Using Bullinger’s King James Version Companion bible (Kregel)
After entering into the desert after witnessing many miraculous events provided by God, the Israelites being led to a promised homeland of their very own by the man called Moses, would begin to complain and question God’s plans and the authority of the leaders, Moses and his brother Aaron.
In that time, there were fiery serpents (#H5175 – “nâchâsh”,
from #H5172 – “to hiss or whisper a spell, to prognosticate”)
that were afflicting the people. This of course would make the people complain even more, that they were to endure the burning bites, and even die from these serpents.
Moses will go to God as an intercessor (Christ-like) and ask God for some way to handle this problem, to somehow reconcile the poor behaviors of the people, and the result of being bit by these snakes of retribution.
God provides a plan to Moses. and tells him to create a brass/bronze serpent then put that image up onto a pole. A person, bitten by a serpent could then look upon the image and be healed from the fiery bite. The faith of the person, realizing that they had endured the anguishing result of their own bad behavior (sins).
This is a foreshadow of the Messiah and how he himself said in John [3:14]
that he would also be lifted up, much like the serpent of the desert. The accumulated sins of a person would be “covered”, and the result of death avoided.
Their faith will in fact allow them to be healed. Once the people did obey the instructions provided by Moses to heal them, the people would begin to continue to obey with allegiance to God’s plan and the leadership that God wanted to guide the people into the promised land.
Numbers [21:6] “And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the People; and much people of Israel died.”
Numbers [21:7] “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.
Numbers [21:8] “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 upon it, shall live.”
Numbers [21:9] “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.”
John [3:14] “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:”
Numbers [21:10] “And the children of Israel set forward, and pitched in Oboth.”
Much later in time when Israel would have a temple built by Solomon’s orders, there was a corruption that involved the bronze serpent artifact being used by high priests to conduct certain invocations during ceremonial acts.
Nehushtan: 2 Kings [18:4]) –
II Kings [18:4] “He (Hezekiah) 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.”
[ed: Notice the close reference to the Hebrew word “nâchâsh” (serpent-like).
Nehushtan was not a god, but does refer to the “raised serpent on a staff” that was used to seemingly heal the person dying from the bite of the “fiery serpents” in the Sanai desert area. Of course it was really God himself who healed them after they made some effort to recognize their offending actions which caused them to be bitten on the first place. Nehushtan simply means “brass”, but the root “nâchâsh” does refer back to the word “serpent” as well.]
Eventually, the Israelites would begin to include this artifact that was
placed near the Jerusalem’s temple’s “Holy of Hollies” and some certain priest began to corruptly include it into some ceremonies.
The Israelites started burning incense to the bronze serpent, completely
defeating its original purpose. And they had given it a name, Nehushtan, as if it was an individual, and could exist out of its practical context.
The king Hezekiah (2 Kings [18:4]) stopped the practice of this ill-worshipped serpent into pieces. Hezekiah stepped up to the throne, his first order of business was to remove all pagan centers of worship, also the Asherah (grove) and the “Nehushtan” (2 Kings [18:4]).
But Hezekiah could not destroy the sinful human tendency to glorify idols
(non-living things). Israel had earlier “played the harlot” with an ephod
Gideon had made (see Judges [8:27]).
Much later in time, in Pergamos, Cyprus, a form of a living serpent was worshipped. Revelations [2:12-14] calls Pergamos the seat of satan, but before this reference, Babylon was the seat.
A separate study on the events of the Pergamos church is found here:
https://www.ourgoodshepherd.org/church-of-pergamos/
However when Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians, the priest-king, Attalus fled the city and went to Pergamos with his priests and sacred mysteries and conducted ongoing serpent involved religious ceremonies raising this serpent idol for the reverence of the gathered people.
We know that another “Babylon-like” city will become the seat of satan in the near future.
<end>