1. The journey southwards towards the sea was very difficult and trying; it lay through the southern part of the Arabah, a barren district of loose sand and stones, subject to sand-storms and infested with serpents. Murmuring again arose about the absence of food and water, and the unsatisfying character of the manna-“our soul loatheth this light bread.”
The mutinous discontent of the Israelites had some excuse when they had to wheel round once more and go southwards in consequence of the refusal of passage through Edom. The valley which stretches from the Dead Sea to the head of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, down which they had to plod in order to turn the southern end of the mountains on its east side, and then resume their northern march outside the territory of Edom, is described as a “horrible desert.” Certainly it yielded neither bread nor water. So the faithless pilgrims broke into their only too familiar murmurings, utterly ignoring their thirty-eight years of preservation.
Murmuring brought punishment, which was meant for amendment. “The Lord sent fiery serpents.” That statement does not necessarily imply a miracle. Scripture traces natural phenomena directly to God's will, and often overleaps intervening material links between the cause which is God and the effect which is a physical fact. The neighbourhood of Elath at the head of the gulf is still infested with venomous serpents, “marked with fiery red spots,” from which, or possibly from the inflammation caused by their poison, they are here called “fiery.”
The snakes against which the brazen serpent was originally raised as a protection were peculiar to the eastern portion of the Sinaitic desert. There and nowhere else, and in no other moment of their history, could this symbol have originated.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, i. 162.]
2. The swift stroke had fallen without warning or voice to interpret it, but the people knew in their hearts whence and why it had come. Their quick recognition of its source and purpose, and their swift repentance, are to be put to their credit. “Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 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 upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Num_21:7-9).
The notion that such a plague could be removed by making and offering an image of serpents fell in easily with the primitive notions of the people. There is a story in the First Book of Samuel which points in this direction. When the ark brought plagues of mice upon the Philistines who had detained it, and they were anxious to propitiate the offended Deity of Israel, they were told to make and offer five golden mice, one for each of the Philistine cities, and thus to secure relief from their distress. By a similar collocation of ideas a brazen serpent would be an effective propitiation to the Deity which had sent a visitation of serpents. We have to remember that the mind of primitive worshippers is not to be interpreted by modern parallels. What seems grotesque to us, seemed reasonable to our religious ancestors. The popular worship of the brazen serpent clothed itself in orthodox theory, just as the popular worship of the pagan deities in Christendom successfully disguised itself under the cultus of the saints. This story in the Book of Numbers is the official justification for the image in the Temple.
The serpent of brass that Moses had “made” was long cherished as a sacred image in the sanctuaries of Judah and Jerusalem. Incense was offered to it, and a name conferred on it, and even after its destruction by Hezekiah the recollection of it was still so endeared to the nation that from it was drawn one of the most sacred similitudes of the New Testament; and the Christian Church itself claimed for centuries to have preserved its very form intact in the Church of St. Ambrose, at Milan.
The singularity of the remedy provided for the plague of serpents under which the Israelites were suffering consisted in this, that it resembled the disease. Serpents were destroying them, and from this destruction they were saved by a serpent. This special mode of cure was obviously not chosen without a reason. To those among them who were instructed in the symbolic learning of Egypt there might be in this image a significance which is lost to us. From the earliest times the serpent had been regarded as man's most dangerous enemy-more subtle than any beast of the field, more sudden and stealthy in its attack, and more certainly fatal. The natural revulsion which men feel in its presence, and their inability to cope with it, seemed to fit it to be the natural representative of the powers of spiritual evil. And yet, strangely enough, in the very countries in which it was recognized as the symbol of all that is deadly, it was also recognized as the symbol of life. Having none of the ordinary members or weapons of the wilder lower creatures, it was yet more agile and formidable than any of them; and, casting its skin annually, it seemed to renew itself with eternal youth. And as it was early discovered that the most valuable medicines are poisons, the serpent, as the very “personification of poison,” was looked upon as not only the symbol of all that is deadly, but also of all that is health-giving. And so it has continued to be, even to our own days, the recognized symbol of the healing art, and, wreathed round a staff, as Moses had it, it may still be seen sculptured on our own hospitals and schools of medicine.1 [Note: Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, 122.]
3. Jesus Christ has bidden us find in this strange story a luminous teaching about Himself, and we are relieved from all embarrassments of the old literal interpretation by His high authority. What, then, does the symbolism of the brazen serpent teach us about Christ? Two lessons lie on the surface. First, Christ was to be conspicuously set before men as the Divine Saviour from sin. Next, having been thus presented, He was to prove Himself to all who looked to Him in faith the power of deliverance. The “lifting up” of the Son of man figured the Crucifixion; and the healing of the serpent-bitten Israelites who looked in faith to the “token of salvation” which Moses had set up in their midst was a picture of the moral release which believers in the Crucified would surely experience.
And this healing power of Christ has been verified in human experience. We know whose voice whispered Divine forgiveness, if only we would not cease from the fight with sin; whose love was upon us as a Divine coercion compelling us to strive afresh. From this vantage ground of our own experience we look out on the scenes of moral conflict, and we see that in all directions this Divine Person who has been in contact with us has been doing as much for our brethren. The accordant testimonies of our fellow-believers justify and confirm the halting verdict of our own hearts. We were not mistaken; we read the riddle of our hearts aright; it was Christ who worked in us and with us throughout: we know Him whom we have believed:-
I know Thee, who hast kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy:
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.
That which Moses lifted up for the healing of the Israelites was a likeness, not of those who were suffering, but of that from which they were suffering. It was an image, not of the swollen limbs and discoloured face of the serpent-bitten, but of the serpents that poisoned them. It was this image, representing as slain and harmless the creature which was destroying them, which became the remedy for the pains it inflicted. Similarly, our Lord instructs us to see in the cross not so much our own nature suffering the extreme agony and then hanging lifeless as sin suspended harmless and dead there. All the virus seemed to be extracted from the fiery, burning fangs of the snakes, and hung up innocuous in that brazen serpent; so all the virulence and venom of sin, all that is dangerous and deadly in it, our Lord bids us believe is absorbed in His person and rendered harmless on the cross. With this representation the language of Paul perfectly agrees. God, he tells us, “made Christ to be sin for us.” It is strong language; yet, no language that fell short of this would satisfy the symbol.1 [Note: Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, 123.]
