Exodus 25:18
Exodus 25:1818Make two cherubim of hammered gold at the ends of the mercy seat,
JWs acknowledge the golden cherubim on the ark of the covenant but argue these were commanded by Jehovah for a specific purpose and were never objects of worship themselves. The distinction between God- commanded sacred art and human-initiated religious imagery is maintained — the cherubim were part of the divine design, not a precedent for Christians to create religious images.
records Jehovah commanding Moses to "make two cherubim of hammered gold" on the mercy seat of the ark. This is God himself ordering representational art of heavenly beings — in direct proximity to his own presence. If the second commandment () forbade all images of heavenly things, God contradicted his own law within five chapters. The same pattern continues: the tabernacle curtains bore woven cherubim (), Solomon's temple was filled with carved figures (, 7:25), and the bronze serpent was a God-commanded image that Jesus later used as a type of the cross (). The consistent biblical principle is that the problem is worship directed at images, not the existence of images. The Watchtower itself publishes illustrated depictions of Jesus in every issue of its magazines — representational art of a heavenly being by their own standard.