[294] Exod. xxv. 40, xxvi. 30; Acts vii. 44; Heb. viii. 5.
[295] More Nebochim, iii, 45-49; Kalisch, Exodus, p. 497.
[296] The three names given to the Tabernacle are Ohel ("tent"), Mishkan ("tabernacle," "habitation," or "dwelling-place"), and Baith ("house"). It is undoubted that the Tabernacle followed the ordinary construction of the Oriental tent, with its two divisions, of which the interior could not be entered by strangers.
[297] Numb. xvii. 7, xviii. 2; 2 Chron. xxiv. 6; Acts vii. 44; Exod. xxix. 10, etc.; 1 Kings viii. 4; 2 Chron. viii. 13. The phrase "Tent of Meeting" in the R.V. removes the complete obscuring of the meaning involved by the A.V. rendering of "Tabernacle of the Congregation."
[298] Exod. xxv. 22.
[299] Exod. xxix. 42, 43.
[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."