Catholic Commentary
The Departure of Yahweh's Glory from the Temple Threshold
18Yahweh’s glory went out from over the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim.19The cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went out, with the wheels beside them. Then they stood at the door of the east gate of Yahweh’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
Ezekiel 10:18–19 describes the glory of God departing from the Temple in a measured, deliberate procession rather than a hasty flight, moving from the threshold onto the cherubim's wings before ascending eastward through the east gate. This withdrawal represents divine judgment upon Israel's unfaithfulness, though the eastward direction foreshadows the glory's eventual return in restoration.
God doesn't flee judgment—He withdraws slowly, moving from the inner sanctuary to the threshold to the gate, giving Israel time to repent before the final rupture.
Ezekiel 10:18 — The Glory Leaves the Threshold
The verse opens with a verb of motion that carries enormous theological weight: the kābôd YHWH — the glory of the LORD — "goes out" (wayyēṣēʾ) from above the threshold of the Temple. This is the same threshold over which the glory had hovered in 10:4, having already moved from the innermost sanctuary above the cherubim. Each stage of departure is deliberate: from the Holy of Holies (9:3), to the threshold (10:4), and now outward to stand upon the cherubim themselves (10:18). The movement is not abrupt or chaotic — it is a solemn procession, an ordered withdrawal by a God who is not fleeing but judging through departure.
The threshold (miphtan) was the liminal zone between the house of God and the outside world. In ancient Near Eastern and Israelite theology, the threshold of the sanctuary was a sacred boundary; to cross it unworthily was dangerous (cf. 1 Sam 5:4–5). That the glory stands here, on the margin between sacred interior and the wider world, captures perfectly the moment of divine hesitation — or, better, divine deliberateness. The LORD does not burst away in anger; He pauses, He stations Himself, before the final movement.
Ezekiel 10:19 — The Cherubim Rise and Carry the Glory Eastward
The cherubim — the four living creatures of Ezekiel's inaugural vision (ch. 1) now explicitly identified as kerûbîm (10:15) — respond to the glory's movement by lifting their wings. Their ascent from the earth is a cosmic gesture: what was heavenly but had graciously descended to dwell among Israel now re-ascends. The wheels (ʾôpannîm), which accompanied the cherubim in chapter 1 and symbolize the all-encompassing mobility and omniscience of God (they were "full of eyes," 10:12), rise with them. Nothing about this divine chariot-throne (merkābāh) is left behind.
The destination is critical: they "stood at the door of the east gate." The east gate (šaʿar haqqādîm) will become enormously significant later in Ezekiel — it is through this same eastern gate that the glory will return in Ezekiel 43:1–4. The eastward orientation is laden with meaning. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are driven east of Eden after the loss of divine communion (Gen 3:24). In the Tabernacle and Temple, worshippers always faced east-to-west, approaching God. The departure eastward through the east gate is thus a dramatic inversion of approach — it is a going-out, a reversal of divine indwelling.
The closing phrase — "the glory of the God of Israel was over them above" — is almost liturgical in its solemnity. Ezekiel emphasizes the visual, witnessed nature of this event: leʿênāy, "in my sight." He is a reluctant but faithful witness to what is both a prophetic judgment and a personal bereavement. The title "God of Israel" (ʾĕlōhê Yiśrāʾēl) is used at the moment of departure, a title that underscores the covenantal relationship being, in effect, suspended because of Israel's infidelity (cf. Ezek 8–9, the abominations in the Temple that preceded this departure).
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the fourfold Catholic hermeneutic, the allegorical sense points forward: this departure of God's glory from an unfaithful Israel typologically foreshadows the rejection of the Son of God by Jerusalem (Matt 23:37–38, "your house is left to you desolate"). The anagogical sense warns that the soul, as a temple of the Holy Spirit, can by grave and persistent sin grieve and ultimately lose the indwelling presence. The tropological sense calls the reader to vigilant fidelity: the glory did not depart in an instant but moved in stages — from the inner sanctuary, to the threshold, to the gate — suggesting that the soul's estrangement from God is typically gradual, mirroring Israel's slow drift into idolatry.
Catholic tradition approaches this passage as a supremely sobering icon of what happens when a community consecrated to God — a living temple — abandons fidelity to His covenant. The Catechism teaches that the Temple in Jerusalem was the place where God dwelled "in a unique way" among His people (CCC 2580), and its desecration and the withdrawal of the divine glory represent the darkest consequence of Israel's infidelity.
St. Gregory the Great, commenting on Ezekiel in his Homiliae in Hiezechihelem, treated the staged departure of the glory as a model of divine mercy: God withdraws slowly, mercifully, granting time for repentance at each threshold. Gregory saw in the hovering at the east gate a final divine pause — an act of longing — before judgment falls. This reading resonates deeply with Catholic teaching on the patience of God and the real possibility of conversion even at the edge of judgment.
The Church Fathers also recognized a Christological typology here. Origen and Jerome noted that the kābôd — the divine glory made visible — is a pre-figuration of the Logos, the eternal Word who is "the radiance of the Father's glory" (Heb 1:3). Just as the glory departs from the corrupt Temple, so Christ explicitly pronounces the Temple's abandonment (Matt 23:38) and predicts its destruction (Matt 24:2). The trajectory from Ezekiel 10 to Matthew 23–24 is a single theological arc.
From the sacramental theology of Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Church's liturgy is understood as the living presence of Christ among His people. The radical implication of Ezekiel 10:18–19 for Catholic life is that liturgical infidelity — the reduction of sacred worship to mere human performance — carries within it the risk of an analogous withdrawal of the living divine presence. Pope Benedict XVI, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, warned precisely against a liturgy that no longer points beyond itself, becoming a closed human circle rather than a genuine encounter with the living God.
For the contemporary Catholic, this passage is a call to examine what kind of "temple" we are maintaining — both personally and communally. St. Paul's declaration that "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 6:19) means that Ezekiel 10 has direct personal application: the glory of God dwelling in us through baptism and the sacraments is not a permanent, unconditional fixture. Mortal sin, persistent idolatry of money, status, or comfort, and deliberate rejection of conscience are the "abominations in the Temple" (Ezek 8) that precede a departure of grace.
The staged nature of the glory's withdrawal is pastorally important: God does not abandon us suddenly. He withdraws in increments — from the inner sanctuary of intimacy in prayer, to the threshold of barely-maintained practice, to the outer gate of mere cultural Catholicism. The diagnostic question this passage poses is: where is the glory in my life right now — enthroned in the inner sanctuary, hovering at the threshold, or pausing at the east gate? The remedy the Church has always offered is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which is precisely the grace by which the exiled glory can return — as it does, triumphantly, in Ezekiel 43.