Esther J. Hamori, God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible (Broadleaf Books, 2023), 65-66.
Divine guardians are effective because they represent a real threat. Sometimes this means they must serve as soldiers for their divine commander, like the hybrid monsters of Tiamat’s army. As guardians of the gateways, the cherubim prevented the havoc created by unsanctioned contact between realms as long as they could. But now [in Ezekiel 11] it has come, the storm when divine chaos and human chaos meet.
It seems for a time that we might hope the cherubim would protect us from the wrath of God. Didn’t they perch over the ark in part to keep something in? This is how the story was supposed to end. But those were only statues, after all, able to do no more than symbolize the danger triggered by illegitimate contact. What they ward off eventually breaks through. Ezekiel witnesses the abominations in the temple, right there where the stormfronts meet. God responds with complete destruction, and the cherubim do their job. They’ve stood guard for God, and now they evacuate him, turning to fire on the perpetrators as they go, like a divine Secret Service shielding a brutal leader. This is the horrific reminder that the cherubim’s role of guarding against passage between realms didn’t mean they were neutral. They have always been in God’s employ.
The Amateur Exegete 