_THE ARK AND THE CHERUBIM._
1 KINGS vi. 23-30, viii. 6-11.
"Jehovah, thundering out of Sion, throned
Between the cherubim."
MILTON.
The inculcation of truths so deep as the unity, the presence, and
the mercy of God would alone have sufficed to give preciousness to
the national sanctuary, and to justify the lavish expenditure with
which it was carried to completion. But as in the Tabernacle, so in
the Temple, which was only a more rich and permanent structure, the
numbers, the colours, and many details had a real significance. The
unity of the Temple shadowed forth the unity of the Godhead; while
the concrete and perfect unity, resulting from the reconciliation
of unity with difference and opposition (1 + 2), is "the signature
of the Deity." Hence, as in our English cathedrals, three was the
predominant number. There were three divisions,--Porch, Holy Place,
Oracle. Each main division contained three expiatory objects. Three
times its width (which was 3 × 10) was the measure of its length. The
number ten is also prominent in the measurements. It includes all the
cardinal numbers, and, as the completion of multiplicity, is used to
indicate a perfect whole. The seven pillars which supported the house,
and the seven branches of the candlestick, recalled the sacredness
of the seventh day hallowed by the Sabbath, by circumcision, and by
the Passover. The number of the cakes of shewbread was twelve, "the
signature of the people of Israel, a whole in the midst of which
God resides, a body which moves after Divine laws." Of the colours
predominant in the Temple, _blue_, the colour of heaven, symbolises
revelation; _white_ is the colour of light and innocence; _purple_,
of majesty and royal power; _crimson_, of life, being the colour of
fire and blood. Every gem on the high priest's pectoral had its mystic
significance, and the bells and pomegranates which fringed the edge of
his ephod were emblems of devotion and good works.
Two instances will suffice to indicate how deep and rich was the
significance of the truths which Moses had endeavoured to engraft
in the minds of his people, and to which Solomon, whether with full
consciousness or not, gave permanence in the Temple.
1. Consider, first, _the Ark_.
Every step towards the Holiest was a step of deepening reverence.
The Holy Land was sacred, but Jerusalem was more sacred than all the
rest. The Temple was the most sacred part of the city; the Oracle was
the most sacred part of the Temple; the Ark was the most sacred thing
in the Oracle; yet the Ark was only sacred because of that which it
contained.
And what did it contain? What was it which enshrined in itself this
quintessence of all sanctitude? When we pierce to the inmost recesses
of a pyramid, we find there only the ashes of a dead man, or even
of an animal. Within the adytum of an Egyptian temple we might have
found "an ox wallowing on purple tapestry." The Egyptians, too, had
their arks, as the Greeks had the cyst of Cybele, and the _vannus_
of Iacchus. What did _they_ contain? At the best phallic emblems,
the emblems of prolific nature. But the Ark of Jehovah contained
nothing but the stone tablets on which were carved the Ten Words of
the Covenant, the briefest possible form of the moral law of God. In
the inmost heart of the Temple was its most inestimable treasure,--a
protest against all idolatry; a protest against all polytheism, or
ditheism, or atheism; a protest, too, against the formalism which
the Temple itself and its services might tend to produce in its
least spiritually minded worshippers. Thus the entire Temple was
a glorification of the truth that "the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom," and that the one end to be produced by the fear
of the Lord is obedience to His commandments. The Ark and its unseen
treasure taught that no religion can be of the least value which does
not result in conformity with the plain moral laws:--Be obedient; be
kind; be pure; be honest; be truthful; be contented; and that this
obedience can only spring from faith in the one God whom all real
worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.
Obvious as this lesson might seem to be, it was entirely missed by
the Jews in general. The Ark, too, was degraded into a fetish, and
Jeremiah says (iii. 16) of the exiles, "They shall say no more, The
ark of the covenant of the Lord: neither shall it come to mind:
neither shall they miss it: neither shall it be made any more"
(Heb.). When a symbol has been perverted into a source of materialism
and superstition, it becomes not only useless but positively
dangerous. No religions have fallen so absolutely dead as those which
have sunk into petty formalism. The Ark, for all its quintessential
sacredness, had been suffered to fall into the hands of uncircumcised
Philistines, and to be placed in their Dagon temple, to show that
it was no mere idolatrous amulet. Ultimately it was carried away to
Babylon, to adorn the palace of a heathen tyrant, and probably to
perish by fire in his captured city. In the second Temple there was
no ark. Nothing remained but the rock of Araunah's threshing-floor,
on which it once had stood.
2. Consider, next, the meaning of _the Cherubim_.
(1) The infinite sanctity given to the conception of the moral law
was enhanced by the introduction of these overshadowing figures.
We are never told in the entire books of Scripture what was the
form of these cherubim; nor is their function anywhere specially
defined; nor, again, can we be at all certain of the derivation of
the name. That the cherubim over the Ark were not identical with the
fourfold-visaged four of Ezekiel's cherub-chariot we know, because
they certainly had but one face. But we now know that among the
Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, and other nations nothing was more
common than these cherubic emblems, which were introduced into their
palaces and temples under the forms of winged lions, oxen, men, and
eagle-headed human figures. We see also that in the Tabernacle,[300]
and to a still greater extent in the Temple, a tacit exception to
the stringency of the Second Commandment seems to have been made in
favour of the component parts of these cherubic figures. If Solomon
was aware (as he surely must have been) of the existence of the law,
"_Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image_," he must either
have laid stress on the words "_to thyself_," and have excused the
brazen oxen which supported his great laver on the ground that they
could not be turned into objects of worship, or he must have held,
as Ezekiel apparently did, that the ox was the predominant form in
the cherubic emblem.[301] From the Vision of Ezekiel we see that the
cherubim--like the "Immortalities" (ζῶα) of the Apocalypse, which had
faces of the ox, the eagle, the lion, and the man--were conceived of
as "living creatures" upholding the sapphire Throne of God. They had
wings, and the similitude of hands under their wings. They flashed
to and fro like lightning in the midst of a great cloud, and an
enfolding fire, and a rolling mass of amber-coloured flame. Of the
form of this "changeable hieroglyphic" we need say no more. Perhaps
originally suggested by the wreathing fires and rolling stormclouds,
which were regarded as immediate signs of the Divine proximity, the
cherubim came to be regarded as the genius of the created universe in
its richest perfection and energy, at once revealing and shrouding
the Presence of God.[302] Their eyes represent His omniscience, for
"the eyes of the Lord are in every place"; their wings and straight
feet represent the speed and fiery gliding of His omnipresence;[303]
each element of their fourfold shape indicates His love, His
patience, His power, His sublimity. Their wheels imply that "the
dread magnificence of the unintelligent creation" is under His entire
control; and, as a whole, they symbolise the dazzling beauty of the
universe, alike conscious and material. They were the ideal _anima
animantium_--the perfection of existence emanating from and subject
to the Divine Creator whose tender mercy is over all His works. Their
function, when they are first introduced in the Book of Genesis,
is at once vengeful and protective; vengeful of the violated law,
protective of the treasure of life.[304] They are here the Erinnyes
of the Dawn, revealing and avenging the works of darkness. Their
"dreadful faces and fiery arms" at the gate of Eden typify guilty
awakenment, realised retribution, conscious alienation from God, the
universe siding with His awakened anger.
(2) But when next they are mentioned, God says to Moses, "Thou shalt
make a mercy-seat of pure gold, and thou shalt make two cherubim of
gold at the two ends of the mercy-seat." But for their presence on
the mercy-seat how terrible would have been the symbolism of the
Holy of Holies--God's darkness, man's crime, a broken law! It would
have represented Him who hath clouds and darkness round about Him,
and dwelleth in darkness which no man can approach unto; and the Ark
would only have treasured up, as a witness against man's apostasy,
the shattered slabs of the words of Sinai.[305] But over that Ark,
and its saddening because dishallowed treasure, bent once more these
mystic figures, these "cherubim of glory." They bent down as though
at once to protect with outspread wings, and to regard with awful
contemplation, that mystic gift of a law promulgated to all nations
as their moral heritage and as the revealed will of God. These are
no longer cherubim of vengeance or awakened wrath, for they stand on
the _Capporeth_, the "covering," or "propitiatory" of the Ark.[306]
They gleamed out in the red light of the high priest's golden brazier
on the one day when human foot entered the darkness in which they
were shrouded; and even by him they were but dimly discerned through
the ascending wreaths of fragrant incense. But he stood before them,
where, on their spreading wings, the light of the Divine presence
was deemed to dwell; and with the blood of expiation he sprinkled
seven times the mercy-seat over which these adoring figures leaned.
The wrathful cherubim of the lost Eden had driven man from a
treasure which he had forfeited; but these, though they guard the
ten words of a law which man had broken, were cherubim of mercy and
reconciliation. Those of Eden were armed with swords of flame; those
of the Temple were reddened with the blood of forgiveness. Those
typified a covenant destroyed and ended; these a covenant broken yet
renewed. Those spoke of awakened wrath; these of covenanted mercy.
Those kept men back from the Tree of Life; these guarded that which
is a Tree of Life to them that love it.
Could the whole covenant of the law and the gospel have been
symbolised more simply, yet with Diviner force? The Temple itself,
with all its sacrifices, with all its service and ceremonial and
all the gorgeous vestments of Aaron's vestry, served but to teach
the infinite worth of simple righteousness. The heart of the Mosaic
legislation was nothing so poor, so paltry, so material as the
promotion of liturgical Levitism, and the pomp of ritual, and the
organisation of priestly functions--as though these in themselves had
any value in the sight of God. It lay in the lesson that "Obedience
is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." The
law of Moses--the ten words which constituted the inmost preciousness
of his legislation--was, alas! a violated law. For the disobedient it
had no message but the wrathful menace of death. But to show that God
has not abandoned His disobedient children, but would still enable
them to keep that law, and to repent for its transgression, the
cherubim are there. Their presence on the propitiatory was meant to
reveal the glory of the gospel. The high priest, who alone saw them
on the Great Day of Israel, was a type of Him who, not with the blood
of bulls and goats, but in His own blood (_i.e._, in the glory of the
life outpoured for man), entered into God's presence within the veil.
(3) In the dazzling living creatures before the throne in the
Revelation of St. John, we see once more these cherubim of Eden, who,
having indicated at the Fall an awful warning, and represented in the
Tabernacle a blessed hope, symbolise, in the last book of the Bible,
a Divine fulfilment. They are there no longer with fiery swords, in
wrathful aspect, in repellent silence; but, gracious and beautiful,
they join in the new song of the redeemed multitude under the shadow
of the Tree of Life, to which all have free access in that recovered
Eden. In the Temple--glimmering through the rising fumes of incense,
which were the type of accepted prayer, their golden plumage sprinkled
with the blood of the atoning sacrifice--they became a type both of
all creation, up to its most celestial beings, gazing in adoration on
the will of God, and of all creation, in its groaning and travailing,
restored through the precious blood that speaketh better things than
the blood of Abel. Not all, of course, of these deep meanings were
present to the souls of Israel's worshippers; but the best of them
might with joy see something of the things which we see when we say
that in these glorious figures are summed up the three chief images
of all Scripture: first, the Primæval Dispensation, "_In the day that
thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die_"; next, in the wilderness,
"_This do, and thou shalt live_"; last of all, in the Gospel
Dispensation, "_Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy
blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and hast
made us unto our God kings and priests._"
FOOTNOTES:
[300] Kuenen's notion that the cherubim had come to the Jews through
the Phœnicians from the Assyrians is quite improbable. The symbol was
common throughout the East, whatever be the derivation of the word.
[301] Compare Ezek. i. 10 with x. 14, where "the face of an ox" is
identical with "the face of a cherub." Perhaps this gave rise to
the pagan calumnies that the Jews worshipped an ass. Josephus says
(insincerely) that no man could tell or even conjecture the shape of
the cherubim.
[302] Bähr, whose profound studies on symbolism command respect, says
that "as standing on the highest step of created life, and uniting in
themselves the most perfect created life, they are the most perfect
revelation of God and the Divine" (_Symbolik_, i. 340).
[303] Compare the Homeric epithet νέποδες, and Milton's
"smooth-gliding, without step."
[304] One of the Scriptural functions of the cherubim was _to guard
treasure_ (Ezek. xxviii. 13-15). This conception, too, was widely
diffused throughout the East:--
"As when a Gryphon through the wilderness
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Has from his watchful custody purloined
The guarded gold."
MILTON.
[305] I follow the Rabbis in saying that the first broken slabs were
in the Ark.
[306] Like the Greek images of the gods, they were made of olive, the
least corruptible kind of wood, and overlaid with the purest gold.