Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Many Faces of the Cherubim (and what the Devil looks like)
Ezekiel 1, 10

Introduction
Imagine sitting on a hill, wondering about your life, when suddenly the heavens open, and you see creatures so otherworldly they defy description. Four faces on each of their heads, gleaming metal, fire, and a throne surrounded by lightning. That’s where Ezekiel’s story begins—and where we’re headed today.
The prophet Ezekiel sees something that very very few people in the Bible ever saw: a vision of God on His throne. In the very first chapter of the book, God appears before Ezekiel, attended to by these spiritual beings known as the cherubim. There are four of them, and each of the creatures has four faces. It says in
Ezekiel 1:10
As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.
So Ezekiel gets off to a pretty strange start. Like I said, that’s just the first chapter. And right off the bat, Ezekiel sees something that even almost no other prophet gets to see. And not only that, he gets to see it again. Ezekiel has another experience of God and the cherubim in
Ezekiel 10:14
And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was a human face, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.
So, there’s a slight difference there between the description of the cherubim in chapter 1 vs the description in chapter 10. In chapter 1, one of the faces was described as an ox. In chapter 10, it was called the face of a cherub.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to know why it changes from one chapter to the next. And along the way of exploring this question, we’ll actually discover the answer to another one: What does Satan look like?
It’s probably not a question you’ve ever dwelt on too long. You probably think I’m pretty weird for even asking it. But this is not a podcast for people who like talking about normal stuff in the Bible. This is a podcast for people who like to learn about weird stuff in the Bible.
So if that’s what you’re here for, turn to Ezekiel 1, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Ezekiel 1 vs Ezekiel 10
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about two things: why the description of the cherubim changes from Ezekiel 1 to Ezekiel 10, and then we’ll answer a second question: what does Satan look like?
You get two-for-one today. And perhaps that will make up for having no new episode last week. Since Christmas was on a Wednesday, I didn’t have a new one last week. I did re-release an older episode as a rebroadcast, my interview with Bill Scott. I wondered if it would be wise to release an interview again that was only a few months old, but the audience here grew so much since then that actually more people listened to it the second time than they did the first time, so thank you all very much for being listeners. I’m so thankful that you’re here and that you give me the privilege of being your Bible teacher for 20 or 30 minutes here in a new year. That’s not something I take lightly and I’m grateful for each and every one of you.
Now let’s get into today’s topics, starting with the cherubim. We’ll go back to Ezekiel 1. At the start of Ezekiel’s story, he is sitting on the side of a hill, wondering what his place in this world is. Ezekiel was a Levite and had trained his whole life to be a priest, a role that started once you reached the age of 30. And now here he is, on his 30th birthday, and he has no temple to minister in. Shortly before he turned 30, he was kidnapped and taken captive by the Babylonians. He was shipped off to a village called Tel Abib, almost a thousand miles away from everything he knew.
And so Ezekiel is sitting here on the side of this hill, thinking about how the one thing he trained his whole life to do has just been ripped away form him, wondering what his purpose in life is, whether God just forgot all about him- when all of a sudden, God appears right in front of him. God appears, but right before God does, there are these four creatures known as the cherubim that Ezekiel sees first. Here is his description
In Ezekiel 1:4-11
4 As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. 5 And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, 6 but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. 7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: 9 their wings touched one another. Each one of them went straight forward, without turning as they went. 10 As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle. 11 Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies.
Some would refer to cherubim as angels, and that’s OK to call them angels, but the Hebrew doesn’t use the word “angels” to describe them. It calls them Living Creatures or Cherubim. And these are very strange; they don’t look like the precious moments figures that your mom kept on the fireplace. There’s really nothing precious about them at all; they’re weird.
They had hooves like a calf, two wings apiece, and four faces on their heads. Not four heads.They each had one head with four faces. They had one face looking in each of the four directions.
And on their four faces, there was the face of a human, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle.
Now, a note here on the Hebrew in Ezekiel 1, in the word choice he used: translators and commentators note that Ezekiel sounds very freaked out in his description of these creatures. He was caught very much off-guard by this whole thing. The Hebrew reads as if Ezekiel, with his heart pounding in his chest, immediately scribbled down the details of this vision as quickly as he could before he had a chance to forget anything.
It sounds like he’s overwhelmed. He’s not quite sure what to call them. The vocabulary actually isn’t all that clear.
But then Ezekiel is given another vision in chapter 10. By this point, Ezekiel’s gotten pretty used to visions and conversations with God and entering the spirit realm. And when he describes what he sees in Ezekiel 10, commentators note that he sounds a lot calmer, more particular, and that he understands more of what he’s looking at.
Now he calls them the cherubim. Cherubim is the plural form of the word “cherub.” And so it says in
Ezekiel 10:9-15
9 And I looked, and behold, there were four wheels beside the cherubim, one beside each cherub, and the appearance of the wheels was like sparkling beryl. 10 And as for their appearance, the four had the same likeness, as if a wheel were within a wheel. 11 When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went, but in whatever direction the front wheel faced, the others followed without turning as they went. 12 And their whole body, their rims, and their spokes, their wings, and the wheels were full of eyes all around—the wheels that the four of them had. 13 As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing “the whirling wheels.” 14 And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was a human face, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.
15 And the cherubim mounted up. These were the living creatures that I saw by the Chebar canal.
So it’s a little bit more detailed in chapter 10 as opposed to chapter 1. He is more objective and clinical in his delivery. In chapter 1, Ezekiel is overwhelmed, unsure of what to make of what he’s seeing. By chapter 10, he’s more composed and more confident in describing these strange creatures.
And there’s one minor change this time around in the description of their faces. In chapter one, it was an eagle, a man, a lion and an ox. This time, it was an eagle, a man, a lion and (quote) “the face of a cherub.”
Now, what is the face of a cherub? Well, I can’t 100% say, except that it must have looked very very similar to the face of an ox or a cow, some kind of what we call a bovine creature. The bovine classification of animal are those like cattle, buffalo, bison, yaks and similar creatures. You would of course be familiar with them, because everybody’s got a water buffalo.
And their faces aren’t the only bovine features they had. They also had hoofed feet like a calf. Straight legs and hoofed feet.
Cherubim are similar and yet distinct from a creature that also shows up around God’s throne in Isaiah 6, the Seraphim. The Seraphim have six wings and they aren’t the exact same as the Cherubim, but they seem to have a similar role of protecting the presence of God. Honestly, it’s probably us who need protected from the presence of God; I’m not sure that God needs bodyguards. But that’s a whole other topic I don’t have time to get into today.
The Cherubim show up a few times throughout the Bible. The first time is when a cherub is placed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to kick out Adam and Eve. Cherubim were also crafted or engraved on the tabernacle and temple furnishings, including the Ark of the Covenant. God is said to be enthroned upon the cherubim in the Psalms, and that’s how He arrives in Ezekiel’s vision. It seems that the Cherubim are controlling the wheels of God’s portable throne. They also get mentions in Isaiah and Hebrews, but of all the places that they come up in the Bible, they are never given as deep of a description as they are here in Ezekiel.
So I would say that we should understand the cherubim as very unique creatures of the spiritual realm. Many would call them angels, but the Bible never calls them that. The Hebrew word “malak” is the word for angel, and that refers to the spirit beings who show up but just look like ordinary people. They aren’t mentioned as having wings, and malak never comes up around cherubim. The cherubim are something distinct, with a purpose of either driving God’s throne or guarding God’s presence. When Adam and Eve sinned, they could no longer dwell in God’s presence. Man was now sinful, and God is holy, so they were removed from God’s presence, and a cherub was placed there probably to protect them more than to protect God.

The Face of satan
So that’s cherubim for you, but let’s turn to examining our second question of the day: what this has to do with Satan and his appearance. And perhaps you’re wondering: this has been a nice little exploration of cherubim, but why do you have to go and bring the devil into it?
Well, because of something else Ezekiel says. In chapter 28 of his book, Ezekiel gives a message directly to the prince of darkness himself, and this is what he says:
Ezekiel 28:12-13
You were the signet of perfection,
    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
    every precious stone was your covering,
And it goes on for a moment describing all of the beauty that Satan had. He was apparently a very visually appealing creature. And then it says this
In verses 14 and 15
You were an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
    in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.
So Satan- I’m sure you caught it there- was a cherub. Satan was one of the cherubim. So Satan had the face of…a cherub. Satan had the face of a cherub. And what is the face of a cherub?
Well, we saw it there in Ezekiel 1 and 10. The face of a cherub looks like the face of an ox. Maybe there are some subtle differences but they’re very very similar. So it follows that Satan had a calflike or bovine-like face.
Now, I also believe that there is a shapeshifter aspect to Satan. He is said to have transformed himself into a serpent in Genesis 3. He is described as a dragon in Revelation. And II Corinthians warns us that he masquerades as an angel of light. So I’m not claiming that he always looks the same way. The cherubim themselves have many faces, and as we’ve been studying on this podcast, Satan claims a lot of identities himself. But we can say with some certainty that in his natural form, at a minimum, he would have the face of a cherub, since he was a cherub.
And understanding that will break open a few other mysterious or weird things in the Bible. If you go back just a few episodes ago to when I was talking about Zeus, I mentioned that I believe Zeus was a Greek representation of the devil. But not only that; I went through the history of where Zeus-worship came from, and traced it all the way back to an Old Testament deity named Baal. B-a-a-l. Baal was also known as Beelzebub, and I tied together I Kings 1 and Matthew 12 to explain that, and it says there in Matthew 12- as well as Mark 3- that Beelzebub or Beelzebul- is Satan himself, the prince of demons. So worship of Baal was actually worship of the devil.
If you’ve read the Old Testament, you are familiar with the practice of Baal-worship showing up left and right. This seems to be the predominant deity that the Israelites were tempted to worship in ancient Israel, but also the god of the Canaanites who were also always causing problems for the Israelites.
But have you ever seen a picture of what Baal looked like?
Baal was sometimes depicted like a man, but he usually looked like a person with a bull-like head. Sometimes he was depicted as just a bull or calf, but usually he had a man-like body and a bull-like head, with horns. So you read all throughout the Old Testament that the Israelites were drawn to worship Baal, and Baal was often set up as the antithesis of Yahweh. There were prophets of God and prophets of Baal.
We also see a problem with Israel worshipping golden idols of calfs, which you see most famously right after the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus. You also see it right after Solomon’s death in I Kings 12, when Jeroboam takes the throne and sets up some calf idols.
Verses 28 and 29 say
So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.
Now, what is with the spiritual draw of people to worship cows- either these golden calves or in the figure of Baal? Well, I think I have an answer: I think the spiritual yearning is because Satan is trying to get the Israelites to worship something that looks like himself. I think Satan has a bull-like face, and so he tries to get the Israelites to worship bull-like creatures. It’s actually a worship of Satan himself. He somehow draws or urges people to worship an image of what he looks like.
Once you understand that, suddenly we see why, of all things, the idols that Israel were struggling with were these idols of bovine creatures.

Housekeeping/Mailbag
And I’m going to leave it there for today because I don’t want this episode to drag on for too long. Next time on the podcast, I’m going to launch into some random topics. They actually aren’t random; they’re preparation about what I’m going to talk about over the next few months.
Sometimes I talk about things because they’re really just preparation for what I “really” want to talk about down the road. Like for example, I saved a lot of time today in explaining what Satan looked like because I already explained that Satan is Baal in the Zeus episode a few weeks ago. So I was able to build on that this time, and we’ll have some building blocks to set up over the next few weeks here in January to build on what I want to talk about in February.
And we’ll start next week with a very weird phrase that comes up in Malachi: “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.”
It sounds a little bit sketchy to say that God hates anyone, and yet, Malachi says God hated Esau. And Romans 9 says it again. So what did Malachi mean by that? It’s a really weird verse because God tells us to love everyone, yet it says God hates someone. What’s up with that? Well, make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it, and all of the weird stuff I have for you to hear about in 2025.
In the next few months, I plan to also start a series looking at the book of Enoch right alongside the Bible and seeing where it lines up with Scripture, and we’ll go through it one chapter at a time. So I’m very excited to talk about that soon as well.
And if you’re a fan of the Book of Ezekiel, I’ll mention this, too, because we started in that book today: I also do a second podcast all about Ezekiel. You can find it by searching: “The Book of Ezekiel: A Cross References Bible Study.” Actually, it was my first podcast; I’ve been doing the Ezekiel podcast since 2021, going through that book very slowly, and I’m just about to wrap it all up in the next few months. I’m up to chapter 40. So if you’re ever wanting to go deeper into any aspect of the book of Ezekiel, I invite you to search out that archive of episodes, because I have covered the whole book verse by verse by verse.

Closing Thoughts
In closing, just one more interesting tidbit about the four faces of the Cherubim. Many Bible commentators- and I agree with them- connect the four faces of the Cherubim to the four Gospels. They say that each of the qualities of the animals to whom these faces belong are weirdly similar to the qualities of the Gospel stories and how they uniquely portray Jesus.
For example, Matthew presents Jewish as the King of Israel, the King of the Jews, and so some see that as correlating to the lion, the king of the animal kingdom. As an example, Matthew’s genealogy gives the kingly line of Jesus, from Abraham through David to his father, Joseph. A lion is of course an animal that is often associated with royalty or majesty.
Mark presents Jesus as the servant. It is the gospel with the least of Jesus’ words and the majority of Jesus’ actions. It’s a very action-oriented Gospel, and so some correlate this to the ox, which is a service-animal. And Mark is the Gospel that has no genealogy, just as a servant would have no genealogy.
The Book of Luke is said to correspond to the face of the man, because Luke goes the deepest into the humanity of Jesus, and has a particular emphasis on Jesus’ interactions with people. The significance of what it means that God became man. Luke’s genealogy goes all the way from the first man- Adam- to his mother- the biological human he descended from.
And then the Book of John has a different focus: the divinity of Jesus. John’s genealogy begins, “in the beginning was the Word,” emphasizing the eternal nature of who Jesus was, the fact that though He was now a man, He was always God. And so many say that the eagle corresponds to this.
Now, there may be something to that theory or not. It makes sense to me, but you can take it or leave it if it doesn’t make sense to you. But one reason I like it is that it takes some of these quote-unquote random things like the four faces of the cherubim and it ties them into other aspects of Scripture. And now when I read my Bible, it makes those things less random- and less weird.
And keep in mind: the Bible is not weird. WE are weird, because we don’t know about what the cherubim were and how their appearance connects a lot of other dots throughout the Bible. But now we do. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.