Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Ezekiel 4:1

However, the opinion of Ibn Ezra is that ספיר is blue. He does not agree that the word לבנת is a derivative of the word לובן, but that we must understand it as similar to Ezekiel 4,1 ואתה קח לך לבנה, “and now take for yourself a brick.” According to Ibn Ezra the elders and Aaron saw instead of an ordinary brick, a brick-like image made of the finest blue sapphire. Whereas in Ezekiel 1,26 Ezekiel had seen אבן ספיר כמראה, something like a sapphire stone, the elders saw an image of something like that. Proof of the fact that this is the correct interpretation is the fact that Ezekiel compared what he saw to אבן ספיר “a sapphire-coloured stone,” clearly not the white of an egg. Proof for Ibn Ezra is the fact that our verse describes the structure of the object as כמעשה, “like the work of,” a description which would not fit something fluid like לובן. According to Ibn Ezra then the meaning of the whole verse is that these people saw the throne of G’d’s glory as a structure made of sapphire-like brick of the utmost clarity and purity and beneath this sapphire-based structure they saw the pure and clear sky. This was the same as the sky seen by Ezekiel in his famous vision which was above the heads of chayot described there as “awesome ice” (Ezekiel 1,22). The sky mentioned here was also beneath the throne, and the throne beneath the G’d of Israel, just as in the vision of Ezekiel, except that the Torah did not bother to write all these details in our verse.