Now as I looked at the living creatures: In Hebrew this verse begins in almost exactly the same way as verse 4. Now renders the Hebrew waw conjunction (literally “And”), which simply serves to continue the story. Here it does not mean “at this present time,” but rather “then,” “and,” or even “next.” Many versions omit it, and it should only be included if there is a suitable resumptive particle that is natural in the translator’s language. As I looked at the living creatures can be taken in two ways. Most translations take it as a continuous action, referring to the whole vision thus far; for example, Good News Translation says “As I was looking at the four creatures.” But it could mean that Ezekiel now refocuses his attention on the creatures after watching the flashing of the fire. If so, it should be translated “Then I looked [again] at the creatures.” Some translations take this clause as Ezekiel focusing his attention on one part of the vision; for example, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch says “As I looked more closely,” but this rendering goes a bit further than the Hebrew allows.

I saw a wheel upon the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them: I saw is literally “and behold” (see the comments on Ezek 1.4). There was one wheel beside each creature, so Good News Translation says “I saw four wheels … one beside each of them.” The wheels were probably beside the legs and feet of each creature. The wheels were upon the earth, that is, standing upright and “touching the ground” (Good News Translation). The translation must not give the impression that the wheels were lying on their sides on the ground. One way would be to say “I saw a wheel standing on the ground beside each of the four creatures.”

One for each of the four of them renders a difficult Hebrew text, which is literally “to his four faces.” Many versions omit the reference to the “faces” (so Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, Revised English Bible, Jerusalem Bible). Others strain to get some meaning from the word “faces,” but their solutions are not very satisfactory; for example, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh says “each of the four-faced creatures” (similarly New Jerusalem Bible), and New International Version has “each creature with its four faces.” It may be that these “four faces” belong to the wheels themselves (see the comments on 10.14). But this would be the only reference to the wheels’ faces in this chapter, and it is almost impossible to make any sense out of this meaning here. Therefore it is more likely that the “four faces” refer to the human faces on the four sides of the square of creatures. Thus there was one wheel alongside each creature, and the wheel was pointing in the direction that the human face was facing. This is the meaning of Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation.

Translators may want to restructure the verse slightly as follows:

• And then as I watched, I saw that beside each of the four creatures there was a wheel standing on the ground.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .