What's the story with Ezekiel's Wheels?

image accessed from “The Michigan Catholic”–no attriution given.

Well! The spiritual “Ezekiel Saw De Wheel” is a pretty strange song. Have you ever wondered what on earth it means, or have you just sung it, or listened to it, and enjoyed the rhythm and tune?

If you take a look at the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel in the Jewish Bible/Old Testament you’ll find the source for the images of this spiritual. Ezekiel, we are told, is writing during the Jewish exile in Babylon, which occurred after Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in about 595 BC. He was a contemporary of both Daniel and Jeremiah, and his book is full of visions and prophecies which are pretty strange and hard to understand, it must be admitted. But Ezekiel himself tells us that he’s simply reporting what God showed him:

“While I was among the exiles by the Kebor River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” So perhaps we should just take him at his word. He then goes on to describe his first vision, the one that appears in this spiritual. He sees a windstorm, and clouds, and lightning, and then four winged beings with multiple faces, each of them with a wheel beside or underneath. The wheels themselves are made of precious stones, they are “high and awesome,” and they are “full of eyes all around.” Not only that, but they are double wheels: “a wheel within a wheel.” What do these creatures and wheels symbolize? It’s hard to pin the meaning down completely, but they obviously refer to something truly otherworldly. This first vision culminates with the image of God on His throne: “brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.” Every translation has slightly different details, of course. The overall emphasis is on light, fire and color, with Ezekiel trying to convey the brightness of God’s glory. As the vision progresses the prophet is given a message for the Jews who are living in captivity with him, but the spiritual confines itself to the vision in chapter 1.

How did we get from this vision to the spiritual? Let me refer to an earlier post I wrote on how we got the spirituals to say that there were many ways in which plantation slaves were exposed to ideas from the Bible. They might be required to attend services in a church on the plantation, or they might stand and listen outside, or they might have their own services. I can’t imagine that there would have been many sermons preached from the very difficult to understand book of Ezekiel, so I wonder if there was one sermon in particular preached by some very colorful and vivid speaker who made a real impression on his hearers. Then the next day, out in the fields, the work gang leader wanted to come up with a new song and remembered that strange but compelling sermon of the day before. So he led out with “Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air.” As I’ve described in yet another of my own posts, these work songs could have practically unlimited verses, with various members of the gang singing out new verses on the spur of the moment. Usually the pattern is that of “call and response,” in which you have the improvised line, then the repeated line, then the next new line, then the repeated line, and then almost always a set chorus or refrain. It’s a way of stretching the song out to last as long as possible. The only limitations on the new lines, other than their having at least a tangential relationship to the meaning of the song as a whole, is that they fit into the meter and end with the proper rhyme. These songs aren’t written down, remember, as is the case with all true folk songs. But the thought has occurred to me that for any of these very specific songs there has to have been an original: the first time that someone came up with it. No one knew how to read or write, though, so the song had to be memorable enough and well-liked enough to become popular. It could spread to other plantations by various means. Plantation owners sometimes rented out their slaves to others in the area and of course also sold slaves if they needed the money or if a particular slave was seen as a troublemaker. (There was often a threat hanging over a slave’s head: “I’ll sell you down the river,” usually a reference to the huge cotton plantations in southern Louisiana where slaves could be worked to death. A similar threat was used back in the Roman Empire: “I’ll sell you to the salt mines,” where a slave’s life would usually be measured in months. Some things never change, alas! Today we say “He was sold down the river” to refer perhaps to a business deal when someone was cheated and “back to the salt mines” when we have to leave a gathering and get back to work. We use these phrases all the time without thinking about their true origins. Oh, and while I’m on the subject, have you ever heard anyone say, “There are wheels within wheels” when describing a situation that’s complicated and has more going on than meets the eye? I’ll bet you anything that if you challenged that person to explain the source of the saying he wouldn’t be able to do it. But now you can!)

Let me give you some examples of this type of variation. Our friend Wikipedia give us a set of three:

Who’s that yonder dressed in white?
(Way up in the middle of the air)
It must be the children of the Israelites.
(Way in the middle of the air)

Who’s that yonder dressed in red? . . .
It must be the children that Moses led . . .

Who’s that yonder dressed in black? . . .
It must be the children running back . . .

As I’m sure is perfectly clear, the colors have nothing to do with any actual Old Testament stories and everything to do with the rhyme. Once someone came up with a color for one verse others would naturally follow. And as for the “big wheel run by faith and the little wheel run by the grace of God,” well, I just don’t know what to tell you. The wheels in the actual biblical text aren’t different sizes, but I wonder if somehow in that (purely hypothetical on my part) overheard sermon that the preacher got mixed up or was misheard. Why would faith be bigger than the grace of God? No clue. But that phrasing shows up in all the versions, so somehow it made quite an impression.

I got very tickled with one variant: “Ole Satan wears a clubfoot shoe” in one version is rendered elsewhere as “Satan wears a number 11 shoe.” So the idea of Satan having hoofs (hooves?) means that he has to wear special shoes like people with clubfoot would wear. (I’m not going to get into why Satan is depicted that way. This post is going pretty long as it is, and I’m sure he’ll show up in relation to another song.) But at some point someone misunderstood what was being said, or sung, and changed it to show simply that Satan has big feet, all the better to stomp on unrepentant sinners who “don’t mind.”

Here’s a fabulous performance by a group named “The Charioteers” that contains the “size 11 shoe” line–

If you find the actual vision of Ezekiel interesting and would like to hear more about it, I will refer you to a sermon by Dr. Mark Dever, who used to be my pastor. It’s pretty short, around 35 minutes, and I promise you that you won’t be bored. You may disagree with him, but I can guarantee that you’ll learn a good-sized chunk of theology in a thoroughly engaging way. Here’s the link: “A Vision of God”

And, if your appetite for Ezekiel’s visions as they appear in spirituals has not been sated, I would mention that he also provided the imagery for “Dry Bones.” Here’s another great performance, this time with a visual aid so you can keep the bones straight:

As noted above, there are many variants of this spiritual. Here’s at pretty full version giving many verses, with credit given to Louis Armstrong:

Ezekiel saw the wheel
Way up in the middle of the air
Ezekiel saw the wheel
Way up in the middle of the air

And the little wheel run by faith
And the big wheel run by the grace of God
A wheel in a wheel
Way up in the middle of the air

Some go to church to sing and shout
Way in the middle of the air
Before six months they’ve shouted out
Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw the wheel
Way up in the middle of the air
Ezekiel saw the wheel
Way up in the middle of the air
And the little wheel run by faith
And the big wheel run by the grace of God
A wheel in a wheel
Way up in the middle of the air

Let me tell you what a hypocrite’ll do
Way in the middle of the air
He’ll talk about me, he’ll talk about you
Way in the middle of the air

Don’t pray for things that you don’t need
Way in the middle of the air
The Lord don’t like no sin and greed
Way in the middle of the air

There’s one thing sure that you can’t do
Way in the middle of the air
You can’t serve God and Satan too
Way in the middle of the air

One of these days about twelve o’clock
Way in the middle of the air
This old world’s gonna reel and rock
Way in the middle of the air

Ezekiel saw the wheel
Within a wheel in a wheel my lord
wheel wheel in a wheel
within in a wheel in a wheel great god o mighty
wheel wheel in a wheel
Within a wheel in a wheel my lord
Ezekiel saw the wheel!