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)
