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Why the Cherubim Faced Each Other Over the Ark

Incense rises toward the veil, fire consumes strangers to the holy vessels, and two cherubim face each other above the Ark.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Incense Altar Stood at the Nearest Edge
  2. Fire Consumed Strangers to the Holy Vessels
  3. The Cherubim Faced Each Other Above the Mercy Seat
  4. The Cherubim Spread Their Wings Above the Ark

The Incense Altar Stood at the Nearest Edge

The golden incense altar does not stand inside the Holy of Holies. It stands before the veil of testimony, facing the mercy seat where God appoints His Word to meet Moses. The targum turns placement into theology. Every object in the Mishkan teaches by location, and the incense altar teaches that the closest approach daily service can make is to stand at the boundary rather than cross it.

Incense is the subtlest offering. Sacrifice has flesh, blood, grain, and visible weight. Incense becomes fragrance, a matter so fine it rises where heavier things cannot follow. The altar stands at the threshold between the accessible and the inaccessible. Its smoke ascends toward the veil and the Memra, the divine Word, waits above. The worshiper who tends this altar is not crossing into holiness. He is sending the finest thing material life can produce as close as material life is permitted to go.

Fire Consumed Strangers to the Holy Vessels

The vessels of the Mishkan are not neutral objects. When Nadav and Avihu bring strange fire before God, they are consumed. The targum does not soften this. A fiery flame goes out from before God and burns them. They are called strangers to the holy vessels, not because they are foreign by birth but because they approach the sacred instruments without the authorization that makes approach survivable.

That word, stranger, is the key. The Mishkan was built precisely so that Israel could approach God. But approach has rules. The vessels closest to the Ark require the most precise handling. The fire that protects them is the same fire that powers them. Holiness does not distinguish between friend and enemy when boundary is crossed. It distinguishes between authorized and unauthorized, and Aaron's sons crossed into the innermost space on their own initiative rather than God's command.

The Cherubim Faced Each Other Above the Mercy Seat

Two cherubim stand on either end of the mercy seat, their wings spreading upward, their faces turned toward each other and bowed toward the cover below them. The targum reads the facing as significant. They do not face outward, toward the curtain or the camp. They face each other, with the space between them being exactly where God will speak to Moses.

The mercy seat between two cherubim is not a throne. It is the place where the Voice comes from above, from between the two cherubim, down toward the Ark's cover. The cherubim do not speak. They do not move. They stand as fixed witnesses on either side of the space where the divine Word enters the world. Their facing inward is a posture of attention. They are pointed toward the conversation rather than away from it.

The Cherubim Spread Their Wings Above the Ark

The wings of the cherubim spread upward and cover the mercy seat. The targum notes that the tips of the wings touch, forming a canopy over the Ark below. The Ark holds the tablets. The tablets hold the covenant. The mercy seat covers the Ark. The cherubim spread over the mercy seat. The layers stack from the most material to the most immaterial: stone, gold, the carved figures of living creatures, and then open air where the Voice descends.

Each layer is a different kind of protection. The tablets need a container. The container needs a cover. The cover needs guardians. The guardians need to face the place of speech. Everything in the arrangement is pointing toward the moment when Moses enters the tent and hears the Voice coming from between the wings. The Mishkan is not furniture arranged for convenience. It is a physical argument about where God chooses to speak and what kind of approach makes that speech possible.

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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 30:6Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

The golden incense altar stood just outside the veil, not inside the Holy of Holies, but as close to it as any vessel of daily service could come. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan places the incense altar "before the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, where I will appoint My Word to be with thee" (Exodus 30:6), and with that one phrase the altar becomes something more than furniture. It becomes a threshold.

Why was incense the closest offering?

The bronze altar of sacrifice stood outside, in the courtyard. The showbread table and the menorah stood inside the Holy Place. But the incense altar alone was permitted to stand directly before the veil. The sages taught that this was because incense is the subtlest of offerings, no flesh, no blood, no grain, only fragrance. And fragrance, in Jewish mystical tradition, is what the soul perceives when the body can no longer follow. The Talmud in Berakhot 43b says that scent is the one pleasure of the world that only the soul enjoys.

So the incense altar marked the place where matter thinned out. The cloud that rose from it was not meant to feed anyone. It was meant to meet, to ascend the last few cubits to where the Memra waited above the kapporet, the mercy seat, between the wings of the cherubim.

Moses was told exactly where to put it. Not a cubit off. Not facing the wrong way. Before the veil, before the testimony, before the mercy seat. The precision was not pedantry. It was the architecture of a conversation, the geometry of the appointment where the Word promised to meet.

The Maggid learns: sometimes the most sacred offering is not what burns loudly, but what rises as fragrance, quiet, close, just a breath from the throne.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 30:29Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Once the anointing oil had been compounded and the vessels of the sanctuary had been touched with it, they were no longer ordinary. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan describes what happened to anyone not of the priestly tribes who dared to touch them: "of the rest of the tribes, whoever toucheth them shall be consumed by the fiery flame from before the Lord" (Exodus 30:29).

This is not the dry legal language of the Hebrew original. The targum inserts living fire, the same fiery flame that guarded the altar, now extended to every consecrated vessel. Table, menorah, ark, incense altar: all of them carried the charge.

What made the vessels so dangerous?

The sages of the Talmudic period (200-500 CE) wrestled with this. They understood that the vessels were objects, made of wood and metal. How could they burn someone? The answer they developed: the vessels were not dangerous in themselves. They were dangerous because of what they had become connected to. The anointing oil had tied them into a larger circuit, the Presence that filled the Holy of Holies. To touch a vessel improperly was to close a circuit that ran all the way to the Shekinah, and the voltage was more than a body could bear.

This is why the priests were trained so carefully. They knew where to stand, how to hold, when to step back. They were not immune to the fire. They had simply been taught to conduct it rather than resist it.

The Maggid takes the lesson: holy things are not dangerous because they are hostile. They are dangerous because they are real. The more alive something is, the more it rewards careful handling and punishes carelessness. Train your hands. Learn the steps. Then you too can hold fire without being burned.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 37:8Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

The golden cherubim that crowned the Ark of the Covenant were not two separate statues, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 37:8) insists. They were part of the same piece of gold. They were not separated from the mercy seat; but by the wisdom of the Spirit of prophecy, he made the kerubin on its two sides.

The Targum is resolving a technical puzzle. The Torah says Bezalel hammered the cherubim out of the mercy seat itself, meaning from the same slab of beaten gold. No welding, no attaching. One piece of metal, two faces, beaten into shape by a craftsman working under the ruach ha-kodesh.

The Targum attributes this feat specifically to the wisdom of the Spirit of prophecy. Regular craftsmanship could not accomplish it. You cannot hammer a flat slab of gold into two three-dimensional angelic figures that stand up on opposite ends of the slab without some part either snapping off or thinning to tearing. The Talmud says Bezalel only knew how because the Spirit of prophecy told his hands what to do.

Why face to face? The rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Batra 99a) read the cherubim's orientation as a weathervane of Israel's standing before God. When Israel did God's will, the cherubim faced each other. When Israel sinned, the cherubim turned away. The golden angels were a barometer of the covenant.

The Targum's detail, they were not separated from the mercy seat, has a theological resonance too. The cherubim are not floating above God's presence. They are part of the same piece. Guardians and mercy are one continuous substance in Jewish theology.

The takeaway: the holiest object in Judaism was not assembled. It was hammered out of a single block, with angels and mercy-seat inseparable. Some sacred things cannot be put together. They must be forged whole.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 37:9Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Above the Ark, where the Shekhinah rested, stood the two golden cherubim. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 37:9) describes them with a precision that borders on reverence: the kerubaia spread forth their wings, with their heads upward, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces were toward each other, over against the mercy seat were the faces of the kerubaia.

The Targum uses the Aramaic kerubaia, the angelic plural, to mark their status. These were not decorative birds. They were, in some mysterious sense, representatives of the angels who guard the throne of glory. The same word appears at the eastern gate of Eden, where cherubim stand with the flaming sword (Genesis 3:24). The same word appears in Ezekiel's vision of the divine chariot (Ezekiel 10). And here, on the Ark, they are present again, wings spread, faces turned toward each other.

Their posture is the Targum's focus. Heads upward, they look toward heaven, toward the source. Wings overshadowing, they protect what lies below, the kapporet, the mercy seat, the place where God's voice spoke to Moses (Exodus 25:22). Faces toward each other, they regard one another, not the worshipper, not even the high priest. Their attention is inward, sealed in mutual relationship.

The rabbis read this posture as a model of holy community. Holiness between two beings facing each other is stronger than holiness addressed to an onlooker. The cherubim were not performing devotion. They were in it, and the Shekhinah dwelt between them, between the two cherubim, as (1 Samuel 4:4) later phrases it.

The takeaway: the deepest holiness in Judaism happens between two beings turned toward each other. God's presence does not settle on a lone figure or a watching crowd. It settles in the space between two faces that regard each other in love.

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