Thursday, December 5, 2019

Ezekiel 28, the "anointed Cherub" and LDS Satanology




Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. (Ezek 28:13-17)


Some critics appeal to Ezek 28 as evidence against Latter-day Saint theology on the topic of the relationship between Jesus and Satan. For a thorough refutation of this and similar texts, see the section entitled, "The "Mormon Jesus" being a "Spirit Brother" of Satan--what the Bible really says" in Refuting Jeff Durbin on "Mormonism".

Another well-informed LDS apologist offered the following insights into the text and its Satanology:

. . . the identification of Satan as a cherub comes from a Hebrew text which many authorities regard as uncertain in meaning. The first word translated “Thou” in verse 14 is part of the problem of interpreting the verse with any degree of certainty. The underlying Hebrew word in the printed and other texts is אַתְּ, which is the feminine singular form of the masculine singular אַתָּה. This text is problematic because the form of the word which now stands here in our Masoretic text is that typically used to address females, while the pronominal suffixes that are in the verbs addressed to this person show that the person is masculine! Some have gotten creative in handling this issue by simply saying that the same form of the word also can be masculine and, must be so. It gets worse than this, however. Originally, the Hebrew text of the Bible was written consonantally i.e., without the vowels which must later were created and used in the texts. Thus, the first word in the phrase would have been written את. It is probable that the original word in this passage was intended to be אַת, rather than as it now stands, which means “with” or “together with.” In the Hebrew it would be written אָת-כְּרוּב. The translators of this verse in the Septuagint Greek text of Ezekiel so understood it with this sense when they rendered the first line of verse 14as:”With the cherub . . .”.

The translators of the Syriac version also translated thus: “You were with the anointed cherub . . . “. In addition, various scholars ascribe the action of destroying or driving-out to the cherub rather than to the LORD. This would be consistent if the first word in verse 14 were “with” rather than “thou.”

The Septuagint also so understands this text: “ . . . and the cherub has driven you out . . .”. The wording of verse 16b, in The Amplified Bible, is: “ . . . therefore I cast you out as a profane thing from the mountain of God and the guardian cherub drove you out . . .”. Several other versions of the Bible also have followed this idea at verses 14 and 16. They are quoted below, as follows:

v On the day you were created, I placed you beside the kherubs . . . Hence I have expelled you as a profane thing from the hill of God, and the kherub has driven you to your ruin away from the flashing thunderstones. (James Moffett Translation)
v I put a terrifying angel there to guard you . . .So I forced you to leave my holy mountain, and the angel who guarded you drove you away from the sparkling gems (Today’s English Version)
v With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you . . . I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire. (New Revised Standard Version)
v I set you with a towering cherub as guardian; . . . . so I brought you down in disgrace from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub banished you from among the stones that flashed like fire. (New English Bible)

Others have it as the King James Version has it. And do we take the “covering” as referring to winged creatures? It should be recalled that even the king of Assyria also was spoken of as having wings in a setting in which we know that this king did not have wings. Or should we rather take the underlying meaning to refer to guarding or protecting? Not a lot is certain about the meaning of this passage. And worse or the critics is that a number of commentators absolutely deny that this passage has anything to do with Lucifer at all! They do so because of the historical referents in the passage that clearly speak of the king of Tyre. This passage makes comparisons of the king of Tyre to Adam in the garden, being guarded by a cherub, but which cherub then drives Adam from Eden for sin and so, like what happened to Adam, the same thing will happen to the king of Tyre and his guardian cherub will drive him out of Tyre like Adam was driven from Eden . . . But even if all this were not true, and Lucifer is the one who is identified as a cherub in these passages, it still is not a problem. What are cherubim, anyway? Confusion has arisen as to what they are, and what are their form and appearance. Biblical scholars hold that they are symbolic. This is because of differing description of them by various biblical writers. See for example, 1 Kings 6:2-27; 8:7, which refer to them as having two wings; Ezekiel 1:5-10 where they are described as having four faces and four wings; and also, Ezekiel 41:18-19, where the temple cherubim he envisions have but two faces.

It has been said that Jewish tradition maintains that the two cherubim that were on the ark of the covenant were in the form of men only, with wings. They had only the faces of men and had two wings each. What do we make of that description, if true? Could it be that the word “cherub” only is a title of a class of angelic beings regardless of the individual forms of those within the class? The Akkadian cognate verb means “to praise, bless, adore” (Harris, Archer, Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 1:454). It thus also is if interest called that those who also are called cherubim usually are in the attitude of praising, adoring, or otherwise attending upon God. These evidences all seem to point to the fact that, regardless of their various forms, whether in the form of man, beast, or both, they all are cherubim by virtue of what they do. This thus does not preclude some of them from being only in the form of man and, thus also would allow some of them to be God’s children—offspring of the Father of spirits. But if the critics will not accept what here has been presented, we always could have them read Revelation 12:3-9 (where Satan is described as a dragon or serpent with seven heads and ten horns) and, ask them to explain how that description of the Adversary accords with Ezekiel’s description of the cherubim found at Ezekiel 1:5-11. If they say that it is symbolic, it likely is so in the description found in this Ezekiel passage, and we can also say the same, for Revelation and Ezekiel are apocalyptic texts. (D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament Texts (Revised and Supplemented) [North Charleston, N.C.: CreateSpace, 2018], 351-53, 354-55)