Ezekiel 1:5

THE CHERUBIM

‘The likeness of four living creatures.’

Ezekiel 1:5

I. Ezekiel’s name means ‘God will Strengthen,’ or prevail.—Like Jeremiah, he was a priest as well as a prophet. He lived among those Jews who were carried away captive by Nebuchadnezzar, and settled on the River Chebar, the northern part of Mesopotamia. He began to prophesy about six years before Jerusalem was destroyed; he was therefore contemporary with Jeremiah, and prophesied partly before and partly after the destruction of Jerusalem.

It would seem as though a dark storm-cloud approached him, from which an incessant blaze of lightning revealed itself. As it drew nearer, the prophet beheld the form of the four living creatures, each having a wheel beside him, symbolic of the round of Divine providence, ever revolving in perfect circles. The living creatures or cherubim supported a blue expanse on which God was enthroned in human form. The whole conception impresses the mind with a sense of the reality, greatness, and power of the Divine providence and majesty.

II. The description of the cherubim may arrest us for a little.—They combine, under various figures, intelligence, strength, patience, and soaring aspiration. Their bodies veiled with their wings in token of humility; their method of advance straight forward, because they knew no vacillation or hesitation in doing God’s will; their obedience prompt and immediate, whithersoever the Divine impulse moved them. What glorious beings were these? How marvellous the perfect sympathy between themselves and the wheels of Providence! It seems as though they represent the sentient creation, while the wheels stand for the material, both in perfect correspondence with the will of God. Angels and nature will serve us, if we too are in union with God.

Illustration

‘All symbols are likely to be differently understood or misunderstood. Therefore it is that the symbolic figures in Ezekiel and in Revelations have never been understood alike by Jews or Christians generally. It does not, however, follow from this that these symbols are unworthy of study by mature-minded searchers in God’s Word. For more than fifteen centuries there have been discussions over the special assignment of the four figures in Ezekiel’s vision as symbols of the four evangelists. Jerome thought that the man referred to St. Matthew, the lion to St. Mark, the ox to St. Luke, and the eagle to St. John. Other Christian writers have proposed other arrangements.’