Ezekiel chapter 1 talks about four Cherubim. In v.10 he said that the four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side: and they had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four also had the face of an eagle. Then in v.14 of chapter 10, it said that every one had four faces, the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. And the cherubim were lifted up. These were the living creatures that I saw by the river of Chebar.
I just want to know if they are talking about the same angels, because from what I read in chapter 28 it seems as it was Satan and I am a little confused. Help me out.
Cherub is an untranslated Hebrew word that means divine steed, because one of their jobs is to transport the throne of God. (Psalm 18:10)
Most scholars believe that Ezekiel 28:12-19 is a reference to Satan. In the passage we’re told that Satan is a cherub, and in fact was in charge of the other cherubim before he rebelled.
In Rev. 4 John mentions the same four faces as Ezekiel, but allocates only one to each cherub, which he called living creatures. Isaiah 6 gives another description but Isaiah called them seraphim. (In Hebrew, adding the letters im makes a word plural so the plural for cherub is cherubim.) In any case they all describe the same four beings, guardians of the throne of God.
By the way, I haven’t ever found a good explanation as to why Ezekiel used an ox to describe one of the faces in chapter 1 and then a cherub in chapter 10. The fact that all the cherubim faces are everywhere described as resembling the faces of other beings, and no where is a cherub face described, leads me to believe that it’s some kind of a copyist’s error.