Angels in the Bible

The Cherubim

The guardians of God's holiness, from Eden to the mercy seat

The cherubim are the guardian creatures of Scripture, first stationed at the gate of Eden to keep the way to the tree of life, then wrought in gold above the mercy seat of the ark, and finally seen by Ezekiel bearing the throne of God. They are strange and glorious beings, not the soft infants of later art, and their work is to guard the holiness of God and to carry his presence. In them we learn how holy God is, and how wonderful it is that the mercy seat, guarded by cherubim, is where he chose to meet sinners.

And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.Exodus 25:20 (KJV)

The cherubim at the gate of Eden

The cherubim enter the Bible at a moment of loss. When Adam and Eve are driven from the garden, So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. Their first task is to guard, to bar the road back to the tree of life so that fallen humanity cannot seize immortality in its sin. They stand between the holy and the unclean.

This is worth pausing over, because it sets the tone for everything the cherubim do. They are associated with the holiness of God and the barrier that sin has raised between God and us. The flaming sword is not cruelty; it is mercy in a severe form, for it would be a terrible thing to live forever east of Eden, unforgiven. From the very beginning the cherubim raise the question the whole Bible will answer: how can a sinner ever come back to the tree of life?

It is important not to sentimentalize this scene. The cherubim at Eden are not decorative; they are a barrier, and the barrier is a mercy that also grieves. Something has gone wrong between humanity and its Maker, and the guarded gate is the visible sign of it. Every later appearance of the cherubim carries this memory. Wherever they are, the holiness of God is near, and the question of how the unholy may draw close is never far behind. The Bible refuses to let us forget the gravity of sin, and the cherubim are its silent, flaming witnesses.

The cherubim over the mercy seat

The answer begins to appear in a golden image. When God gives Moses the pattern for the ark of the covenant, he commands that two cherubim of gold be made, one at each end of the mercy seat, the lid of the ark: And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be. Their gaze is fixed on the place of atonement.

This is the heart of the matter. The same creatures who guarded the way back to God now bend over the very spot where God promised to meet his people, where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year. The cherubim who barred the gate of Eden now frame the throne of grace. The holiness that once shut sinners out is now the setting for the mercy that lets them in. God said, There I will meet with thee, from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims. The whole gospel is hidden in that golden picture.

The living creatures of Ezekiel's vision

The prophet Ezekiel, exiled by the river of Chebar, saw the cherubim in a vision so overwhelming that he could only describe it in the language of likeness and appearance. He saw four living creatures, each with four faces, the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle, moving with wheels full of eyes, bearing above them the likeness of a throne. Later he tells us plainly what he had seen: 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 cherubims.

Two things stand out. First, the cherubim are nothing like the chubby infants of sentimental art; they are awesome, many faced, tireless bearers of the divine throne. Second, and more important, Ezekiel never lets us stare at the creatures for their own sake. His eyes, and ours, are drawn upward past them to the likeness of the glory of the Lord that rides above. When he sees it, he falls upon his face. The cherubim exist to carry a glory that is not their own.

Ezekiel's vision came to exiles who feared that the glory of God had abandoned them in a foreign land. The sight of the cherubim bearing the throne, mobile and unstoppable, carried a hidden comfort: the presence of God is not chained to a temple or a country, and it had come to be with his people even by the river of Chebar. The strange creatures Ezekiel struggled to describe were, in the end, servants of that reassuring truth. They go wherever the Spirit goes, and the Spirit goes to seek and keep the people of God.

What we are told, and what we are not

Scripture describes the cherubim more fully than most angels, yet even here it is careful. Isaiah's seraphim, the winged creatures of the temple vision, are distinct from these, and the Bible does not merge them into a single tidy hierarchy or hand us an organizational chart of heaven. The various descriptions, in Genesis, Exodus, Ezekiel, and Revelation, overlap and differ, and the honest reader will not force them into a rigid system the text does not supply. What is clear is their role: they guard, they carry, they worship, and they surround the holiness of God.

We are not told to picture them for their own sake, still less to venerate them. The golden cherubim were made at God's command and set in the most hidden place of the tabernacle, unseen by the people, the opposite of an idol on display. Everything about them directs attention to the presence they guard and to the mercy seat they overshadow.

This hiddenness is its own quiet sermon. The most sacred objects in Israel's worship were kept out of sight, in the inner room where only the high priest entered, and only once a year, with blood. The cherubim were never meant to be gazed upon and admired; they were meant to frame the meeting place between God and his people. Whenever the cherubim appear, they are turned toward that meeting, and they turn us toward it too, away from themselves and toward the mercy of God.

How the cherubim magnify Christ

The story that begins with cherubim guarding the way to the tree of life ends with that way thrown open. The mercy seat they overshadowed was the place of atonement, and the New Testament tells us that Jesus is himself the propitiation, the true mercy seat, where the holy God and guilty sinners meet in peace through his blood. What the golden cherubim pictured, Christ accomplished. The flaming sword that turned every way fell at last upon him, so that the way to the tree of life stands open again, and Revelation ends with the redeemed given the right to the tree of life in the paradise of God.

So the cherubim, terrible guardians of holiness, are finally servants of grace. They teach us to take the holiness of God with utmost seriousness, and then they point us to the one place where that holiness and our sin are reconciled. They keep the way to the tree of life until the Lamb opens it, and their wings still bend, as it were, over the throne of grace where he invites us to come boldly and find mercy.

A sober word: Scripture is deliberately restrained about angels. It tells us enough to trust God and never enough to make angels the center of our attention. The Bible distinguishes what is clearly revealed from what later tradition has supposed, and it warns plainly against the worshipping of angels (Colossians 2:18) and against superstition. The angels themselves refuse worship and say, Worship God (Revelation 22:9). Everything true about them points beyond them to the Lord.

Related: The seraphim · The angel of the LORD · Who is Jesus? · Angels in the Bible