The name cannot possibly be connected with _sârâph,_ a snake (Sanscrit, _sarpa,_ Latin, _Serpens_); and to trace the word to a verb _sâraph_ in the sense of the Arabic 'sarafa ('sarufa), to tower high, to be exalted, or highly honoured (as Gesenius, Hengetenberg, and others have done), yields a sense that does not very strongly commend itself. On the other hand, to follow Knobel, who reads shârâthim, worshippers of God), and thus presents the Lexicon with a new word, and to pronounce the word _seraphim_ a copyist's error, would be a rash concession to the heaven-storming omnipotence which is supposed to reside in the ink of a German scholar. It is hardly admissible, however, to interpret the name as signifying directly spirits of light or fire, since the true meaning of _sâraph_ is not _urere_ (to burn), but _comburere_ (to set on fire or burn up). Umbreig endeavours to do justice to this transitive meaning by adopting the explanation "fiery beings," by which all earthly corruption is opposed and destroyed. The vision itself, however, appears to point to a much more distinctive and special meaning in the name, which only occurs in this passage of Isaiah. . . . If the fact that a seraph absolved the seer by means of this fire of love (vers. 6, 7) is to be taken as an illustrative example of the historical calling of the seraphim, they were the vehicles and media of the fire of divine love, just as the cherubim in Ezekiel were the vehicles and media of the fire of divine wrath. For just as in the case before us, a seraph takes the fire of love from the altar; so there, in Ezek. x. 6, 7, a cherub takes the fire of wrath from the throne-chariot. Consequently the cherubim appear as the vehicles and media of the wrath which destroys sinners, or rather the divine _doxa,_ with its fiery side turned towards the world; and the seraphim as the vehicles and media of the love which destroys sin, or of the same divine _doxa_ with its light side towards the world. . . . "Seraphic love" is the expression used in the language of the Church to denote the _ne plus ultra_ of holy love in the creature.--_Delitzsch._