In Chapter 3, Rambam turns his attention to the second presentation of the Ma`aseh Merkavah, in Chapter 10 of Yehezqel. While this was in the course of a different vision (in this vision, Yehezqel was taken to Yerushalayim, whereas the first had been in Bavel, on the banks of the river Kevar), Yehezqel himself identifies it as the same vision (meaning he saw the same stuff, although in a different episode). Rambam assumes that the 2nd version comes to clarify aspects we did not understand in the first one.

Possibly, although Rambam does not say this, Yehezqel had not originally noted these aspects of the vision. Rambam says Yehezqel repeats it for our benefit, but perhaps he actually saw the vision slightly differently this time, having grown in his ability to understand God and His relationship with the world. This would mean that even though Yehezqel had a vision of Ma`aseh Merkavah in the first chapter of his book, after some time, when he had the same vision, he was yet able to draw new understanding from it, a notion I find attractive. It reminds us that even prophets grow in their understanding and insight about God; it’s not that once a person is a prophet, he or she can speak to God, and has achieved the pinnacle. Rather, it means they have reached a certain level of understanding, but the process is never--ending.

Either way, let’s analyze some of the elements Rambam brings up. First, he notes that the hayyot are the keruvim, meaning they are a type of angel (Rambam at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah listed several types of angels referred to in Tanakh). Possibly, Rambam means not that the hayyot (a physical part of the world) are the keruvim, but that they are intimately connected to the keruvim. Some of the medieval commentators seem to have read it this way, I guess because they couldn’t imagine that Rambam meant that the heavenly spheres are actually angels. I would note here that Rambam also speaks (in later chapters) of separate intellects, which have no matter to them whatsoever, so we'll have to wait to get a full picture of these issues.

If Rambam did think that the spheres were also angels (meaning they could carry messages from God to man), it would lead to some interesting ideas. Identifying the heavens (the celestial spheres, in medieval parlance) as the keruvim gives a different understanding of prophecy from what we might generally have assumed. I believe our general picture is that an angel is a being separate from the universe, which takes on a visible form to give prophecy at God’s command. Identifying the hayyot (meaning, really, the heavens) as those angels means that prophecy is in some way a question of communing with the Universe. According to this, the angels are really other parts of the Universe, possessed of a higher appreciation of God, but lacking in free will—and prophecy is finding a way to communicate with them. But I’ll leave a full discussion of this for a time when we join together to read the 2nd part of the Moreh, where Rambam discusses prophecy at greater length.

Rambam also notes that Yehezqel in Chapter 10 refers to the ophanim as galgalim, spheres, to which we will have to return. If you notice on page 422, Pines believes that Rambam means that the ophanim were the celestial spheres, which contradicts how I have been reading it. We will see in the next chapter (later in this shiur) that Rambam spends a chapter disagreeing with Yonatan b. Uziel on exactly this issue, so I believe I can support my reading. If so, however, the prophet’s mention of the galgal aspect of the ophanim has to be taken in some other way (their roundness must be a characteristic rather than an actual physical attribute).

Other new points Rambam notices in Yehezqel’s description of the ophanim are that they had eyes all around, they had flesh, backs, hands, and wings, none of which the prophet had mentioned before. These ophanim are intimately connected to the keruvim, and were interconnected with each other, which is why Yehezqel sometimes refers to them as one creature, sometimes as four. Final note on this chapter—Rambam closes it by repeating that Yehezqel added this vision, and these items for our benefit, so he clearly did not think Yehezqel had only just come to understand these parts of the vision in this chapter.

Rambam spends chapter 4 explaining Yonatan b. Uziel (the reputed author of the Aramaic translation of Yehezqel, a student of Hillel in the first century C.E.)’s interpretation of the ophanim. Since verse 1; 16 described them (the ophanim) as of the color of bedolah , which we all know (Rambam says) is the color of the heavens, that must be what they are. That definition, however, forced Yonatan b. Uziel to interpret verse 15 in a way that seems not to follow the literal meaning. Verse 15 says that one ophan was on the Earth; Yonatan b. Uziel interprets aretz as the lowest level of heaven, which Rambam does not think is completely implausible, since it is like the earth to the rest of the heavens.

Rambam then writes (p. 424, line 9) "Understand this interpretation as it is in reality." This is one of the many times that we’ll find Rambam pointing out to us that there is more here than he has said. The medieval commentators took this to mean "pay attention to how Yonatan b. Uziel has strayed from the truth." It occurs to me, though (especially because at the end of this chapter, Rambam says it’s ok to believe in Yonatan b. Uziel’s reading), that Rambam meant to note the sophistication of Yonatan b. Uziel’s view of the workings of the heavens. If we believe that Scripture would call the lowest level of Heaven Earth, since it is the Earth for the rest of Heaven (as Rambam assumed the earlier commentator had), it means that early Jewish commentators already understood the different levels of Heaven, and that the lowest level is a level that shares similarities with Earth. I suspect Rambam intended this, because it matches his claim in Hilkhot Yesodei haTorah that the lowest level of angel was called "ish, person" because it was that level that communicated with people.

Rambam, however, does not believe that the reference to galgal forces us to interpret the ophanim as the celestial spheres; rather, galgal means round, so that the word simply informs us of the shape of the galgalim. This interpretation, however, does not make as full use of the prophet’s words as Yonatan b. Uziel’s. In verse 13, the prophet said "They were called Hagalgal in my hearing." While possibly that means they were called round, as Rambam has it, the heh hayedi`ah (the letter "heh" functioning as a definite article) at the beginning of the word suggests a specific galgal, not just the notion of roundness, so that Yonatan b. Uziel’s explanation works somewhat better, it seems to me. In addition, if the earth that the ophanim rest on is really the lowest level of heaven, it suggests a much sharper break between the heavenly and the earthly, which also seems reasonable.

An aside before reading the end of the chapter. Were we to accept: 1) Rambam’s assumption that a vision of Ma`aseh Merkavah is actually a vision of how God relates to the world and the intervening levels of substance that mediate between the Divine and the physical, and 2) that Yehezqel’s vision accurately depicted that, it would mean that the chapters contain information that could be meaningful for us as well. Assuming the hayyot were not the heavens, I could imagine them being objects existing at the quantum level, whereas the ophanim would already exist at a meaningful physical level. I do not know quantum physics well enough to make a real go of such an interpretation, but it strikes me that quantum physics has shown that at the microscopic level, physical particles do not behave like we observe them in the ordinary world. The shift from the quantum level to the ordinary physical level could be a place of the split between the world of the hayyot and the world of the ophanim. Of course, that’s just speculation—perhaps at some point we’ll study enough physics to see whether the analogy can really work.

Rambam then closes with an uncharacteristically pluralistic view of truth. He says that the reader should not be surprised that he has mentioned Yonatan b. Uziel’s interpretation only to disagree with it. Others have before disagreed with Yonatan b. Uziel on his interpretations, so Rambam feels free to do so as well. In addition, though, Rambam says he does not oblige us to accept his interpretation—he has laid out Yonatan b. Uziel’s view, and he has laid out his own, and we can choose (since only God knows which is the intended one).

The question is what did Rambam mean by this last paragraph? [A story. Two professors meet each other in the hallways every morning, and nod good morning, with no words passing between them. After 10 years of doing so, one says to the other "Good morning," and walks on. The recipient of the greeting stares after him, wondering "Now what did he mean by that?"] Why does he draw attention to his having raised Yonatan b. Uziel’s view and disagreed with it?

At the simplest level, we might think Rambam was leery of publicly disagreeing with such a traditional interpretation, but that had never stopped him before. I would guess that Rambam suspects readers will wonder why he bothered to bring up the interpretation only to disagree—Rambam does not generally survey other views before bringing his own, unless he has a reason.