Although, probably to varying degrees of success, people have made attempts at depicting them,1 no one knows for sure what either a cherub or a ‘wheel within a wheel’ looks like.
The descriptions we have about what they looked like can be found in places like Ezekiel chapters 1 and 10. In the answer to another question (‘What is a cherub?‘), the following visual characteristics were highlighted for the cherubim:
- a human likeness (Ezek. 1:5)
- four wings (v6)
- four faces (v6 — human; lion; ox; eagle: v10)
- straight legs (v7)
- soles, which sparkle like burnished bronze, like the soles of a calf’s foot (v7)
- human hands (v8)
There is less information about what the wheels looked like. They are described as a ‘wheel within a wheel’, with the rims full of eyes (Ezek. 1:15-16,18), but no other information is given.
Notes
A “cherub” is distinguished from a “deputy” (AGGELOS) in that the cherub is an beast of burden that lives in the sky whereas the deputies are men that live in the sky. Though the cherub has a human aspect they are not fully human in form as the “angels” are. Angels are DNA compatible with humans (because they successfully mated with the daughters of men in Gen 6 and the book of Enoch).
Hello WoundedEgo,
Thanks for the comment.
In regard to Genesis 6, see: http://bibleq.info/answer/3550/