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Bizarrely, the lost precursor to this text appears to have found its way into Greek literature. Compare Xenophanes, fragment 24, “He sees everything, he knows everything, he hears everything.” On the debt of Xenophanes and other pre-Socratic philosophers to the ancient Near East, see M.L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
The received text continues “or good,” but this is simply a gloss by a copyist who knew a variant, “he knows if you’ve been good,” itself a corruption influenced by the presence of “good” in the following line. Note that my reconstructed version has a more regular meter (3:3:3) than the canonical rendition.
The image of cherubim as pudgy toddlers reflects classical depictions of the spirits of Love and has no basis in Near Eastern iconography. Scholars agree that cherubs were hybrid beasts, winged lions with human or animal heads. They symbolized the power of the storm. See Albright, “What Were the Cherubim?” Biblical Archaeologist 1 (1938), pp. 1–3, and the accompanying illustrations.
