The Cherubim

Who are the cherubim? Celestial winged beings, mentioned 90 times in the Hebrew Bible
and once in the New Testament, their antecedent seems to be the exotic, composite beast
known as lamassu in Assyria: partly ox, lion, eagle and human. These creatures served as
mythic gatekeepers for gods and kings.

<che07>
Lamassu, Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, 883 - 859 BCE

Mythic Gate keepers

In the Bible, their description is fragmentary. Sometimes they are statues, carved
reliefs, sometimes woven images and sometimes they are "living beings". The cherubim
first appear in Genesis 3, as the inhospitable, fiery guardians of the gates of Eden, in art often
pictured as sword wielding agents of God unceremoniously ejecting Adam and Eve out into
the world/history.

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 <a+e51>
Masaccio, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 1426-27

The Divine Throne

They turn up next in <Exodus 25:17-22>, a pair of solid gold winged statues,
opposite each other on the cover (kaporet) of the Ark. Here, God speaks to Israel from
above and between the facing cherubim; the tablets of the law are inside the box below.
Another way of describing this complex symbolism is that the cover and the cherubim are
the throne of God and the rectangular box (the Ark) is God's footstool (hadom, Psalms
132:7; I Chronicles 28:2). From several Ancient Near Eastern texts we learn that law codes
were deposited inside the king's footstool; similarly, the tablets of the Covenant are
deposited in the ark. Since, in Israel, the Law superseded the Divine image as the focus of
worship, the small footstool became the large rectangular container for the Tablets.

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 <reconstruction> <che77>
Reconstruction of the Ark The Cherub Throne of the Prince of Megiddo,
13- 12th century BCE

The word cherub appears in Exodus an additional 19 times, but without additional
description.

The Divine Chariot

The next narrative mention of the cherubim occurs in I Samuel 4, where the ark,
brought to a battlefield, is described as:

‫יׁשב הַ ּכְ רֻ בִ ים‬

ֵ ‫אֲ רוֹן ּבְ ִרית ה' צְ בָ אוֹת‬
The ark of the covenant of the Lord of Hosts
who sits between/above/upon the cherubs.

The static cherubim take flight in II Samuel 22, parallel to Psalms 18, dramatically
transporting God on "the wings of the wind".

He rode upon a cherub and flew

And He glided upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Here the word cherub is parallel to and synonymous with cloud formations, thus imaging the
celestial God riding the clouds, his vehicle personified as cherubim.

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 <che14>
Ibram Lassaw, Torah Ark, Temple Anshe Hesed, Cleveland, 1956
Perhaps the verbal imagery of Psalms influenced the twentieth century visual imagery of
Ibram Lassaw's Torah curtain, the wings of the cherubim have become abstracted into the
fringes of a tallit/divine fingers flanking the eternal light/the Shekhina.

Holy and Secular Decorations

Next, the ark is placed in Solomon's Temple (>I Kings 6<), with the small golden
figures on the Ark now supplemented by two enormous wooden statues of cherubim.

Because cherubim are entirely mythic, and only partially described, the artistic
imagination is unfettered. Thus, for example, artists of the 13th century North French
Miscellany, merged Tabernacle, Temple and prophetic imagery, endowing their cherubim
with an extra pair of wings, based on Isaiah's famous vision of six-winged seraphim that
hovered in the Holy of Holies:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted,

with the train of His robe filling the temple. 
Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings…
And one called out to another and said,
“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts,
the whole earth is full of His glory.” (Isaiah 6:1-3)

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 <che78>
Furnishings of the Holy of Holies, North French Miscellany, ca. 1280.

Solomon also decorated the walls of the Temple with cherubim in carved relief:

29 Then he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved engravings
of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, inner and outer sanctuaries.

<che22>

Cherubs and Palms, Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud

The above drawing of an ivory plaque from Assyria shows just such an alternating pattern of
the mythical creatures and the date palms, which probably represented the Tree of Life. As
freestanding statues and relief carvings, the cherubim not only support the divine throne and
power the divine chariot, but they are now ornaments throughout the Temple, and in the
Holy of Holies, they are security guards, similar to the Assyrian lamassu <link back to
beginning>, restricting access to the divine.

The cherubim, then, were been both hidden and viewed; in Solomon's temple, all
three forms were unseen by any but priests. Subsequently cherubim virtually disappear from

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the Hebrew Bible being mentioned only once more (II Kings 19:15 = Isaiah 37:16), up until
the time of Ezekiel.

However, from archaeology we know today that the cherubim were also found in the
public domain; they were used as a decorative motif, especially in the ivory carvings found
in the homes of the northern kingdom of Israel's wealthy class.

<samaria ivory>
Striding Sphinx, Samaria, 9th-8th cent. BCE

In addition, Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, employing forbidden images in the
ritual of his new kingdom, established the cult of the golden calves at his holy sites in Bethel
and Dan. These statues were analogous to the cherubim, in that both were conceived as
transporting the invisible God. Evidence both in the Bible and from archaeology indicates
that the calves were on public display, for example at the outdoor cultic site at Dan, where
Jeroboam proclaims "These are you gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of
Egypt" (II Kings 12: 28. Thus in Judah, the cherubim were sequestered in the Temple, lest
the image be worshiped, while in northern Israel, the calves were open to viewing and
available for adoration, evidence of controversy in ancient Israel regarding the presence of
icons in worship.

Ezekiel and Beyond

The most detailed and elaborate description of the cherubim comes in the Book of
Ezekiel, stemming from the period of the Babylonian Exile. In chapter 1, the prophet
Ezekiel describes his vision of the Divine chariot (merkaba), a description that became one
of the major bases of Jewish mysticism. While chapter 1 refers to the creatures that transport
the chariot simply as "creatures", the parallel description of the chariot in chapter 10 uses the

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term cherubim consistently. In chapter 1, the creatures have a partially human torso, two sets
of wings, human hands and "straight legs" ending in calves' hooves.

As for the form of their faces, each had the face of a man;
all four had the face of a lion on the right and the face of a bull on the left,
and all four had the face of an eagle. (Ezekiel 1:11)

Where have we seen this hybrid before? Where had Ezekiel seen it? On the one hand, as a
priest he had certainly been raised on tales of the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant; on
the other hand, living in the Babylonian exile, he probably saw images daily such as below:

>che38 new> <che38 <

Genii and Sacred Tree, Palace of Ashurnasirpal, Nimrud 12 th century cylinder seal

As opposed to the lamassu mentioned above, Ezekiel's cherubim, like these griffins
or genii, have two-legged human torsos; on the other hand, Ezekiel's cherubim like the
lamassu, have features of the same four animals: bird, ox, human and lion.

Why these four? Joseph Campbell, a renowned historian of religions, writes as follows:

The winged lion-bull with human head combines in one body those four signs of the
zodiac that in the earliest period of Mesopotamian astronomy marked the solstices
and equinoxes: the Bull (spring equinox and eastern quarter), Lion (summer solstice
and southern quarter), Eagle (later Scorpio: autumn equinox and western quarter),
and Water carrier (winter solstice and northern quarter). These are the four "living
creatures" of Ezekiel's vision and of the apocalypse. The Mythic Image, p. 285

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The Tetramorph

This beast, representing human space and time, guarded the gates, access to the god-king, the
Eternal One. In medieval Christian art, this composite beast comes apart into its four
components, representing the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

<che18>
Cathedral of Chartres, Pantocrator and Evangelists, 13 th cent.

Each is identified with one of the four. Together they are called the Tetramorph. As in
Mesopotamian astronomy, they represent human space and time. In Chartres, they flank the
ellipse in which Jesus is enthroned.
Where is this pervasive Tetramorph in Jewish art?

<che53 new>
Bet Alpha Synagogue. The Ark of the Covenant

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 In early Jewish art, fear of the Golden Calf and reservations regarding the human
image prevent the full representation of the Tetramorph. Thus, in Bet Alpha, crude lions and
"eagles" flank the Holy Ark. The idea is present but the imagery is suppressed. What is
eternal is the Torah, not an image of God; Human space and time are naively present with
cultic objects of the Temple. In later Jewish art, the Tetramorph finally makes a modest
appearance, as in this illustration from the 14th century Wroclaw Mahzor.

<Wroclaw Ezekiel>
Wroclaw Mahzor, Vision of Ezekiel, ca. 1320

Five medallions are affixed to a Romanesque gate, four of which enclose the "living
creatures" (hayot), represented by an eagle, a man, an eagle and an ox. The fifth medallion,
placed uppermost in the arch, shows the empty throne of the Eternal One.

We have followed the life of the cherubim for over 3000 years and seen their protean
transformation, which was enabled by their multiple identity and their profound symbolism,
the human yearning to see the divine and the concomitant fear of that mysterious encounter.

One strange result of this pull in two contradictory directions is the common use of
the word cherub, as round faced baby angels, as far as can be imagined from the fearsome
hybrid creatures of ancient times.

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 <Raphael cherubs>
Raphael, The Sistine Madonna (detail), 1513-14

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