What is the Ark of the Covenant?
What was the ark of the covenant? You’ve heard of it. You’ve read of it. Maybe you even saw it in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but what was it really? What did it look like? And why was it so important? In the desert, after the Exodus from Egypt, the Lord told Moses to make a ceremonial ark or aron – a wooden chest – as a sign of the covenant made at Mount Sinai.[1] The ark was made of acacia wood—a box within a box within a box—a metre long, and overlaid with gold.[2] On top was a solid-gold cover called the kapporet , where two golden keruvim or ‘cherubim’ faced each other, wing-tips touching. WHAT IS A KERUV? The keruv or cherub is a being whose general type is well known to us from ancient eastern iconography. It was not a winged man; much less a little flying putto or baby boy . Rather it was a being combining human characteristics with those of fierce animals and birds, and representing a solar or stellar deity. The best-known example is the great man-headed lion t...