HEBREW WORD STUDY – INWARD – LBAYITH  ל,בית   

Exodus 25:20: “And the cherubims shall stretch forth [their] wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces [shall look] one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.”

II Chronicles 3:13:  “The wings of these cherubims spread themselves forth twenty cubits: and they stood on their feet, and their faces [were] inward.”

I was reading the Talmud the other day in Bava Batra 99a.  Here the sages compare these two study verses.  Most modern English translations including the KJV say the faces of the cherubims were inward in II Chronicles 3:13.  However, The word is labyith or the word for house or dwelling.  The Talmud teaches it should be rendered as well. Their faces faced the walls, not each other. Labyith comes from the root word byith, the Lamed is a preposition unto or to.  Other uses for the word is curtains, protective covering,and walls. The cherubims faced the walls or coverings not each other. One other use is interior where translators stretched the word to mean inward.  This was done in an attempt to keep Exodus 25:20 and II Chronicles 3:13 from contradicting each other.  

The sages, however, see no contradiction. They teach that God actually moved the heads of the cherubims. You see II Chronicles is teaching about the building of Solomon’s Temple.  Note it is almost always referred to as “Solomon’s Temple” not “God’s Temple.”  You see, Solomon used copper where he should have used gold,  bronze instead of silver etc.  He built the temple on the backs of slaves and many other things about the temple were not God’s will. Somewhere along the line, he started to build a monument to himself.  Oh, he said it was God’s temple and he made sure people knew it was God’s temple but people knew better, it was Solomon’s temple and eventually, even he began to believe it.

That is why the Talmud teaches that the faces of the Cherubims turned away from each other and faced the walls, people began to worship a building a structure and the man leading the operation rather than God. Many ministers start off building a ministry, calling it God’s ministry, God’s buildings, God’s work but as it grows the focus seems to turn to the one building the ministry and the structures, he or she begins to like that attention and praise, particularly from the media. Of course, they must use their name in the media to help further God’s work. 

Like you I have seen too many ministries and structures fall apart like the second temple and go down in history as so and so’s college, church, structure and/or ministry.  Many times as funds run short there is panic and desperate moves to finance the ministry or building.  Solomon built his temple on the backs of slaves.  These were people who worked not to build a monument to God but who were under control of a powerful leader. How many ministries are built on the backs of people with small incomes who are promised blessings or even intimated by a powerful leader? 

I wonder how many churches, ministries, colleges have cherubims facing the labyith and not each other as God intended?