May 9

Fiery Serpents

Numbers 21

In pursuing the course which had been marked out for them, the Hebrew host traversed southward the arid, hot, and sandy Arabah, and passing by the head of the eastern gulf of the Red Sea, gained the equally desolate region constituting the desert east of the mountains of Edom. By this time “the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” This is not, perhaps, surprising, for after having been permitted to reach the borders of the promised land, and to look up the green valleys of Edom, they had been sent back to take another long journey through the worst parts of the desert, on which they fully supposed that they had turned their backs forever. It is possible, also, that the absence of any interposition to enforce for them a short cut through the territory of Edom, had shaken their confidence in the certainty of the Divine aid in taking possession of the land of Canaan. All this might have been the case; but their complaints took the gross form of murmurings at the scarcity of water, and of expressions of disgust at the manna. This time it is not flesh they long for but bread: “There is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light food.” We see in this that the people, confined to one kind of diet for nearly forty years, had been looking forward with eager expectation to the change of food which might be expected when they entered a peopled country; and the postponement of an expectation so eagerly entertained, must have materially enhanced the disappointment which the renewal of the journey occasioned. Even the short postponement of an expectation on the very point of being realized, is a disappointment far more deep than one of larger actual amount, when the fruition is not near. Still, something better might have been expected from a people trained and tried as they had been; and as they seem to have been emboldened by the impunity of their murmurings at Kadesh-Barnea, it became necessary to remind them sharply of their covenanted duty. So “the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, which bit the people, and much people of Israel died.” In another place we are informed that the wilderness in which they had sojourned, abounded in venomous creatures. It is called in Deuteronomy 8:15, “The great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought.” Yet we never hear of their being bitten or killed by them till now. From this we infer that they had been marvellously protected hitherto from this as from other dangers of the way, but the protection which they had experienced being now withdrawn, the serpents—in this part of the region unusually numerous—had their poisonous jaws unbound, and smote them at heir will. The testimony of travellers respecting the frequency of serpents in these parts is very remarkable. The ancient historian tells us, that the people who inhabited the maritime parts of the Red Sea, were subject, among other strange distempers, to one in which the flesh of their legs and arms bred little snakes or serpents, which, eating through the skin, thrust out their heads through the orifices; but as soon as touched retired again into the flesh, and in this manner occasioned most violent and dangerous inflammations. Note: Agatharcides in Plutarch, Sympos i. 9. It is added, that this was a disorder peculiar to this region, and not known in any other parts of the world—perhaps not then known, but it seems not dissimilar to the disease now occasioned in Africa by the “Guinea worm.”

At a point on the shore, a little below the extremity of the eastern gulf of the Red Sea, and therefore not far from the place where the Israelites met with this visitation, Burckhardt found the sandy shore of a bay bearing everywhere the impression of the passage of serpents, crossing each other in many directions, and the bodies of some of them could not, from the tracks they left, have been less than two inches in diameter. The traveller continues—“Avd told me that the serpents were very common in these parts; that the fishermen were much afraid of them, and extinguished their fires in the evening, before they went to sleep, because the light was known to attract them.” He further observes—“As serpents are so numerous on this side, they are probably not deficient towards the head of the gulf on its opposite shore, where it appears the Israelites passed when they journeyed from Mount Hor, by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom, and where the Lord sent fiery serpents among them.”

It was also in the region near the head of the Red Sea, and more directly in the track of the Israelites, that Laborde relates an incident which occurred in his camp. “The night passed over quietly, and the cold of the morning had warned us to rise, when we found beneath the carpet which formed our bed, a large scorpion of a yellow color, and three inches in length. Note: This is hardly “large” for a scorpion if the tail be included. We have ourselves found some, under similar circumstances nearly twice as long. When he was detected he endeavored to effect his escape, though not with sufficient rapidity to ensure his safety; but our Arabs did not wish that he should be killed…. The Alaouins told us that scorpions and serpents abound in this part of the desert.” After alluding to the circumstance before us, this writer adds: “The fact thus recorded in Scripture is fully confirmed by the Arabs, as well as by the vast numbers of these reptiles (serpents) which we found two leagues to the east of this place, on our return to Akabah.”

It is much to be regretted, that no one has taken the trouble to ascertain the species of these serpents. This might have helped to settle the question—What is meant by the epithet “fiery” applied to them? Was it from their color, or from the burning inflammation which their bites produced? Perhaps from both. The fact that the representative serpent was made of brass, may at least suggest that the natural serpents were of a burnished, glaring, or yellow appearance.

Under this infliction the people were speedily brought to their senses, and very humbly confessed that they had sinned —“for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee.” On this the Lord directed Moses to make a brazen serpent, and set it upon a pole, that every bitten Hebrew, who looked upon it, might be healed. This was, no doubt, designed to render the cure a result of faith, for no one who doubted the sufficiency, as appointed by God, of a means so apparently inadequate, would look to this representative serpent, and he would, consequently, from his lack of faith, die of the poison in his veins. It is this that rendered the brazen serpent so lively a type or symbol of our Lord, who appropriated it to himself in the memorable words: “For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”—John 3:14-15.

In the serpent being made of brass, the Jews take notice of a miracle in a miracle—in that of God’s healing against the common course and order of nature—for brass, they allege (with some Christian interpreters, to be hurtful to those who have been bitten by serpents. This they compare with the bitter wood making the water sweet at Marah. A very learned writer, Note: Huet, in Demonstr. Evangel. Propos. 4, c. 8, sect. 6. whom others have followed, thinks that this great transaction led to the heathen god of healing, Esculapius, being usually represented with a serpent by him or holding a rod with a serpent twisted round it; to his being worshipped in the form of a serpent; and to his being enrolled among the stars under the person and name of Ophinchus. We are ourselves inclined to refer this to still earlier notions of the serpent, derived from primeval traditions, which we know to have overspread the earth. But if we might suppose that the knowledge of this circumstance had reached the heathen, and to have spread among them, there is nothing more strange in their turning them into acts and objects of worship; than that the Israelites themselves should, in a later age, have been disposed to render sacred honors to this very serpent of brass, which had been preserved in the holy place as a memorial of this judgment and deliverance. See 2 Kings 18:4.