Moses and Ezekiel: Angels Told as Visitors from Beyond Earth

In Exodus chapter 34, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai after forty days and forty nights without bread or water. He carries two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The Bible says the skin of his face is radiant, so Aaron and the Israelites shrink from coming near him. He speaks with the people and then covers his face with a veil; the veil comes off only when he goes in before God to converse.

In roughly the sixth century BCE, on the fifth day of the month in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's exile, a priest named Ezekiel records an even stranger sight beside the Chebar Canal in the Babylonian region. A great cloud comes from the north with flashing fire and a bright substance like heated metal. Beneath it are four living creatures with human, lion, ox, and eagle faces. Beside each creature is a wheel within a wheel. The wheels move straight in every direction without turning their bodies.