Texts in Conversation
Isaiah 6 gives the beings around God’s throne six wings for covering their faces and feet and for flying. The Apocalypse of Abraham echoes this arrangement in its four living creatures, joining Isaiah’s winged beings to Ezekiel’s throne bearers.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Isaiah 6:2
Hebrew Bible
1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord seated on a high, elevated throne. The hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs stood over him; each one had six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and they used the remaining two to fly. 3 They called out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! His majestic splendor fills the entire earth!” 4 The sound of their voices shook the door frames, and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 I said, “Woe to me! I am destroyed, for my lips are contaminated by sin, and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. My eyes have seen the king, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”
Apocalypse of Abraham 18:7
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
3 And as the fire raised itself up, ascending into the height, I saw under the fire a throne of fire, and, round about it all-seeing ones, reciting the song, and under the throne four fiery living creatures singing, 4 and their appearance was one, each one of them with four faces. 5 And such was the appearance of their faces, of a lion, of a man, of an ox, of an eagle. four heads [were upon their bodies] [so that the four creatures had sixteen faces]; 6 and each had six wings; from their shoulders, [and their sides] and their loins. 7 And with the (two) wings from their shoulders they covered their faces, and with the (two) wings which (sprang) from their loins they covered their feet, while the (two) middle wings they spread out for flying straightforward.
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Notes and References
“... The second way in which Revelation’s description of the h\ayyoµt
coheres with other Jewish interpretations is in the identification of the
h\ayyoµt or cherubim with the seraphim of Isaiah’s vision (Isa. 6:2–3).
Some Jewish exegetes did not conflate the cherubim and the seraphim
but treated them as two different orders of angelic beings (1 Enoch
61:10; 71:7; 2 Enoch 19:6;14 21:1; T. Adam 4:8; Apost. Const. 7.35.3;
8.12.27). Others, however, identified the two (Apoc. Ab. 18; b. H|ag. 13b;
Lev. Rab. 27:3). ...”
Bauckham, Richard
Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology
(p. 167) Baylor University Press, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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