THE MERKAVAH

THE origins of the Merkavah concept lie in the Chariot Throne of the cherubim, whose divine pattern or prototype was shown to Moses in heaven and whose first representation in a cultic context is as ‘two cherubim of gold’, with outstretched wings, mounted on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant in the desert sanctuary. In the Holy of Holies (devir) of Solomon's Temple, two gold-plated cherubim shielded the cover of the Ark with their wings; their appearance, revealed to David in a vision as a divine pattern, is described in the parallel passage in Chronicles, which explicitly links the cherubim with the heavenly Chariot Throne: ‘for the pattern of the chariot—the cherubim—those with outspread wings screening the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord’. The various traditions that pictured the cherubim as screening the Ark differ in their particulars: some place them above the cover of the Ark, others have them standing before it; common to all is the fact that their four wings touched. The divinely patterned chariot of the cherubim in the First Temple's Holy of Holies, the supposed throne of the Deity or site of his revelation in the Temple, did not survive the destruction, but lived on in mystical memory, which linked its cosmic prototype with its ritual meaning, and was perpetuated in prophetic and priestly traditions and in liturgical testimony. In these traditions, the very word merkavah became a symbolic concept expressive of the Holy of Holies and the Temple, both as a whole and in detail; it figured both in the divine prototype of the Temple (the supernal Heikhalot and their angelic cult), and in the memory of its earthly archetype (the Temple and its priests); its roots lay in the numinous foundations of an ancient ritual tradition that forged a bond between heaven and earth.