R.C. “But those which had been constructed in the Temple, which were over the mercy-seat of the Ark.”  Besides the two Cherubim of solid gold which Moses placed on the two ends of the Mercy-seat (Ex. xxxvii. 7 ff.), Solomon set “within the oracle” two Cherubim of olive wood overlaid with gold, ten feet high with outstretched wings overshadowing the Ark (1 Kings vi. 23–26; viii. 6, 7).  All these were either carried off or destroyed, when Nebuchadnezzar took away “all the treasures of the house of the Lord” and “cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, King of Israel, had made in the Temple of the Lord” (2 Kings xxiv. 13; 1 Esdras i. 54; 2 Esdras x. 22).  The Benedictine editor is concerned because Cyril has paid no attention to the strange fiction in 2 Maccabees ii. 4 that Jeremy the Prophet “commanded the Tabernacle and the Ark to go with him” to Mount Horeb, and there hid them, with the Altar of Incense, in a hollow cave, to remain “unknown until the time that God gathers His people again together.”