Speaking about Isaiah's call vision in ch. 6, Barry Bandstra says this:
With two wings, these Isaian seraphs flew. With two they covered their feet. These two are an enigma until we realize that feet is a euphemism (here as elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible) for genitals.Now that's what I like to hear.
If Bandstra is right, this is another interesting connection between the temple and the Garden. The idea of covering nakedness put together with the seraphs who guard the way into the Garden/presence of the Lord, the latter of which is woven and carved into the temple, puts the nakedness references of Gen 2 and 3 into a fascinating larger context.
Of course, if Seraphim have genitals that's another vote for reading Gen 6 as angelic beings having conjugal relations with human women.
O.K. I think I'm just about at the line right now. I'll refrain from stepping (further) over.
10 comments:
"stepping" over the line? Was that pun intended?
Why, whatever do you mean?
I'm all over Garden/Tabernacle/Temple biz, but why would a seraph need to cover his junk? Humans felt the need because of sin. These seraphs don't seem to be the fallen angel type (I could understand Lucifer having to cover his organ...takes me back to my fundmentalist childhood when I learned that rock music was from the devil, even if it was christian, and the devil was made of musical instruments).
"What is remarkable in this passage is that, while the seraphs cannot look upon God, the prophet Isaiah does, and yet he lives." Maybe that explains it--we humans can go buff while angels are stuck with the white robes and the wings.
Someone needs to write a seminal article on this one: "Where Angels Fear to Streak."
I think Barry Bandstra is spot on when he says that "feet" here is a euphemism. However, I'd say that the Seraphim more closely resembled the Egyptian uraus snakes (as argued by Othmar Keel) rather than Mesopotamian Sphinxes (which are obviously Keruvim).
If angels had sex with humans, why have they stopped.
pduggie: Why do you think they've stopped? :^)
Or, granting your point that they have, why not posit a "dispensation of sex with earthly women," somewhat akin to the "dispensation of multiple wives" from the era of David and Solomon?
Besides, Satan's bound. This is all just silly non-pre-mil talk. ;^)
Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.”
And when the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pushed against the wall and pressed Balaam's foot against the wall. So he struck her again.
Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. (wow)
Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you.
"Between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still; between her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell—dead."
tee hee
Wow. I have to say that I used to find the "40 years" passage comforting--now I find it the most depressing in the entire Bible!
"Besides, Satan's bound. This is all just silly non-pre-mil talk."
So pre-millenialists are BSDM types?
This is a facinating subject, On the sexual intercourse between angels and woman, we can get a hint as to why they did it and why they stopped in the book of Enoch. Cannonized scripture brings forth some great clues also. For one we see in one of the epistles of Peter that the angels who left their first estate was bound in hell, this particular GK word is found only once in the New Testament, it is the word Tartarus, which is said to be the lowest abyss of hell.
Concerning the Seraphs, theyu were known in the Hebraic language to be The Firey Ones, or Firey Serpants or Dragons. They had 6 wings, 6 is the # of man, with 2 they covered their face this speaks that they would take nothing away from the beauty that is in the Majesty of God, as for the feet, I would like to hear somemore insight.
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