Exodus 25:17-20
Of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubim
The figures are not attached, they are part of the lid. Their faces are toward each other and toward the covering.
Objects of the Bible
The mercy seat
A lid, with the law underneath it and blood on top of it once a year.
It is made of pure gold, not overlaid, and its dimensions match the top of the ark exactly, because it is the ark’s lid. Two cherubim of beaten work stand at the two ends, of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubim, so the whole thing is one piece. Their faces look toward each other and downward, toward the lid, and their wings stretch over it. What they are looking at is the covering over the testimony.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The mercy seat
- 01
- 02
Exodus 25:22
There I will meet with thee
The stated location of the meeting is above a lid and between two gold figures, over a box containing a law that has already been broken once.
- 03
Leviticus 16:2
That he come not at all times
Aaron is told plainly that the reason for the restriction is that he will die, and that a cloud will appear upon the mercy seat.
- 04
Leviticus 16:12-14
The cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat
He goes in with coals and incense first, so that the smoke arrives before he does, and then sprinkles the blood seven times.
- 05
Hebrews 9:5
The cherubims of glory shadowing the mercy seat
The letter lists the furniture and then declines to go into detail, of which we cannot now speak particularly, and turns to what it was for.
Why it matters
The promise made about it is the point of the whole tent: there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim. And once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, the high priest goes in with a censer of coals and two handfuls of incense so that the cloud may cover the mercy seat that he die not, and sprinkles blood upon it and before it seven times. The law is inside the box and the blood is on the lid, and the meeting happens above both.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
