The Brazen Serpent

Israel was dying of serpent bites, and God’s remedy was a serpent. “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 upon it, shall live” (Num 21:8). The cure was made in the shape of the curse. Jesus took the picture for Himself: “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14), and the next verse is the one everyone knows.

The condition was a look, and the offer was to “every one that is bitten.” No one was told the remedy was not for him. And the symbol outlived its purpose: seven centuries later Hezekiah “brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made,” because the people had begun burning incense to it and called it Nehushtan, a piece of brass (2 Kings 18:4). The thing that saved by being looked to became an idol by being worshipped. The plate is a warning as well as a promise.