Wednesday, 5 December 2012

The Cherubim angels



Cherubim first appear in the Bible in the Garden of Eden, to guard the way to the Tree of life



In Isaiah 37:16, Hezekiah prays, addressing Yahweh as "enthroned above the Cherubim" (referring to the mercy seat).




Cherubim feature at some length in the Book of Ezekiel. When they first appear in chapter one, when Ezekiel was "by the river Chebar", they are not called cherubim until chapter 10, but he saw "the likeness of four living creatures". (Ezekiel 1:5) Each of them had four faces and four wings, with straight feet with a sole like the sole of a calf's foot, and "hands of a man" under their wings. Each had four faces: The face of a man, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle. (Ezekiel 1:6-10)




In Ezekiel chapter ten, another full description of the Cherubim appears with slight differences in details. Three of the four faces are the same; man, lion and eagle; but where chapter one had the face of an ox, Ezekiel 10:14 says "face of a cherub". Ezekiel equates the Cherubim of chapter ten with the living creature of chapter one by saying: "This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar", in Ezekiel 10:15, and in Ezekiel 10:20 he said: "This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubim."




In a psalm of David that appears in 2 Samuel 22:11 and Psalms 18:10, David said that the LORD "rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind."




The words Cherub and Cherubim appear many other times in the holy scriptures, referring to the Cherubim of beaten gold on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, and images on the curtains of the tabernacle, and in Solomon's temple, including two Cherubim made of olive wood overlaid with gold that were ten cubits high.[11]

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