covered it and remained upon it (40:34–35).
All the people could see that the cloud was covering the tent of meeting. That cloud represented the visitation of God and His abiding with them. The cloud also represents God’s care for His people and His favor toward them.
He appeared to them as a cloud, covering them and shading them in order to care for them. Proverbs 16:15 says that the king’s favor is like “a cloud of the latter rain.” In His gracious visitation, God comes to us as a cloud to care for us and show favor to us.
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¹ In the text of Psalm 75:6–7, this “substitution” in Hebrew is real and intentional, and the text fully supports this interpretation.
Hebrew:
כִּי לֹא מִמּוֹצָא וּמִמַּעֲרָב
וְלֹא מִמִּדְבַּר הָרִים׃
כִּי־אֱלֹהִים שֹׁפֵט
Transliteration:
Ki lo mimotsá u-mimaʿarav,
ve-lo mimidbar harím;
ki Elohím shofét.
Literal translation:
“For it is not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert (the south) that exaltation comes; for God is judge.”
The text mentions three directions: East (מוצא / motsá), West (מערב / maʿarav), and South (desert / midbar); the north is not mentioned. Instead, the following line begins directly with: כִּי־אֱלֹהִים שֹׁפֵט — “For God is judge.”
In Hebrew poetic parallelism, one would expect the fourth direction (north) to complete the set. But the text deliberately replaces the north with God. This substitution is neither accidental nor merely interpretive; it is structural and literary, that is, in the Hebrew text, God occupies the place of the north. The psalm presupposes the recurring biblical concept that the north is the direction associated with God’s dwelling and authority (cf. Psa. 48:2; Isa. 14:13; Ezek. 1:4).
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