2. This, and the root rum (lift up) [in the word eranzah, an offering] helps one to understand the heave-offering.
18-21. With regard to the cherubim; in Gen. 3, they are set to maintain, as instruments of holy, sovereign, guardian power, the way of the tree of life against sinful man. They are instruments of judicial holiness maintaining it against inroad; it is a known supposed power, eth hakk'ruvim (the cherubim). Next, the mercy-seat was the throne of God in the holiest—the blood made propitiation there, but it was the place of the throne—of divine righteousness. Gold, silver, brass were divine righteousness in its intrinsic qualities—its stability of purpose—so securing His place and people—and in spiritual acting, energy in accomplishments, in man, or in connection with what it had actually to deal with humanly, not as judging man, for then it must be gold, but as displayed in work in man.
The Cherubim were out of the gold of the mercy-seat, i.e., they were instruments to sustain the Majesty of divine righteousness—the throne. They were not that righteousness—that was marked by the mercy-seat itself—but they were the instruments to maintain the majesty and expression of it, when God dealt in it with the creature as such. We find further that in Ezekiel they had the faces of a man, an eagle, a lion, and a cherub, again a man, an eagle, a lion, and an ox; the living creatures had those of a man, an eagle, a lion and an ox; Rev. 4:7. But in 1 Kings 7:29, we have lions, oxen, and Cherubim; in Ezek. 41:18, 19, they have two faces—a young man, and a lion, but this was half on the door. In Ezek. 1, they have four wings and straight feet like oxen's feet, and hands under their wings; here in this chapter (Ex. 25) we have the faces of the two cherubim looking to the mercy-seat, and wings joining at top; in 2 Chron. 3 the faces towards the house, and wings stretched out touching the sides of the house and each other—here God sat, and will sit as on earth—from hence Moses heard a voice when he went in; Num. 7: 89; 1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2; 2 Kings 19: 15; 1 Chron. 13:6; Psalm 80:1; Psa. 99 I.
It is His place and throne of Majesty, where He allows nothing contrary to it (see Isa. 37:16), but where He dwells among His people, in the place of glory, because He has set His throne there, and governs them, and speaks to them there—has His palace and throne there—though He may dwell in a tent, yet unchanged there, in the same Majesty. But on the cry of His people, He rides—comes, in the same Majesty, intolerant of evil, and in the Sovereign power of judgment;
but that is deliverance, and hence, note, He puts blood on the door posts, He draws out of many waters—hence the very foundations of the earth are discovered—hence He hears, though it be Israel's deliverance, out of His holy temple, the place of His terrible, royal Majesty, "In his temple does every one speak of his honor"—what a wonderful thing that He should ride forth in majesty! No wonder redemption is such a thing! and that Christ must have gone so low, being under the blow and dealing, through grace, of this Majesty—for where should blood be found to put upon the door posts? But study this Psalm (2 Sam. 22) and see how far it is the deliverance of the Lord, under the power of death, the enemy, by the visitation of this Majesty. In 1 Chron. 28:18, it is "the chariot of the Cherubim."
In Ezek. 1, we learn that they "had the likeness of a man," "brightness," "coals of fire," "lightning"—we recognize the display of 2 Sam. 22
22. This is the apostolic office of Christ, or rather prophetic—Christ is speaking from the Father, and ordering all things in the embodying of His Church; yet as risen and so speaking from heaven, which is the proper order of ministration in the mystically formed body. Our Lord was, in fact, speaking from heaven, when in the body, the words of God, from the Father within the veil; as the Jehovah of the Church, He did give forth His commandments, apostolically, by the hands of those whom He sent in this office. See chapter 29: 42.