Part
3
Numbers
21 presents yet again a familiar scenario.
In response to the people’s accusations against
God, verse 6 says the LORD sent [xlv shalach]
fiery [Prs saraph] serpents [vxn nachash] among the people, they bit [Kvn nashak] the people and much [br rab] of the people of Israel died [twm muwth].
In
response, the people again go to Moses, who goes to the LORD.
8 And
the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole:
and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh [har ra'ah] upon it, shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent [vxn nachash] of brass [tvxn n@chosheth], and put it upon a pole, and
it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld [jbn nabat] the serpent of brass, he lived.
If
you wonder, as did I, about the serpent on the pole and any relation to the
caduceus, it would appear that the caduceus is a later figure, of two snakes
and wings. It was Hermes’ staff and came to symbolize wealth and commerce. The
other snake-on-a-stick is the rod of Asclepias, which had only one snake.
Asclepius was a god associated with healing and medicinal arts. Did one culture
borrow from another? Perhaps. [I, of course, think it was original with God and Moses.]
In
any case, the LORD instructed Moses to make the symbol. The words for “serpent”
and “brass” might be a pun or perhaps a memory aid. It might, however, just be
what it is and the words happened to go together that way. (Exegetically, we
can ask the questions but don’t necessarily conclude with answers. For
Judeo-Christian theology, it is a point for speculation but not one for
doctrine.)
Verse
9 says that when any man (which can
be translated “whoever”) was bitten, he lived when he nabat-ed the serpent
of brass.
In
verse 8, ra’ah means to see, look at,
perceive, inspect, consider. In verse 9, nabat
means to look, regard, pay attention to, consider. To me, it doesn’t seem that
a passing glance will bring the healing. The snakebite victim was to process
the image, perhaps think about why the snakes bit in the first place.
The
brasen serpent wasn’t a magic stick. I believe the healing came in the
considering, in the repentance.
The
bible doesn’t say whether bites from the fiery serpents continued to be a
problem. We do know that the snake-on-a-stick lasted for generations. What
happened to it?
By
the time of Hezekiah, the children of Israel were burning incense to it. During
Hezekiah’s reforms, he broke it up and called it Nehushtan. My paraphrase of the meaning of the word is “That brass
thing.” The brass thing had become a subject of worship to them, so King
Hezekiah destroyed it.
II Kings 18:4 He removed the high places, and
brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen
serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did
burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.
In
John 3, Jesus refers to the Moses and the brass serpent when Nicodemus visited
him:
John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
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