Ezekiel 10:20-22

20-22. I knew that they were the cherubim If we try to dissect this vision we are in great danger of taking all the life out of it. It must not be forgotten that the cloud and the lightning, the wheels and cherubim, were only “the pictorial clothing of the supreme truth that in his vision, Ezekiel’s soul met the Infinite and Eternal face to face and heard the secret of Jehovah’s counsel from his own mouth” (W. Robertson Smith); yet, we may be able to catch, if only in dim outline, the meaning of each part of this complex picture. Not until Ezekiel had several times seen this vision did he realize that the “living creatures” who were the glory-bearers of Jehovah were the cherubim. They were so unlike the cherubim of the temple with which he was acquainted that he never realized their essential identity until he saw the vision in the temple itself, and perceived that these living creatures took the place above the mercy scat which the carved cherubim formerly occupied, just as the flying wheels and the throne took the place always sacred to the unseen glory (the Shekinah). It is surprising that expositors, notwithstanding the marked difference between Ezekiel’s cherubim and those of the tabernacle and temple, have yet attempted to make them as nearly identical in form as possible. Even M. Pinches supposes there must have been “a peculiar cherubic form” which Ezekiel recognized in the living creatures, “though kept secret from all others,” and even yet an “unfathomable mystery!” (Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1893.) But whatever Ezekiel’s words imply here, they could not declare exact similarity of form (Exodus 25:20; 1 Kings 8:7). Indeed the chief object in repeating the vision must have been to bring out the new truth revealed by this new view of these strange symbolic creatures as cherubim. Muller’s idea ( Ezekiel Studien, 1895) that Ezekiel substituted the cherubim in this vision for “living creatures” and made certain other changes because of the criticism of those to whom he had told the first vision, is as deficient in a just appreciation of the prophet’s character as in spiritual discernment. Ezekiel 10:22 is in itself sufficient refutation of this hypothesis. Every Hebrew would have been surprised at the identification by a priest, such as Ezekiel, of these animal forms with the temple cherubim, and would begin to search at once for the points of comparison and contrast, and for spiritual lessons hidden therein.

On the other hand, it is equally clear that these “living creatures” of Ezekiel were not copies of the so-called “winged bulls” of Assyria. Those stone guardians of the temple, with their single human face and long beard and miter ornamented with horns, were strikingly different from these fiery four-faced “living ones” covered with eyes. It has recently been doubted whether the name Kerubi is ever used of these “guardians of the palace” (Davis, Genesis and Semitic Tradition). But if, indeed, those complex animal forms bore the same name as these living creatures of Ezekiel this would only more quickly lead everyone who listened on the banks of the old Babylonian canal to the recital of this strange vision, to compare and contrast these very different forms in order to learn the lessons, which might thus be taught, of providence and deity. What those spiritual lessons were we may be able now only to grasp very partially. One may well regret that the author of the Hebrews, when he spoke of the “cherubim of glory,” was forced to add, “of which we cannot now speak particularly” (Hebrews 9:3-5). How much controversy and confusion of tongues it would have saved if he had given just then one of the parentheses of which he was so fond! The similarity between the Babylonian and all forms of the Hebrew cherubim is evident. All of these “mighty ones” were symbolical forms manifesting the Invisible. They were divine watchers and “guardians,” mediators between God and man, representatives of the divine will, protectors of the divine law, and upholders of the divine throne.

But the differences grow on one. The Babylonian genii which protected the temples and palaces had an independent power for good or evil and needed to be propitiated by gifts and prayers. A recently deciphered text gives the piercing cry which daily ascended from those Babylonian homes:

Propitious be the favorable Shidu that is before thee.

May the Lamassu that goeth behind thee be propitious.

King, Illustrated Archaeology, 1894.

The horror of this worship is well expressed by the psalmist:

They sacrificed their sons

And their daughters unto Shidim, And shed innocent blood.

Psalms 106:37 ; see also Deuteronomy 32:17 .

How different from the Hebrew cherubim! They were wholly dominated by the One. There was no caprice or personal feeling possible. In Eden, in the tabernacle, in the temple, on the Chebar, everywhere and always, Jehovah dwells “between the cherubim,” and his will and his spirit moves them. But while the Bible cherubim agree in this and thus differ vitally from the Babylonian there is a vast growth to be traced in the Hebrew conception represented by these symbolic forms. The cherubim in Eden are guardians of the tree of life, and their revolving sword or “disk of fire” (Lenormant) is especially emphasized. They are pre-eminently representatives of the divine justice and power. The cherubim of the tabernacle and the temple have no sword. They watch over the mercy seat and the written law, and point the way with beckoning wings to the new Eden the gates of which are now open and to the Tree of Life of which, through God’s mercy, even the sinful man can now eat. All the cherubic heraldry wrought into the tapestry of the tabernacle and adorning the walls of the temple was a heraldry of grace.

But Ezekiel’s vision shows a great advance upon any previous revelation. Before this the cherubim were only seen in the temple. They were guardians of the covenant of grace which God had made with the Israelites.

Only Israelites could enter the temple. It was only the sins of the Jewish nation which the high priest confessed, and for which he received pardon as he knelt close to the mercy seat, shadowed by the glorious wings of the cherubim. Where the cherubim are God’s holy place must be; but Ezekiel sees the cherubim outside the temple and outside the limits by which heretofore he and his nation had always bounded the “holy city” and the “holy land.” God’s holy place and the holy guardians of his law and covenant are not confined any more within the walls of Jerusalem. The throne which the Jews always thought of as above the cherubim in the temple is now seen on the Chebar. Jehovah now “fills the whole earth with his glory,” and all nature “with the floating edges of his robe” (Jeremiah 7:4), and the symbolic cherubim are no longer of the exclusive Jewish type! They have taken on a manifold form. They are neither Jewish nor Egyptian nor Babylonian. They combine all elements. The single-faced cherub of the Jerusalem temple has become the four-sided, four-winged, four-faced cherub of God’s universal sanctuary. It looks toward every point of the compass, toward every nation of men.* The images of gold in the local holy of holies has given way to living beings full of spiritual fires. The cloud of incense hiding the unseen Presence has given place to “the likeness of a man upon the throne.” The Palestinian and Jewish conception of God and his providence has gone down before the new and lofty thought that the one God belongs to the whole earth and the whole earth to him, and that all forms of life even the gods and genii of the heathen and the guardians of death are but manifestations or servants of the One supreme. (See notes chap. 1.) Never have the omnipotence, the omnipresence, and the omniscience of the Deity been more vividly and forcibly pictured. Whirlwind, cloud, and lightning, and all the most subtle and untamable forces of nature are his ministers. The powers of heaven and earth and the underworld bow submissively before his throne. Life and death, men and demons, are his servants. It was a lesson Ezekiel’s captive and stricken comrades needed to learn. They, no doubt, almost universally thought of Jehovah as the God of Jerusalem and of Canaan, and when they were carried away from these holy places away from the temple, the altar, and the cherubim and all the customary worship and ritual were left far behind them in the distance, many of them began to feel themselves justified in honoring the gods of the land wherein they dwelt. Especially were they tempted to do this when it appeared that even the sanctity of the distant temple was not to be maintained, but even the holy of holies had been profaned by the feet of the invading heathen. Then it was that this seer of God, in this splendid picture, painted before their eyes the mighty all-conquering truth, that “the Lord is here,” and every spot where he reveals himself is holy ground; and that he is “Lord” in Babylon as truly as in Jerusalem. This is the central thought of the vision and of the entire prophecy. Israel may sin, the temple may be destroyed, Jerusalem may fall, “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take council… against Jehovah,” but his sovereignty remains untouched. He is still “God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, a mighty and a terrible,” who “doth execute the judgment… and loveth the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:17); as powerful and as gracious on the plains of Chaldea as in the mountains about the holy city.

[*This explains the repetition again and again of this fourfold symbolism. The use of the numeral four in ancient times in this symbolic sense cannot be doubted. (See our Introduction to Ezekiel, “Symbolism.”)] This seems to have been the lesson which God taught Ezekiel and he in turn taught to his countrymen from this “vision of God.” Thus the nature and office of the cherubim are clearly seen. They are the guardians of the divine majesty, mediatorial revelations of the glory of the One, concentrating in themselves all the forces of immaterial nature and all the quintessence of universal life. Animate and inanimate nature, man, and all the powers and principalities of heaven and Hades are but revelations of the divine Presence, fitly enthroning the supreme revelation of the invisible God in the “man upon the throne.”

The influence of this vision upon later writers is almost unparalleled. The early fathers, particularly, were sure that the four cherubim were symbolical of the nature and work of Christ: the man representing his Incarnation; the lion, the emblem of Judah, his eternal Kingship; the ox, his atoning sacrifice; the eagle, his heavenly spirit and essential divinity. So also many of the earliest fathers believed that these “living creatures” prefigured the four evangelists: St. Matthew having written the gospel of his humanity; St. Mark, the eagle gospel; St. Luke, the priestly or sacrificial narrative; and St. John, the royal gospel, showing his glorious generation from the Father though later writers almost universally assign the eagle to St. John, and the lion to St. Mark.