Chapter 5. – The Cherubim – In Exodus by Fay Berry

Chapter 5 – The Cherubim – in Exodus

And so the first Passover was held by the Jewish slaves on the last day of their slavery to Egypt (Ex 12). They ate it with haste and plundered their captors and 600,000 of them left Egypt as a “mixed multitude” of Jew and Gentiel, with their animals and all that “pertained to them,” and at the ed of the four hundred and thirty years,”even the self-same day” all the hosts of God went out from the land of Egypt (Ex 12:41).
“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night (Ex 13:21). Here we meet the Cherubim again commanded by the Angel of the Lord, Michael the Archangel who was to travel with them through the wilderness until they finally came to the promised land. This is the same Cherubim who stood at the entrance to Eden to “keep the way of the tree of life,” the Cherubim that Adam and Even recognised only as a being with the appearance of lighting darting this way and that, and it had terrified them then as it did the children of Israel as they left Egypt to follow the Cherubim wherever it took them.
In the meantime, Pharaoh had once again repented his decision to “let my people go,” and he gathered his army to follow his escaping slaves and bring them back to their servitude (Ex 14:5). The Cherubim which had been travelling before the camp of Israel, now removed and went behind them (Ex 14:19), and Moses stretched forth his hand out over the sea that was blocking their forward path towards the promised land and all that night under the protection of the Cherubim, the waters banked up and a dry pathway was formed and the waters were divided. The Israelites passed over the Red Sea on dry land and the Egyptians following hard on their heels were drowned when Moses, safe on the other side, stretched his hand over the sea and the waters came again upon the Egyptian host, (Ex 14:26). “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” Moses had said, and this is God’s command to all his people from that time until now. It is something I say to myself on a daily basis when I don’t know what to do and how to choose a path for myself each day, as I travel through my personal wilderness, toward my “promised land.”
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel a song unto Yahweh,”for he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea. He has become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him, (Ex 15:2).