תפקיד כרובי הארון

The two temples described in detail in the Hebrew Bible, the Temple of Solomon and the wilderness Tabernacle, contained in their innermost chamber, the focal point of Israelite worship, the Ark of the Covenant and two sculptures of fantastic winged creatures, the cherubim. Understanding the symbolic function of these cherubim may be central to understanding the ancient Israelite cult. The prevailing view regarding this question is that the cherubim formed or supported the throne of YHWH, while the Ark underneath them served as His footstool. The Temple cherubim and Ark are thus considered an instance of the sphinx-throne, a known motif in Phoenician and Canaanite visual art from the Biblical period. In this paper, the prevailing view is challenged on several grounds. First, Biblical sources explicitly define the cherubim as bearing the role of guardians and not throne-bearers; it is shown that these sources cannot be down-dated and ignored, since they are backed up by multiple sources consistently showing that the cherubim were not the primary objects in the Temple and Tabernacle, as would be expected if they served as the throne of YHWH. Second, no actual throne is mentioned in the Bible in relation to the cherubim. Third, the cherubim as described by the Bible stood upright, while all throne bearing creatures in Ancient Near Eastern visual art are quadrupeds. Fourth, the large dimensions attributed to the cherubim of the Temple would have left insufficient space for a proportional throne. It is shown that the cherubim as described in the Bible correspond to a separate known motif in Egyptian-Canaanite iconography, that of the winged protectors. In this motif, two or more winged humanoids flank a deity, a person or an object and spread their wings toward it in a gesture of protection. A common form of this motif, in which the wings meet in a diamond pattern, appears in several Iron Age items from the Land of Israel, and corresponds specifically to the cherubim of the Tabernacle as depicted in the Bible. A less common form, in which the protecting beings appear en face with their wings spread to the sides, appears on the 14th-Century sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and corresponds to the cherubim of the Temple.