The Hebrews understood these celestial beings as having the form which we attribute to angels—a glorified human appearance, but with the addition of wings. They are spoken of as bearing the throne of the Almighty through the clouds (“He rode upon a cherub, and did fly”), and in Psalm xviii. 11 he is also represented as sitting upon them. In Ezekiel i. and x. they are said to be of a very composite form, combining with the human shape the face of a cherub (whatever that may have been), a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. It has been supposed that Ezekiel was indebted to Assyro-Babylonian imagery for the details of the cherubic creatures that he describes, but it may safely be said that, though the sculptures furnish us with images of divine creatures in the form of a man with the face of an eagle, or having a modification of a lion’s head, and bulls and lions with the faces of men, there has never yet been found a figure provided with a wheel for the purpose of locomotion, and having four heads, like those of which the prophet speaks. We may, therefore, safely conclude, that Ezekiel applied the word _kerûb_ (cherub) to the creatures that he saw in his vision, because that was the most suitable word he could find, not because it was the term usually applied to things of that kind. It is hardly likely that the guardians of the entrance into the earthly Paradise and the creatures that bore up the throne of the Almighty were conceived as being of so complicated a form as the cherubim of Ezekiel. Whatever doubt may exist as to the original form of this celestial being, the discussion of the origin of the Hebrew word _kerûb_ may now be regarded as finally settled by the discovery of the Assyro-Babylonian records. It is undoubtedly borrowed from the Babylonian _kirubu_, a word meaning simply “spirit,” and conceived as one who was always in the presence (_ina kirib_) of God, and formed from the root _qarābu_, “to be near.” The change from _q_ (qoph) to _k_ (kaph) is very common in Babylonian, and occurs more frequently before _e_ and _i_, hence the form in Hebrew, _kerûb_ (cherub—the translators intended that _ch_ should be pronounced as _k_) for _qerûb_ (which the translators would have transcribed as _kerub_). Originally the Assyro-Babylonian word _kirubu_ seems to have meant something like “intimate friend,” or “familiar,” as in the expression _kirub šarri_, “familiar of the king,” mentioned between “daughter of the king,” and “the beloved woman of the king.” An illustration of its extended meaning of “spirit,” however, occurs in the following lines from “the tablet of Good Wishes”— “In thy mouth may there be perfection of speech (_lû asim dababu_); In thine eye may there be brightness of sight (_lû namir niṭlu_); In thine ear may there be a spirit of hearing” (_lû_ KIRUB _nišmû_, lit. ‘a cherub of hearing’).”