Cherub
Cherub is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq. Known today as Babylon. It appears across 2 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
Cherub was not a city in the conventional sense but appears in the Old Testament as a place name referring to a location in Babylonia from which exiles returned to Judah following the decree of Cyrus. In Ezra 2:59 and its parallel in Nehemiah 7:61, Cherub is listed alongside Tel-melah and Tel-harsha as a region from which certain Jewish returnees could not demonstrate their Israelite ancestry: "They searched for their family records, but they could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean." The passage thus highlights Cherub as a Babylonian resettlement zone where Jewish identity had become genealogically uncertain during the long decades of exile. The name may echo the famed city of Babylon and its surrounding settlements, where Jewish exiles were housed and assimilated to varying degrees. The emphasis on genealogical verification in Ezra-Nehemiah reflects the post-exilic community's intense concern with maintaining covenant identity.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The precise location of Cherub in Babylonia remains unidentified with certainty. It is mentioned only in the context of the Babylonian exile and return, and no corresponding Babylonian toponym has been definitively matched to it. The coordinates associated with it near ancient Babylon suggest a Babylonian resettlement district in the vicinity of the Euphrates floodplain in modern southern Iraq. The broader Babylon region has been extensively excavated since the nineteenth century, with the German Oriental Society conducting major campaigns at Babylon itself from 1899 to 1917. Cuneiform archives from Nippur and Babylon have confirmed substantial Jewish communities in the region during the sixth and fifth centuries BC.
Verse Appearances (2)
Sources: ISBE Encyclopedia · OpenBible Geocoding (CC BY) · Pleiades Gazetteer View all →