The Messiah in Moses and the Prophets

by Eleazar Lord

Pankhurst, under the word Cherubim, in his Hebrew Lexicon, describes no less than sixty examples in which heads or other parts resembling the cherubic figures are incorporated in the objects of idolatrous homage of different heathen nations.

Maimonides, as quoted by Parkhurst, says that the first idolaters regarded the heavenly bodies as messengers or mediators of a supreme, infinite, invisible Being. In the worship of those bodies, or rather of the mediating intelligence supposed to reside in them, either because they were often out of sight, or for other reasons, they selected representative creatures, chiefly of the species comprised in the four-faced cherubim, but sometimes of other species, and among them of the serpent, and at length of mineral and metallic images of such creatures.

In a number of the examples cited by Parkhurst, the serpent, or the serpent’s head, appears conspicuous; and particularly in idol forms representative of the sun or Baal. In most of the images, the human form predominates; around which the serpent often appears entwined. The cherubic wings are indifferently attached to the human and the leading animal forms, and to the serpent. The combinations, especially of heads, in these representative images, strikingly suggest that the example of the cherubic faces was perverted to be the basis of the system, and that the serpent, when not exhibited as a distinct and sole object of homage, was foisted in and superadded to the figures which were familiar in the original system of revealed religion. In most of the complex forms in which different animals are combined, reference appears to have been had to the sun or Baal, i. e. to Satan, the supposed mediating intelligence resident in the sun.

In a published account of two “sculptured images” disinterred by Mr. Layard from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and forwarded by him to Williams College, Mass., being supposed to have “been buried in the ruins of that city not less than twenty-five hundred years,” and to be samples of the earliest “idols” instituted in that capital, the date of which is supposed to be about one hundred and thirty years after the deluge, the figure of one is described as “that of a man with wings and an eagle’s head and beak, well proportioned. The two wings, springing from the back of the shoulders, are gracefully spread.” The other is a figure simply of a man, seven and a half feet in height. They are pronounced “perfect of their kind. The slabs on which they are sculptured are dark gypsum, such as are described as lining the walls of the rooms and passages of the ruin, which Layard regards as having constituted at once the temple and palace of the king. One of the slabs is seven feet, and the other seven and a half feet high, and they are each three feet and two inches wide. The figures are the whole length of the slabs.”

Here is a manifest, and in all likelihood a surreptitious combination of two of the figures in the cherubic emblem, which, without some prototype, and a prototype already associated with the religion which was to be renounced, perverted, and counterfeited, would not be likely to occur, or to be easily brought into use and favor. An existing and familiar prototype might be copied exactly—as altars, sacrifices, incense, and various rites appear to have been—or with some modifications, and yet be readily adopted. In this view it would be obvious to argue, that as Jehovah often appeared on earth in the similitude of man, and thereby taught and virtually anticipated his future predicted incarnation; and as that form was associated with others in the cherubic emblem, therefore that emblem might be taken as representative of the Intelligence to be worshipped, and as teaching the doctrine of his incarnation not merely in the form and nature of man, but also in birds, four-footed beasts, and all other creatures brought into existence by him. Such pantheism undoubtedly resulted. But had the first forms of images been wholly an original device of the idolaters, they would naturally have selected not complex, but simple ones. They would have copied nature. They would in all probability have selected first the human form; but they would have taken that as it visibly appears, without a mysterious and inexplicable combination of inferior natures with it.

Next, they would very likely select the bird—the eagle—whose flight transcends the clouds, and whose eye endures the blaze of solar light; and next, the most docile and most useful, and then the most powerful and sagacious quadrupeds; in all instances, as is held by Warburton and others, and is highly probable in itself employing images and pictures long before they idolized the animals themselves.

A progress and an analogy of this kind—notwithstanding that the whole subject of idolatry, its origin, its nature, its rationale, its import as an antagonism to the revealed religion, and as involving the reason and an intelligible and ample justification of the jealousy, wrath, indignation, judgments, retributions, and finally of exterminating vengeance against it, has been mystified and misrepresented, under the rabbinical and figurative systems formerly adverted to—might be traced, and indefinitely illustrated, by reference to the Sphinxes, Centaurs, Pans, &c., of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; the Brahmas, the Vishnus, the Sivas, and the incarnations and transmigrations of India, and the Boodism and Lamaism of the whole Eastern world.

The notion of local deities, national gods, &c., implied the doctrine of incarnation, and was no doubt suggested by the Theophanies of the patriarchal history and the Theocracy of the Mosaic, administered by the Messenger Jehovah, locally present in the tabernacle in a cloud-like form, where he was inquired of in respect to things future, and held converse with Moses, Joshua, and their successors. In imitation, the devotees of Baal conceived of him as present in their temples, inhabiting the forms of their idols, and hearing their statements and requests.

Thus Moses returned to Jehovah as present in the burning bush, and said, “O Adonai! wherefore,” &c. Exod. v. 22. “And David the king came and sat before Jehovah, [i. e., in the tabernacle,] and said,” &c. 1 Chron. xvii. 16.

So, on the other hand, “The Philistines took Saul’s head and his armor, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings unto their idols and to the people. And they put his armor in the house of their gods, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.” 1 Chron. x. 9, 10.