As the appearance of the rainbow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of Yahweh’s glory. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke.
⛓ Read Ezekiel 1 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion4
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The appearance of the glory of the LORD as radiant brightness causes Ezekiel to fall on his face and hear a voice speaking. Saul's 'light from the sky,' falling to the earth, and a speaking voice replays the Kavod-theophany sequence. High thematic coherence with the prophetic call pattern; verbal volume is moderate (light/glory, fell, voice).
High confidenceThe rainbow (iris) encircling the throne is a near-verbatim conceptual borrowing of this verse specifically. Distinctive: of all OT theophanies only Ezekiel 1:28 rings the divine glory with a rainbow, so the criterion of distinctiveness is met sharply. LXX renders the Hebrew qeshet with toxon; Rev's iris is the more usual Greek for the meteorological bow (cf. Gen 9 LXX toxon), so John is not slavishly following LXX vocabulary but the image. Also evokes the Noahic covenant bow (Gen 9:13-16) — mercy framing the judgment-throne; listed separately as a contested secondary echo.
High confidenceThe overwhelming light/glory before which Paul 'fell to the ground' (v7) reproduces Ezekiel's response to 'the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD' — 'I fell on my face.' Theophanic glory + prostration is the shared structure inaugurating prophetic commission.
Medium confidencePaul and his companions 'had all fallen to the earth' before a heavenly light and then heard a voice — exactly Ezekiel's response to the glory of the LORD: 'I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spoke.' The vision-then-voice sequence is the prophetic theophany template.
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Stephen 'saw the glory of God' in opened heaven echoes Ezekiel's vision of 'the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD,' the prophetic theophany pattern.
Low confidence