Amber Is in the King James Bible — Three Times, in Ezekiel

Amber appears in the Bible as a word, not as a name. The King James Version uses it three times in Ezekiel (1:4, 1:27 and 8:2) to describe the brightness at the center of the prophet’s visions. No person in Scripture is named Amber, and the name comes from the English word for fossil resin.

What does the name Amber mean?

Amber is the English word for the gemstone formed from fossil resin, and for its orange-yellow color. The word first meant ambergris, from the Arabic ʿanbar. Around 1400 it was extended to the fossil resin of the Baltic, perhaps because both substances were found washed up on shores, and the resin became its main sense. Amber began to be used as a given name in the late nineteenth century and became popular after Kathleen Winsor’s novel Forever Amber (1944). The same word gives the names Ambre in French, Ambra in Italian and Ámbar in Spanish.

Where does amber appear in the Bible?

In the first chapter of Ezekiel, the prophet sees a storm coming out of the north, “a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire” (Ezekiel 1:4, King James Version). The word returns in 1:27, describing the figure seated on the throne, and in 8:2, at the start of a later vision.

The Hebrew word behind it is chashmal, and it occurs only in these three verses, so its meaning cannot be checked against other uses. The Greek Septuagint translated it elektron, which could mean either amber or a pale alloy of gold and silver, and the King James translators followed with “amber.” Many other Bibles choose the metal instead: the NIV has “glowing metal,” the Reina-Valera 1960 “bronce refulgente,” the Louis Segond “airain poli” and the Nuova Riveduta “bagliore di metallo.” The Portuguese Almeida, like the King James, keeps “cor de âmbar.” In modern Hebrew, chashmal is the word for electricity.

What Ezekiel saw

Ezekiel was a priest living among the exiles in Babylon, by the Kebar River, when “the heavens were opened” and he “saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1). The fire, the wheels, the living creatures and the amber-colored brightness all belong to one vision, and at its end he says what it was, the glory of the Lord: “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking” (Ezekiel 1:28). The glory of God appeared to him in exile, far from the temple in Jerusalem.

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Dreaming About Skeletons: Ezekiel’s Valley and What Bones Mean