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Bible Q

What did a cherub and a ‘wheel within a wheel’ look like?

Answered by . April 8, 2011 - 3:27 am

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

1. See the following examples: 1, 2, 3.

2 Replies to “What did a cherub and a ‘wheel within a wheel’ look like?”

  1. 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).