WHEEL
The exact historical origin of the wheel is not known. Anciently, wooden planks were pegged together, rounded and furnished with a felloe or rim to form the early wheel. The spoked type was used on chariots, wagons and other vehicles. (Ex. 14:25; Isa. 5:28; 28:27) The ten copper carriages that Solomon made for use at Jehovah’s temple each had a copper axle and four chariotlike copper wheels one and a half cubits high, with hubs, spokes and felloes.—1 Ki. 7:27-33.
The potter fashioned earthenware vessels on a revolving horizontal disk called a potter’s wheel. (Jer. 18:3, 4) Also, a bucket might be lowered and raised in a cistern by means of rope attached to some type of wheel or windlass.—Eccl. 12:6.
ILLUSTRATIVE AND FIGURATIVE USE
According to the Hebrew Masoretic text, Proverbs 20:26 reads: “A wise king is scattering wicked people, and he turns around upon them a wheel.” This seems to allude to an action of a king comparable to the use of the wheel in threshing grain. (Compare Isaiah 28:27, 28.) The metaphor appears to indicate that the wise king acts promptly in separating wicked persons from righteous ones and in punishing the wicked. Thereby evil is suppressed in his domain. (Compare Proverbs 20:8.) However, by a slight alteration, this verse says that a wise king turns around upon the wicked “their own hurtfulness.”
The uncontrolled tongue is a “fire” that “sets the wheel of natural life aflame.” The entire round of one’s life can be set aflame by the tongue, even as a very hot axle can set a wheel on fire.—Jas. 3:6.
By the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans during the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile, Ezekiel envisioned Jehovah riding upon a swift-moving chariotlike celestial vehicle. Its four wheels had rims filled with eyes, and within each wheel was another wheel apparently at right angles, making it possible to go forward or to either side without changing the angle of the wheels. Beside each wheel was a cherub, the cherubic living creatures and wheels moving in unison as spirit-directed. (Ezek. 1:1-3, 15-21; 3:13) The following year, Ezekiel had a similar vision, this time before the temple Solomon built in Jerusalem and indicating that soon that city and the temple would be destroyed in execution of Jehovah’s judicial decision. (Ezek. 8:1-3; 10:1-19; 11:22) Some sixty years thereafter, Daniel envisioned the Ancient of Days, Jehovah, seated upon a heavenly wheeled throne. Both throne and wheels were aflame, suggesting the approach of fiery divine judgment upon world powers.—Dan. 7:1, 9, 10; Ps. 97:1-3.