SERAPHIM. In the vision of Isaiah vi. the throne of God is surrounded by seraphim,—figures apparently human (ver. 6), but with six wings, which constantly proclaim the trisagion. The seraphim are not again mentioned in the Bible; but in later Jewish theology they are taken to be a class of angels. As the whole vision of Isaiah is symbolical, the seraphim also are in this connexion symbolical figures, aiding the delineation of Jehovah’s awful holiness. But the imagery is probably borrowed from some popular conception analogous to that of the Cherubim (q.v.). The name is sometimes explained to mean “lofty ones,” after the Arabic sharufa (Gesenius); but if it has a Hebrew etymology it must signify “burning ones” (“consuming,” not “fiery”), so that in Isaiah’s vision the seraphim will mean the same thing as the “devouring fire” of God’s holiness (Isa. xxxiii. 14). But this, again, is a spiritual interpretation of the old Hebrew conception that Jehovah appears in the thunderstorm (Judges v. 4; Ps. xviii., xxix.) escorted by thunderbolts (resheph, Hab. iii. 5). Among the Phoenicians Resheph is a god (C.I.S., i. 38), probably identical with the Arabian divine archer Kozah, who shoots lightnings. In prophetic monotheism such mythological conceptions could only survive as personifications of the natural phenomena attending a theophany....