The Bronze Serpent

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

The above narrative rings of a vengeful, impatient God who suddenly snapped, doesn’t it? Personally, it reminds me of the times when our children are fighting—each with their own well-argued justification—and after dozens of milder mitigation efforts, I’ll sometimes explode in a flurry of parental sentencing: “Go to your room!”, “You, time out, now!”, and the ever-convicting, “I don’t care about your reasons!” It might be our first impression that like us, God loses his patience with his ungrateful, untrusting, and argumentative children. Thankfully, through closer study we may find relief. The Bronze Serpent passage images Christ and the faith of his people, and by examining the text’s redemptive historical context we are reminded of God’s patient faithfulness toward his own and how we are to respond as those prone to distrust and ingratitude.

This response paper is written as if for use in a men’s bible study. There are seven men in the group, all are believers with varying degrees of biblical literacy and gospel fluency.

This jarring and bizarre passage must be interpreted through a contextual lens to be understood and applied correctly. As a whole, the book of Numbers is a summary of approximately 40 years of Israel’s history. The book spans Israel’s journey in the wilderness from Mt. Sinai to the edges of the Promised Land. Our text comes at a time when the people of God would have been particularly raw from their journey, having just buried Aaron (Numbers 20:24) and battled the Canaanites (21:1–3). They would have been exhausted and deflated, but their hearts would have also been rife with anticipation. To the early readers of the Torah—and to the people of the day—burying Aaron would have carried special significance because he was the nation’s first high priest. Losing their supreme mediator between them and God would have felt disorienting. Additionally, their victory at Hormah marked their first against the Canaanites, and would have served as a stark reminder of God’s intent to fulfill his covenant and to aid them as they battled their way into the Promised Land. One commentator notes, “This marks the turning point: from now on, one victory after another will follow until they reach the Jordan, ready to enter the land of Canaan.”¹

It is with the above context that we feel vividly the faithlessness of the Israelites as they spoke against God in Numbers 21:4–9. Their complaints were more than weary, reckless speech in response to a circuitous routing around Edom. Each protest railed against the very promises, character, and provision of God. Where God had promised to make them into a great nation in an appointed land, they believed they would “die in the wilderness”. Where God had provided for their every need over decades of wandering, the people complained of “no food and no water”, loathing their sustenance and calling it “worthless”. Matthew Henry writes, “They speak discontentedly of what God had done for them, and distrustfully of what he would do. What will they be pleased with, whom manna will not please?”² Their attitudes of resentment were symptomatic of a deep and festering faithlessness, but God would not abandon them in their sin.

The passage gains additional depth when considered in the context of redemptive history. Jesus himself made the connection between his death on the cross and the bronze serpent on the pole, but what might we understand by also looking backward in redemptive history? It is true that the people’s distrust of God and discontent with his provision are echoes from the Fall, and God’s response in each case is a reminder of his promise—and ultimately his action—to redeem and to rescue. In the Garden, Adam and Even wondered, “Did God actually say?” before eating of the Tree. It was in this same spirit of distrust and discontent that God’s people grumbled in the wilderness, and it is with the same spirit that we rebel against God as believers today. It is clear that humanity’s propensity for rebellion, distrust, and discontent are consistent throughout history. Thankfully, our God’s faithfulness never fails.

To Adam and Eve, God promised redemption, saying the seed of the woman—our Redeemer—would crush the head of the serpent. To the serpent-bitten, poisoned, and repentant Israelites in the desert, God responded by instructing Moses to raise a brass serpent on a pole, so that all who looked to it would be healed. It would seem that the ridiculousness of the measure was intended to humble and defy natural reason. Jamieson et. al. write, “This peculiar method of cure was designed, in the first instance, to show that it was the efficacy of God’s power and grace, not the effect of nature or art.”³ As John Calvin puts it, looking to the raised serpent to be healed was “a mode of preservation… so discordant with human reason, as to be almost a subject for laughter.”⁴ He continues, “It was a foolish thing to turn the eyes to a serpent of brass, to prevent the ill effects of a poisonous bite… But it is the peculiar virtue of faith, that we should willingly be fools, in order that we may learn to be wise only from the mouth of God.”⁴ It is this same godly foolishness that would draw us unto our final Redeemer, Jesus Christ, which as we know from his own words, is imaged by the serpent on the pole. Watson beautifully expounds on the later significance of this Christological type, “It was lifted up; He was to be lifted up: it was to be looked upon with the gaze of repentance and faith; He is to be regarded, as He hangs on the cross, with the contrite, believing look.”⁵

We might initially read Numbers 21:4–9 with confusion, but after closer study we may now read it with confidence. God will use any means necessary to recapture the hearts of his people, and just as God’s people lost faith, we too can become faithless.

As men, this looks like growing impatient with God’s timing or the effectiveness of our journeying efforts. Our impatience leads us to forget, to doubt, to grumble, and to seek satisfaction outside of God’s instruction. Even in the midst of God’s continued grace and provision, we can fixate on our challenges, losing faith in our God who has so faithfully led us to overcome. The wildernesses of work, contentious relationships, marital conflict, difficult children, or fulfilling the calling of ministry can seem to stretch on for miles and years. We must firmly place our hope not in our circumstance, but in Christ.

It is in those dried-out times of pain and suffering, of impatience and faithlessness, that we must look to the One who suffered ultimate pain and loss, yet never lost patience or faith: the God-man imaged by the serpent on the pole, Jesus Christ.

Just as the Israelites continually forgot God’s promises in the wilderness, we suffer from spiritual amnesia. Let this passage affirm to us that God is faithful to remind. And, just as they rebelled in the desert, we rail against God’s righteousness in ways we will scarcely comprehend. Still, as with them, God lovingly brings us to our end—by whatever mysterious or ridiculous means necessary—that we too may cry out in repentance, turn our eyes to our raised Redeemer, be reconciled, and live, singing on every occasion, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

1. Crossway Bibles. ESV: Study Bible : English Standard Version. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles, 2007. [back]
2. Henry, Matthew, and Thomas Scott. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997. [back]
3. Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Vol. 1. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997. [back]
4. Calvin, John, and Charles William Bingham. Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony. Vol. 4. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010. [back] [back]
5. Watson, Robert A. “The Book of Numbers.” In The Expositor’s Bible: Genesis to Ruth, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, 1:446. Expositor’s Bible. Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903. [back]