Ezekiel 9:3

3. From the cherub LXX., cherubim. For a full explanation of these symbolic forms and the differences between Ezekiel’s cherubim and those of Genesis see notes on chap. 10. These strange creatures came out of the same forests with the lions and cats and bulls and dragons of English heraldry. They are closely related to the allegorical forms, so reverenced in Egypt, by which it was sought to explain the mystery of life and the character and attributes of the deities. An Egyptian text of the Mosaic period reads: “The god of this world is in the light over the heaven. His symbols are upon the earth and to them reverence is paid every day” ( Ani Papyrus). Professor James Strong ( Biblical World, April, 1893) says the cherubim of the tabernacle were “imaginative embodiments of the four leading attributes of Deity in the physical world according to the unscientific, but really profound and correct, notions of the Hebrews; namely, intelligence, power, constancy, and rapidity. Accordingly they are… bearers of Jehovah’s throne; and they correspond essentially to what we term cardinal ‘laws of nature,’ that is, forces acting for a definite purpose, uniformly and instantaneously. In this light the location of the two upon the lid of the sacred ark is pre-eminently fitting as the custodians of the divine law, nature thus corroborating revelation.”

To the threshold of the house The threshold, like the court and the gate of the court (see note Ezekiel 8:6), from a priestly standpoint probably means the priests’ court. If so, this perfectly explains the expression in Ezekiel 10:5, and it seems far more natural that these priestly sacrificers, pausing at the altar, should receive their orders from the threshold of the priests’ court or the sanctuary rather than that these orders should have been shouted to them from the threshold of the outer court. (See Temple Plan, p. 209). It is also suggestive that from earliest ages the threshold of a sanctuary was a sacred place (Trumbull, Threshold Covenant).