Revelation 4:7

The beasts, or cherubim; the four and twenty elders, Revelation 4:7-11.

7. Lion… calf… man… eagle These four are the cherubim, the precedent of which will be found in the first chapter of Ezekiel. But the old prophet’s cherubim had each one the four faces and the four wings. This, and the fact that in Revelation 5:8, they “fell down before the Lamb,” suggests that these were human in form and animal only in face. They thus symbolize the living creation in its highest aspects and its relations to its Creator.

Cognate to this interpretation was the view of the early Church writers, that the cherubim represent the four Gospels. These Gospels are an earth-wide gospel; a gospel to be preached to every creature. They are to be spread to the “four corners of the earth.” That the four cherubim represent the four Gospels is an idea, as Wordsworth well remarks, coming from the school of John, being found in Irenaeus, the pupil of the pupil of John. It may be more than a coincidence that the Gospels are the creational number, four. But when writers have proceeded to assign either one of the four symbols to either one Gospel the want of individual resemblance has produced a variety of assignments. Irenaeus makes the lion, John; the steer, Luke; the man, Matthew: and the eagle, Mark. Augustine makes the lion, Matthew; the man, Mark; the ox, Luke; and the eagle, John. We suppose that most modern critics would concede the eagle to the soaring John; to Luke, the broad, Pauline, humanitarian friend of the Gentiles, if not himself a Gentile, most would concede the man; to the concise and vigorous Mark, the lion; and to plain, substantial, ultra-Jewish Matthew, both the sturdiness and the sacrificial character of the ox.