Kerubim כרובים

Kerubim (כרובים, “cherubim”) are the winged throne-bearing beings who appear at the Ark of the Covenant, in Ezekiel’s chariot, and as the guardians of Eden. In the Heikhalot throne-world they are one of the named angelic classes alongside the chayyot, ofanim, and seraphim. The cherubim are awesome throne-attendants: in Ezekiel 10 the chariot is explicitly borne by cherubim, and Ezekiel seems to identify them with the four living creatures of chapter 1.

Etymology

From the root K-R-B. The etymology is debated; one influential proposal connects it with Akkadian karibu / kuribu, an intercessory or guardian figure, consistent with the cherubim’s role as guardians (of Eden in Genesis 3:24) and as throne-attendants. The English “cherubim” is a direct transliteration of the Hebrew plural.

Why not “cherubs”

The controlled rendering is cherubim, and cherubs is forbidden, along with winged-children. “Cherubs” carries the Renaissance and Baroque iconographic distortion — the chubby winged infants of European art — which is precisely the opposite of the biblical and Heikhalot kerubim, who are awesome, many-faced, throne-bearing beings guarding the most dangerous and holy space. The distortion is so entrenched in English that preserving the transliterated plural is the only safe rendering.

Contested meanings

The relation between the kerubim and the chayyot is unresolved within the biblical text: Ezekiel 10:20 states that “this is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubim,” apparently identifying the two classes that chapter 1 and chapter 10 had described separately. The Heikhalot and later angelological traditions inherited this ambiguity and variously merged or distinguished the classes. The two golden cherubim over the Ark, between which the divine voice was heard, supply the throne-room imagery that the merkavah tradition cosmologizes.

Primary sources

• Exodus 25:18-22 — the cherubim over the Ark, between which the divine speaks.
• Ezekiel 10 — the cherubim bearing the chariot, identified with the living creatures.
• Genesis 3:24 — the cherubim guarding the way to the tree of life.
• Heikhalot Rabbati (Schäfer Synopse) — the kerubim in the throne-world taxonomy.

Scholarly literature

• David Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot (Mohr Siebeck, 1988) — the cherubim-living-creatures identification and its reception.
• Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God (SUNY Press, 1992) — Heikhalot angelology.

Hekhal Editorial. "Kerubim." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. Last modified May 2, 2026. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/kerubim.

Hekhal Editorial. 2026. "Kerubim." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/kerubim.

Hekhal Editorial. "Kerubim." Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition, May 2, 2026, hekhal.org/lexicon/kerubim.

Hekhal Editorial. (2026). Kerubim. Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition. https://hekhal.org/lexicon/kerubim

@misc{hekhal-lexicon-kerubim-2026,
  author       = {{Hekhal Editorial}},
  title        = {{Kerubim}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {{Hekhal: An Open Reference for Esoteric Tradition}},
  url          = {https://hekhal.org/lexicon/kerubim},
  urldate      = {[date accessed]}
}