Woe to us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods? these are the gods that struck the Egyptians with all manner of plagues in the wilderness.
Ancient Near Eastern artists sometimes pictured a king sitting on a throne supported on either side by a cherub, which the artist represented as a winged lion (sphinx) with a human head. [Note: W. F. Albright, "What Were the Cherubim?" Biblical Archaeologist 1:1 (1938):1-3.] This may have been the image of the Lord of hosts (armies) "who sits above the cherubim" that the writer had in mind here (1 Samuel 4:4).