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146 CHERUBIM
CHERUBIM
which issued the Bathkol or voice of God . Of
the form of these cherubim, we are ignorant .
Josephus says, that they resembled no known
creature, but that Moses made them in the
form in which he saw them about the throne
of God ; others, deriving their ideas from what
is said of them by Ezekiel, Isaiah, and St .
John, describe them as having the face and
breast of a man, the wings of an eagle, the
belly of a lion, and the legs and feet of an ox,
which three animals, with man, are the symbols
of strength and wisdom . But all agree in
this, that they had wings, and that these
wings were extended . The cherubim were
purely symbolic . But although there is great
diversity of opinion as to their exact signification,
yet there is a very general agreement
that they allude to and symbolize the protecting
and overshadowing power of the Deity .
Reference is made to the extended wings of the
cherubim in the degree of Royal Master .
* Much light has been thrown upon the
plastic form of these symbols during the past
few years, not only as to the Cherubim of the
Ark of the Covenant spoken of in Exodus,
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, but those of
Chaldeo-Assyrian art which beautified the
gates of the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh,
and other structures .
The Kirubi of the Assyrian type, in the
shape of bulls with extended wings, in nowise
meet the description given above . The figures
which can be found in various places upon
Egyptian monuments, placed face to face on
either side of the Naos of the gods, and stretching
out their arms, furnished with great wings,
as though to envelop them (Wilkinson, Manners
and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, 1878,
vol . iii.), more fully meet the idea-in fact, it is
convincing, when we remember the period,
and note that all else about the sacred furnishings
of the Tabernacle, or Ohel-mo'ed, are
exclusively Egyptian in form, as well as the
sacerdotal costumes . (See L'Egypte et Moise,
by Abbe Ancessi, Paris, 1875 .) Furthermore,
this was most natural, since the period was
immediately after the exodus . The Kerubim
of the Ark were remodeled by Solomon after
designs furnished by his father, David . (1
Chron . xxviii . 18 .)
THE ISMIAN CAR.
At this epoch, says Fran ois Lenormant,
Professor of Archeology at the National Library
of France, in his Beginnings of History,
1882, the Egyptian influence was no longer
supreme in its sway over the Hebrews ; that
the Assyro-Babylonian influence balanced it ;
that the new Kerubim, then executed, may
(* From this point the article is from the pen of
C . T . McClenachan .)
have been different from the ancient ones as
described in Exodus ; in fact, Kirubi after the
Assyrian type, which formed a Merhbbh (a
chariot, 1 Chron . xxviii . 18), upon which Yahveh
was seated . In the Egyptian monuments
the gods are often represented between the
forward-stretching wings of sparrow-hawks or
THE ARK OF PHILE .
vultures, placed face to face, and birds of this
kind often enfold with their wings the divine
Naos .
The adornment of the Tabernacle, as mentioned
in Exodus, excluded every figure susceptible
of an idolatrous character, which is
far from being the case in what we know of the
Temple of Solomon . In the matter of plastic
images, none was admitted save only the Kerubim
which were not only placed upon the
Ark, but whose representations are woven into
the hangings of the Mishk&n and the veil
which separates the Holy Place from the Holy
of Holies . It is therefore most probable that
the Kerubim of Exodus were great eagles or
birds-Kurubi-while under the remodeling
by Solomon these were changed to Kirubi
with human faces .
The prophet Ezekiel describes four haqy8th
or Kerubim, two and two, back to back,
and going "each one straight forward " toward
the four quarters. The Kerubim of the
Merkhbgh of Ezekiel have four wings-two
lifted up and two covering their back-and
four human faces set in pairs, to the right and
to the left, one of a man, one of a bull, one of a
lion, and one of an eagle-the faces of creatures
which combine all the emblems of
strength depicted by the Chaldeo-Assyrian
bull . Ezekiel (Yehezqel) thus describes the
Kerubim with several faces which, alternately
with the palm-trees, decorated the frieze
around the interior of the temple at Jerusalem
: "Each Kerub had two faces, a man's
face turned one way toward the palm-tree,
and a lion's face turned the other way toward
the other palm-tree ; and it was in this
wise all around the house ."
The following information, furnished by
Prof . Lenormant, on the subject of Cherubim,
is important : "Deductions were formerly
made from the Aryan theory to sup port primitive
tradition as to origin and form, but
these have been overthrown, and the Semitic
interpretation made manifest through finding
the name of the Kerubim in the cuneiform
inscriptions ; that in place of referring the
Hebrew word kerub to the Aryan root grabh,