The Bible does not give us any physical descriptions of the Cherubim other than being winged. Yet here was one of Israel’s most significant symbols, depicting a male and a female (married) pair of deities. Raphael Patai has shown that the Cherubim of ancient Bible times, the winged human figures, were, at their last depiction, "a man and woman in sexual embrace." This is according to Rabh Qetina, from the late 3rd - 4th century:
When Israel used to make the pilgrimage, they [i.e., the priests] would roll up for them the Parokhet [the veil separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies], and show them the Cherubim which were intertwined with one another, and say to them: ‘Behold! your love before God is like the love of male and female!’
When Rabba bar Rabh Shila (an early 4th-century C.E. Babylonian Amora) reinterpreted the description of Solomon’s temple, especially at 1 Kings 7:36, where we read were decorated by engraved Cherubim, lions and palm trees, "according to the space of each, with wreaths," Patai noticed the words in the quotation marks twylw vya r[mk - "kmayar ish wyloyoth" are read by Rabba as "kyish hamyre byliwya (shelo)," that is the Cherubim were "Like a man intertwined with his wife."
Philo allegorized the cherubim as the revolving spheres of heaven (ouranou), with one cherubim symbolizing the outermost sphere of the fixed stars , the other the innermost sphere. Philo allegorized the flaming sword as the sun. He reads Exodus 25:19 ~ybrkh ynp wyhy trpkh la wyha la vya ~hynpw "The Cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover", as each representing two opposing spheres, "and so too, the hemispheres are opposite to each other and stretch out to the earth, the centre of all things, which actually parts them," (epeidh kai tauta antikru men estin allhlwn neneuke de epi ghn to meson tou pantos, w kai diakrinetai). For Philo, there were two spheres, one above and one below the earth. This is the cosmological dimension of putting man into the eternities.
Patai states further that Philo stated it was Reason the flaming sword symbolized; "elsewhere, however, he states that God the father is Reason, while Knowledge is God the mother, and these two aspects of the godhead are symbolized by the two Cherubim." The cherubim find their counterpart in the Assyrian sculptures, "which are often pictured in the act of fertilizing the sacred palm tree." In this respect, it is worth noting the tree birth in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the same in Buddhist scriptures as well as the Koranic Sura of Mary. "The mother stands beneath the tree (of life) clasping it to posses [sic] herself of its life-giving virtue which will enable her to bring to birth the ‘life’ of the world." Mary, as virgin, theotokos and the tree of life could not be kept out of the Christian consciousness, she eventually being identified with the tree, the "primal mater, materia," even being identified as the Cedar of Lebanon, the burning bush, as well as the Palm of Engedi. "she was the mirror image of the sinful mother Eva (Ave!) and as closely involved with the tree when Christ suffered on the tree..." It is of more than passing interest that Nephi in the Book of Mormon, also identifies the virgin as the tree in his vision of the birth of Christ! The Gnostics also understood this conception of Eve who becomes a tree to escape the evil sexual intentions of the evil Authorities. "The tree that she becomes is the tree of ‘Life.’"
Bible scholars Hugo Gressmann and Julian Morgenstern, on studying the Ark of the Covenant, conclude "originally there must have been two images in it, that of Yahweh and that of his wife Anathyahu, or Astarte." Another aspect is that the "two sacred stones in the Ark originally represented Yahweh and, in all likelihood, His female companion." Moshe Weinfeld says the marriage of the Most High with Israel represented the cosmic Hieros Gamos, demonstrated in Hosea 2:21-25, which also demonstrated marriage "as a source of harmony in the world below with the world above," as legitimate representation of the principle. Weinfeld reads Hosea 2:21 - ~lw[l yl $ytfraw - "I will betroth you to me forever," with the comment, "I will espouse you forever... then you shall know YHWH [as is well known, the verb yd’ in Hebrew can have the meaning of sexual relations]." This is crucial to a proper understanding of what is done on earth is done in heaven. Humans imitate the gods as they initiate fertility among themselves as well as an example for the land.
"The union of the Shekhinah with the Holy One is remarkable in the high priest’s worship on Yom Kippur. At his entrance to the Holy of Holies, he heard the voice of the wings of the cherubim being lifted up for intercourse. When the wings subside the cherubim copulate calmly (III 67b). The implications are obvious for ancient Israel. As their God was devoted to them as a nation through marriage, so likewise was He Himself married. Individual Israelite marriage mimicked their God’s marriage, as well as providing fertility to the land, as above, so below.
Louis Ginzberg noted the cherubim’s faces were turned toward each other when Israel was devoted to the Lord. He further noted the cherubim "even clasped one another like a loving couple. During the festivals of the pilgrimage the priests used to raise the curtain from the Holy of Holies to show the pilgrims how much their God loved them as they could see in the embrace of the two Cherubim." Gerschom Scholem, the great Jewish Kabbalistic scholar, reminds us that "What took place in this hieros gamos (zivvuga kadisha, as the Zohar calls it) was primarily the union of the two sefiroth, tif’ereth and malkhuth, the male and female aspects of God, the king and his consort, who is nothing other than the Shekhinah and the mystical Ecclesia of Israel." Scholem also notes that this mystical union between God and Israel, was for the Kabbalists the "merely outward aspect of a process that takes place within the secret inwardness of God himself."
This so-called "inwardness" is hinted at in the Talmud as the "earthly union between man and woman... was taken as a symbolic reference to the heavenly marriage." The Cherubim was that symbol of fertility for Israel, as we read in R. Eleazer’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, "as the sexual union of man and [his] partner, which were in the temple, in order to increase fruitfulness in Israel." This idea of fruitfulness was actually begun with Adam and Eve, who were "intertwined in one another - as symbolized by the form of the cherubim."
Jewish sages and Rabbis use texts such as Midrash Tadshe, for explaining that the two Cherubim symbolize the two holy names, Tetragrammaton and Elohim, which in Talmudic tradition "quoted in the name of R. Katina envisaged these cherubim as male and female, sometimes found in sexual embrace..." Idel noted that R. Joseph Hamadan taught that the two cherubim symbolize the Sefirot Yesod and Malkhut, which are manifestly viewed as bridegroom and bride. Idel goes so far as to note that the function of the temple in ancient Israel was none other than to attract the Shekhinah to sit between the two cherubim. Such a perfect state of union, Idel demonstrates, was a sexual union, the purpose of which "is a function of performing the will of God; otherwise, they will be separated. I assume," says Idel, "however, that only when their union is induced by human activity can the Shekhinah descend upon the cherubim, just as it does with a worthy husband and wife." The Shekhinah is none other than the Holy Spirit, to which I will return below in the New Testament context of Jesus’ baptism.
The Archaeology of God: Scholarship, History, Myths and Legends The Restoration of God’s Eternal Family
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