Ezekiel 28:14

14. The anointed cherub The prince stood in Eden as divinely appointed guard and protector of the treasures of the garden, and as the highest possible form of life (Ezekiel 1:10, and note Ezekiel 10:1-16; Genesis 3:24; Exodus 25:20). Some scholars read, “the far covering cherub.” The Polychrome Bible, followed by Bertholet, reads (as LXX.), “with the cherub.”

The holy mountain The Tyrian Olympus, the throne of deity filled with treasures which all nations have thought of as close to the primeval home of the race. (See Isaiah 14:13-14; compare Warren’s Paradise Found.) The Tyrian ruler seems to stand on the navel of the world and to occupy the highest seat of the gods. There was no mountain in the Hebrew paradise, but Ezekiel, “in addressing himself to the heathen, speaks in a way which they can understand” (Orelli). Mount Zion and the sacred mountains in every religion were only symbolical of the universal “Mount of El,” so the altar of Ezekiel’s ideal temple was called by the Babylonian name, Aralu, “mountain of countries” (Ezekiel 43:15-16), as a symbol in miniature of the terrestrial Arula, “Mount Zion” ( Jeremias, p. 122).

Stones of fire “Precious stones” Brown’s Hebrew and English Lexicon. These were supposed by the Babylonians and others to be in abundance on the Mount of the Gods. It must be remembered also that every jewel among the Egyptians, and presumably among the Babylonians, had a symbolic meaning. For example, the Egyptians called the sapphire and lapis lazuli Dorneken, “Preserving from danger,” and one burial inscription reads, “I kept myself far from quartz and always chose the emerald” (Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bibelwort, pp. 324, 329). Even these magical protecting jewels could not save the Tyrian prince.