[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."
[304] One of the Scriptural functions of the cherubim was _to guard treasure_ (Ezek. xxviii. 13-15). This conception, too, was widely diffused throughout the East:--
"As when a Gryphon through the wilderness Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth, Has from his watchful custody purloined The guarded gold." MILTON.
[305] I follow the Rabbis in saying that the first broken slabs were in the Ark.
[306] Like the Greek images of the gods, they were made of olive, the least corruptible kind of wood, and overlaid with the purest gold.
1 KINGS viii. 1-66.
"Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice."--1 SAM. xv. 22.
Before we enter on the subject of the Temple worship, it is necessary to emphasise a fact which will meet us again and again in many forms as we consider the history of the Chosen People: it is the amazing ignorance which seems to have prevailed among them for centuries as to the most central and decisive elements of nearly the whole of the Mosaic law as we now read it in the Pentateuch.
1. Take, for instance, the law of a central sanctuary. It is strongly laid down, and incessantly insisted on, throughout the Book of Deuteronomy.[307] Yet that law does not seem to have been so much as noticed by any of the earlier prophets or judges, or by Saul, or by David. The judges and early kings offer sacrifices at any place which they regard as sacred--Bochim, Ophrah, Mizpeh, Gilgal, Bethel, Bethlehem, etc.[308] The rule of one place for sacrifice was not regarded for a moment by the kings of the Northern Kingdom. The transgression of it was not made a subject of complaint by Elijah, Elisha, or any of the earlier prophets. Not one of the kings, even of the most pious kings--Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham--rigidly enforced it until the reign of Josiah. The law seems to have remained an absolutely dead letter for hundreds of years. Now this would be amply accounted for if the Deuteronomic and Levitic Codes only belonged in reality to the days of Josiah and of the Exile; for in "the Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxiv. 7), which is the most ancient part of these codes, and comprises Exod. xx.-xxviii. 33, and is briefly repeated in Exod. xxxiv. 10-28, there is not only no insistence on a central shrine, but many of the regulations would have been rendered impossible had such a shrine existed (_e.g._, Exod. xxi. 6, xxii. 7, 8, where "the judges" should be "God," as in the R.V.). Indeed, so far from insistence on one Temple, we expressly read (Exod. xx. 24), "An altar of earth shalt thou make Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen, _in all places where I record My name_, and I will come unto thee and bless thee."
2. Again, the Book of Leviticus lays down a singularly developed code of ritual, "extending to the minutest details of worship and of life." Yet there is scarcely the shadow of a trace of the observance of even its most reiterated and important provisions during centuries of Israelitish history. It is emphatically a priestly book; yet from the days of David down to those of Josiah, the priests, with few exceptions, are almost ignored in the national records. They took the colour of their opinions from the reigning kings, even in matters which were contrary to the whole extent and spirit of the Mosaic Code. Samuel, who was not a priest, nor even a Levite, performed every function of a priest, and of a high priest, all his life long.