as the raging storm-birds.58 Every mythology has framed such conceptions. On the other hand, the wind in its irresistible onward progress was assimilated to the steadfast ox, the vigorous bull, or the impetuous lion.59 In the old Indian myth the bulls which bear their father Vâyu, the Wind, are themselves strong and indomitable gales of taurine might.60 In the Babylonian legend the divine bull sent out by Anu to engage Gilgamesh is the storm-wind doing battle with the sun.61 And similarly the winged bulls (lamassi) stationed at the approach to a temple are known from an inscription to stand in some instances for Ishum, 'the street-traverser,' or whirlwind.62 These colossi with the thews of the beast, the huge mantling wings of the eagle, and benign face of a human being, symbolising the potent, swift, and kindly wind, presided as guardians at the gates of the royal palace, which they flanked at either side; and they exercised their propitious influence in repelling and resisting the entrance of every enemy or evil spirit, while protecting and blessing the path of the king in his going out and coming in. That this was their object is evident from the following inscription of Esarhaddon : 'Bulls and lions carved in stone which with their majestic mien deter wicked enemies from approaching-the guardians of the footsteps, the saviours of the path, of the king who constructed them→ right and left I placed them at the gates.' 63 Another inscription, quoted by Lenormant 64 as addressed to one of these palace guardians, reveals its aerial origin: Thou art the Bull begotten by the god Zû.' It must be of the same nature as the storm-deity of which it is the offspring. The atmospheric origin of the Cherubim of course soon dropped into the background and was forgotten by later writers, but the divining instinct of the poets has often enabled them to recover something of the primitive conception. Shakespeare comes very close to it when he speaks of Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed 58 R. Brown, Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology, 199. 59 The bull form of the kerûb occurs together with the eagle form in a symbolic pattern on the robe of an Assyrian king given in Layard's Nineveh. The eagle and the lion are brought together as types of swiftness and strength in David's lament over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sam. i. 23. 60 Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 7. 61 Jastrow, 537. 62 Sayce, Hib. Lect. 310; Jastrow, 101, differently. We may perhaps compare the Rabbinic lamas, the dog (? as the protecting genius of the house). 63 Records of the Past, iii. 121. So Sennacherib, 'I made great bull colossi and placed them by the doors on the left and right '(R. P. [N. S.], vi. 100). In a letter of one Assur-bani referring to these very marbles occurs a passage which Professor Sayce translates: Assur-mukin has ordered me to transport in boats the colossal bulls and cherubim of stone' (Babylonians and Assyrians, 220). Cf. Lenormant, Chald. Magic, 54. 64 Beginnings of History, 124. 65 Macbeth, i. 7, 21-23. Dr. J. D. Davis objects that the cherubim cannot have Matthew Arnold also: In the sweeping of the wind, your ear The passage of the Angels' wings will hear.66 And still more notably Victor Hugo: There is something beyond the horizon. Something terrible: it is the wind. The wind, or rather that crowd of Titanic monsters that we call gales. . . . The Indians call them the Marouts; the Jews the Kéroubims; the Greeks the Aquilons. These are the invincible winged birds of prey of the Infinite; and these wings are rushing upon us.67 (5) If then, as we are constrained to believe, the Kerubs of the Babylonian religion were personifications of the wind in its divine potency, it remains to be seen how far the cherubim (Kerûbîm) of the Hebrews corresponded to that ideal in function as well as in name. 'In Ezekiel as in other parts of the Bible,' says Franz Delitzsch, we trace the connection between the cherubim and the thunderstorm in which God manifests Himself. There is the same fire of lightning running to and fro, and the same roar as of rumbling wheels.' But the classical passage for our purpose is the opening of the eighteenth Psalm (=2 Sam. xxii. 11), where a magnificent description is given of the tempest in which Yahveh reveals Himself to His worshipper: 68 He bowed the heavens also, and came down; And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind.69 According to the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, the cherub' of the first clause of this last verse and 'the wings of the wind' (=winged wind) of the second clause are identified as synonymous." 70 When been storm-clouds, because they are animate and intelligent beings. Animate they may be, as gifted with free motion, but it is doubtful whether they are represented as intelligent. Dr. Pusey notes that they are not mentioned to have any office of ministry to man' (On Daniel, 524). They are never introduced as speaking. Obedience to divine commands need not imply intelligence. Storm and vapours fulfil His word' (Ps. cxlviii. 8). The Tomb, sub fin. 67 Travailleurs de la Mer, pt. 2, bk. 3, ch. 1. * Compare 'Yahveh rideth upon a swift cloud and cometh into Egypt' (Is. xix. 1). Maimonides notes that flying with wings, as being the motion of an irrational creature, is not to be attributed to Yahveh Himself but only to the cherub which He makes His vehicle (More Necochim, pt. i. cap. 49). See also his comment upon 'Thou ridest upon Thy horses' (Habakkuk iii. 8), in the same work, cap. 70. The Ethiopian Church had a commemoration of the equi cherubini' on the 4th of November (Ludolf, Hist. Æth. 397). ** See W. Kirby, Bridgewater Treatise, i. 43 (ed. Bohn). Fried. Delitzsch quotes from an Assyrian text rákib abûbi, 'Who rides upon the whirlwind' (Assyr. Grammar, 338). In Persian art the flying throne of Sulaiman is borne aloft by four winged genii of human form. VOL. XLIX-No. 288 A A God speeds across the darkened sky, ' and rides upon the storm,' at the same moment He on the wings of cherub rode sublime. With His majesty veiled in thick clouds, He drives triumphant in His storm-chariot, upborne by the extended pinions of the windcoursers which are the cherubim.7 71 Who maketh the clouds His chariot ; Who walketh upon the wings of the wind.72 74 And in Isaiah: 'Behold, Yahveh will come in fire, and His chariots shall be like the whirlwind.' 73 In the sublime imagery of these passages the vehicle of Deity is the wind, the Merkâbâh or chariot' of the flying cherubim which was seen in vision by Ezekiel ; 75 the elemental throne on which the God of Nature sits paramount with the forces of the universe placed under His feet. Mr. Ball points out a noteworthy parallel in the old Aramean Inscription of Panammû (eighth century B.C.) where Rekûb-El, i.e. 'God's chariot,' occurs as a divine name, and this cherubic bearer of the deity is called 'lord of the house' as guardian of the palace, which was the peculiar office also of the Assyrian Kirúbim. The same figure presents itself in the Rig Veda: 'I celebrate Vâta's (the wind's) great chariot; it comes rending the air with noise of thunder. It touches the sky as it goes, and makes it ruddy, whirling up the dust on the earth. As he flies along on airy paths Vâta never rests on any day. The God, where'er he will, moves at his pleasure; his rushing sound we hear, his form was never seen.'" Worthy of being compared with the above is the following passage from the Chaldean Deluge Tablet as translated by Mr. Boscawen: 'Then rose the water of dawn at daylight; like a black cloud on the horizon of heaven, the thunder-god [Ramman] in the midst of it thundered, Nebo and the wind-god march in front, the throne-bearers (storm clouds) go o'er the mountain and plain.'78 Another tablet, speaking of the Shêdi, which are seven dreaded winds, says: The throne-bearers of the gods are they.' What these throne-bearers were like we may infer from a fine Babylonian seal which gives a graphic illustration of a deity seated on a throne which is supported by four winged and men-headed bulls, on the deck of a boat which is 79 "Compare Deut. xxxiii. 26, and Ps. lxviii. 33. 72 Ps. civ. 3. 7 lxvi. 15. 741 Chron. xxviii. 18. 75 See Maimonides, More Necochim, pt. iii. capp. 1-7. " Light from the East, 184. 77 x. 168; Ragozin, Vedic India, 186. "The Bible and the Monuments, 120. "Fuller, in Speaker's Apocrypha, i. 177. Jensen says that guzalû is a 'commissioner' rather than a 'throne-bearer' (Kosmologie, 390, in Davis, Semitic Trad. 81) but he is in the minority in thinking so. sailing over the waters of the (aerial ?) ocean. 80 Just so, say the Rabbins, the cherubim bear the glory of God as it passes through heaven.' As might be expected, the grand imagery of the Hebrew theophany has left its impression on the poetry of other countries, which in its turn becomes illustrative. Thus one great epic poet : Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound The chariot of paternal Deity. Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd By four cherubic shapes; 81 and the poet of the Seasons: Till Nature's King, who oft Amid tempestuous darkness dwells alone, Walks dreadfully serene, commands a calm. (6) Our final consideration must be, how far does this theory of the cherubim fit in with the various statements concerning them which we find in Scripture? That in the theophany passages they are the elemental agents of Him who maketh the winds His messengers,' doing His pleasure and waiting on His will, can no longer be questioned. Not only do they bear up the Throne of God upon their wings and carry Him forth in His glorious progresses, but they surround and stand sentinel around the place of His immediate presence, or mount mystic guard over aught that is peculiarly sacred and unapproachable. When first mentioned, Genesis iii. 24, it is as 'the cherubim,' and the use of the article seems to imply that they were already well known as a familiar part of an older religious symbolism, which conceived divine agents in this form. As the original office of the Kerubim was to act as guardians of a holy presence, and to exclude profane intruders from some sacred enclosure, they were appropriately stationed at the gates of Paradise to prevent fallen man from entering; just as later the cherubim 'stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord's house.' 82 Between them was set the flaming blade of a revolving sword, which seems to represent the lightning's flash, and to correspond in idea to the chakra of the Hindus, a gyrating disk armed with sharp points. So in Ezekiel fire is seen to come forth out of the whirling (galgal, whirlwind) between the cherubim,83 while the sound of their wings was as thunder. Lenormant compares the 'fiery disk,' the' flaming blade of battle,' 'the weapon with fifty points,' with which a god in a Babylonian hymn lays waste his foes.85 84 "Ball, Light from the East, 157. 91 Par. Lost, vi. 749-753. 82 Ezek. x. 19. The Divine Shechina or brightness of His Presence originally abode in Eden (cf. Gen. iv. 14), Oehler, Theology of the Old Test. i. 199. 83 x. 6. 84 v. 5. 85 Chaldean Magic, 162. In the language of simple prose, all the awe-inspiring powers of nature fight against the wicked. The storm clouds, with winds and lightning, guard the sacred portals of Immortality, as the Kerubs guard the temple-gates of Babylonia to oppose intruding footsteps. An interesting parallel is found on a cylinder of Nabonidus, in which he says: Two great colossi (shedi) guardians (muesmaru, 'watchmen ') sweeping away my enemies, In the gate of the Rising Sun right and left I placed.50 So on Babylonian seals two composite beings called 'scorpion men,' gigantic guardians of the gate,' hold watch and ward by the portals of the Sun at his rising and setting, and prevent the advance of Gilgamesh in his search for the tree of life and the secret of immortality.87 The significance of the Cherubim at Eden may be defined in these words of the Book of Wisdom, when, speaking of the anger of the Most High against the ungodly, it says: 'His severe wrath shall He sharpen for a sword, and the world shall fight with Him against the unwise. Then shall the right-aiming darts of lightnings go abroad, and from the clouds, as from a well-drawn bow, shall they fly to the mark. . . . Yea, a mighty wind shall stand up against them, and like a storm shall blow them away,' 988 or, as Lange unfolds the meaning, 'The individual man, like the collective humanity, may in many ways draw nigh to Paradise; bnt he is ever driven back as by a divine tempest and fiery judgment to the outer field of labour, of conflict, and of death." ... The phenomena which attended the giving of the Law by Yahveh on Sinai, when it was very tempestuous round about Him,' had the same meaning. The gloom, and darkness, and storm'89 accompanied by thunderings and lightnings,90 and flaming fire 91 which kept the people at a distance from the mountain, not only discharged cherubic functions, but were themselves the cherubim, as seems to be implied by the language of the Psalmist : The chariots of Elôhîm are two myriads, thousands upon thousands, and by the swan-song of Moses : 92 Yahveh came from Sinai . . . He came out of holy myriads, At His right hand was fire, a law unto them.o 93 66 Boscawen, in Trans. Victoria Inst. xx. 128. It is interesting to note that this word mucsmaru is the Hebrew mishmár, derived from shamar, the very word used, Gen. iii. 24, of the cherubim guarding or protecting the way of the tree of life. 67 Ball, Light from the East, 31; Boscawen, Bab. and Orient. Record, iii. 125; Davis, Sem. Trad. 80. |