And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it.
All Commentaries on Exodus 25:17 Go To Exodus 25
Richard Challoner
AD 1781
A propitiatory: a covering for the ark: called a propitiatory, or mercy seat, because the Lord, who was supposed to sit there upon the wings of the cherubims, with the ark for his footstool, from thence shewed mercy. It is also called the oracle, ver. 18 and 20; because from thence God gave his orders and his answers.