Flaming sword (mythology)

A flaming sword is a sword which is glowing with a flame which is produced by some supernatural power. Flaming swords have existed in legends and myths for thousands of years. According to the Bible, a flaming sword (להט החרב lahat chereb or literally "flame of the whirling sword" להט החרב המתהפכת lahaṭ haḥereb hammithappeket) was entrusted to the cherubim by God to guard the gates of Paradise after Adam and Eve were banished (Genesis 3:24). Scholars have variously interpreted the sword as a weapon of the cherubim, as lightning, as a metaphor, as an independent divine being, or even as a figurative description of bladed chariot wheels. In Kabbalah, the flaming sword represents the order which the sefirot were created in, also known as “the path of the flaming sword.” Eastern Orthodox tradition (as expressed in the Lenten Triodion) says that after Jesus was crucified and resurrected, the flaming sword was removed from the Garden of Eden, making it possible for humanity to re-enter Paradise. Dumah is an angel mentioned in Rabbinical literature and popular in Yiddish folklore. Isaac Bashevis Singer's Short Friday (1964), a collection of stories, mentions Dumah as a "thousand-eyed angel of death, armed with a flaming sword". The sword is otherwise associated with various angels, such as the archangel Uriel, Camael or Jophiel. The ancient Gnostic codex On the Origin of the World predicts that the kings under the archons will be drunken from the flaming sword during the end times. In Norse mythology, the weapon wielded by the giant Surtr is referred to as a "flaming sword" (loganda sverð) by Snorri Sturluson in Gylfaginning 4, of the Prose Edda. Snorri immediately afterwards quotes a stanza from his poetic source, (Völuspá 52), where it is stated that Surt has fire with him, and that his sword shines with the "sun of the gods of the slain". However, it has been argued that the poem might be stressing the fiery glare of Surtr himself more than the sword. The relevant kenning from the quoted poem, svigi lævi ("destruction of twigs"), is usually interpreted to mean "fire".