The Philistines fought, and Israel was struck, and they fled every man to his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.
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).