Numbers 21:4-9, part of the set of travel of travels in the JE account in verses 1-35, is the story of Moses and the serpent in the wilderness.
4 They left Mount Hor, a place mentioned mostly in Numbers and only once outside that book, in Deuteronomy 32:50. They set out by the way to the Red Sea, the correct reading in this context to go around the land of Edom. The detour has the result that the people became impatient on the way. We can all identify with these people and their impatience. We do grow weary at times, struggling with problems of one kind or another. Impatience is a sin we often tolerate in ourselves. Yet, impatience is a sign of larger problem. We are insisting that other people conform to our desires and expectations. In this case, the people want God and Moses to conform to their expectations. Impatience shifts the focus from God and from our love for the people around to us. It shifts our attention toward what we want, believing the world owes us a life of safety, comfort, and convenience. 5 The people spoke against God (Elohim) and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? Although the text does not use the word, the people are angry with God and Moses. The angry venom and insults hurled across the partisan divide betrays the struggle we have in offering genuine honor and respect to people with whom we disagree. In this case, God and Moses deserved honor and respect from the people rather than their anger. For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” One of the favorite complaints for most of us is about the food. Complaining is a sin that is so universal we are hardly aware of its sinful nature. Most people complain about something all the time. We hardly notice it, unless, of course, someone directs his or her complaint at us. Paul advised that the church should do everything without complaining or arguing (Philippians 2:14). It suggests we think we know better than anyone around us does. Sometimes, it suggests we know better than God does. We have yet another example of the murmuring or complaint tradition concerning the Israelite experience in the wilderness. In the canonical text, the story is the last one with that theme. The purpose of this literary motive is to emphasize the faithlessness of the Israelites and the resulting conflict between them and their (divine and human) leaders. Characteristically, in this unhappy situation, reinforced by the romanticized memory of how good it used to be, they quarreled, accused God of infidelity, and accused Moses of poor, failed leadership. 6 Then the Lord (Yahweh) sent poisonous serpents (nechashim hasseraphim, literally, “burning serpents,” so called because of the painful inflammation resulting from their bites). The Lord sent the snakes among the people. All the varieties of snakes currently known to inhabit Palestine are from the genus Ophidia (which includes mambas) and Serpentes (which includes boas), and of the 36 known species, only a few — less than half a dozen — are poisonous to humans. Nevertheless, if the Israelites had encamped in an area infested with a species of poisonous reptile, panic would have ensued in the camp. Unlike many of its neighbors (e.g., Egypt, Assyria, Canaan), Israel never regarded snakes with anything other than dishonor. Snakes are mentioned frequently in the Hebrew Bible, always with opprobrium, in contrast to several of Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors (e.g., Egypt, Assyria, Canaan), where serpents were regarded with a mixture of fear and admiration or even veneration. Biblical references to literal serpents include a warning of the dangers of their bite (Ecclesiastes 10:8; Amos 5:19), a description of their unnerving locomotion (Proverbs 30:19), and the hazards of encountering them in number, as recounted here. Mythologically, serpents represented the forces of opposition against the creative power of Yahweh (Isaiah 27:1; Amos 9:3; Psalm 140:3), as well as the personification of destructive craft and guile (Genesis 3:1). Of course, the serpents bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The idea of natural disasters, especially freak ones, being the punishment of the divine against sinful human beings was a pillar of orthodox Israelite religion. Such a notion has thankfully passed away from the theology of most of us today. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, the primary function of future prophets. The popular conception of the prophet as a unidirectional functionary — delivering declaratory revelation from the divine to the human — arose as that function of the office tended to overshadow the intercessory role in later generations and as the office of priest gradually assumed more of the intercessory function. 8 In addition, the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 Thus, Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. The response of the Lord is not to remove the serpents but to provide a remedy for their bites. The mere act of looking upon the bronze image being sufficient for healing is unique in this context. Ordinarily, healing required more elaborate rituals, such as we find in the healing of Naaman in II Kings 5:1-19. In time, Moses’ bronze serpent would acquire a name — Nehushtan — and would be placed in the temple in Jerusalem as a cult object for the healing (or preventing) of snakebite. As commonly happens with cult objects, the object itself, rather than the miraculous divine reality it represents, becomes the object of worship (i.e., an idol), and for this reason King Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent as part of his cult reforms in II Kings 18:4. This story in Numbers is an etiology to explain the origins of that cult object.
Very good I did not know this. A very good point about what we come to worship. - Lynn Eastman
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