What Does Exodus 25:5 Mean?

"You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth. And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be." The mercy seat (Hebrew: kapporet, the covering/atonement piece) is the cover of the ark and the tabernacle's most theologically dense single object.

The Hebrew root kapar (to cover/atone) connects the kapporet directly to the atonement language: the covering of the ark is the atonement-covering. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest sprinkles blood "before the mercy seat" and "on the mercy seat" (Leviticus 16:14-15): the place where blood is applied to cover Israel's sin.

The two golden cherubim whose wings overshadow the mercy seat are the divine throne's guardian figures: cherubim flank the divine presence in Genesis 3:24 (guarding Eden's tree of life), and the cherubim throne-imagery appears in Isaiah 37:16 ("Enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God"), Ezekiel 10 (the cherubim carrying the divine throne-chariot), and Revelation 4:6-8 (the four living creatures around the throne). The ark with cherubim is YHWH's earthly throne: the "mercy seat" between the cherubim is where YHWH says he will "meet with you" and "speak with you" (verse 22). The innermost sanctuary is the divine throne room.

Paul uses the kapporet language as the interpretive key for the atonement in Romans 3:25: "God put forward [Christ] as a hilasterion (mercy seat/propitiation) by his blood." The mercy seat where blood was applied on the Day of Atonement to cover Israel's sins is the type of which Christ's cross is the antitype: Christ is the mercy seat in his own person: the place where God and humanity meet, where the blood of atonement is applied, where divine wrath against sin is covered.

The gold kapporet in the wilderness tabernacle's innermost room is the most concentrated pre-figuration of the theology of Christ's atoning death in the entire Old Testament.