A Divinely Authorized Snake Attack in the Wilderness—Lectionary Reflection for Lent 4B (Numbers 21)

Bourdon, Sébastien - Moses and the Brazen Serpent - 1653-1654

Numbers 21:4-9 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

⁴ From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became discouraged on the way. ⁵ 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 detest this miserable food.” ⁶ Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. ⁷ The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. ⁸ And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” ⁹ So Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

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                The old Jim Stafford song had as its refrain: "I don't like spiders and snakes

and that ain't what it takes to love me.” Indiana Jones was of a similar mind, as he also hated snakes. Not everyone hates snakes, but poisonous ones can be a bit intimidating. When they invade your community, causing death and destruction, well you can understand why some might not like spiders and snakes! I will admit that I’m not fond of them. Nevertheless, snakes or serpents make their way into our Lenten journey with this reading from the Book of Numbers. And you thought it was just about censuses and other numeric concerns.

                The previous three Lenten readings spoke to God’s identity as the covenant-making God, beginning with Noah (Genesis 9), Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17), and finally Moses (Exodus 20). With this first reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we stick with Moses and the Hebrew people as they wander in the wilderness. The message here is that the covenanting God is not averse to disciplining the people with whom God has made a covenant. In this case, God sends a plague of serpents who bite and kill a number of the people because they speak against God and Moses.

                The text places us on the road to the Promised Land. Having arrived at Mount Hor, a mountain that sat near the border with Edom. The Edomites descended from Isaac’s son Esau and were one of Israel’s traditional enemies. Now, if you look at the map it should take only a couple of weeks to travel from Egypt to Canaan (the Promised Land), but according to the biblical story, it took the people forty years of wandering around in the wilderness before they arrived at the promised homeland. They may be God’s covenant people and have begun to set up their religious and political identity, with Aaron as the first priest (he dies in Numbers 20, with his son Eleazar succeeding him), there is still a lot of work left to do before they’re ready to cross the river. But, it’s worth noting that Moses lost his closest advisor and a likely buffer between him and the people.

                Our story picks up after the Israelites defeated a Canaanite kingdom at a place called Hormah, which in Hebrew translates as Destruction. It’s after this that the people seek a path around Edom, which had refused them passage earlier (Num 20:14-21). To do this the people headed back from Mount Hor, where Aaron had been buried (Num 20:22-29), toward the Red Sea, and then around Edom. But, as they made this detour, the people grew impatient and began to grumble. You can hear them gripe at Moses, asking why it’s taking so long to reach this promised land. They wanted to know why they had been led into the desert where water and food were scarce. Apparently, the manna God sent each day wasn’t sufficient (Num. 11:6-9). They wanted to know why they had been led to this land where death seemed inevitable. After all, Aaron lay dead and buried in the desert. At this point, many in the camp wondered if they had made a mistake in fleeing Egypt.  

From the point of view of Moses and God, all this complaining about the length of time it was taking to traverse the desert, along with the lack of gourmet food, was a sign that they were ungrateful. This wasn’t the first time that they had grumbled against Moses and God. From the author’s point of view, Moses and God are on the right side of things, but I think we can all identify with the people of Israel. If we have memories of long trips as children, especially pre-air conditioning and interstate highways, we might find ourselves identifying with the Israelites and their complaints.  Surely there is a shortcut that could get the people to their new homes a lot quicker than it seemed to be taking.

It's at this point in the story that Yahweh has finally lost patience with these ungrateful Israelites, whose cries for liberation led Yahweh to send Moses to deliver them. Perhaps they needed a bit of discipline to get them back on the straight and narrow. The method Yahweh chooses may seem rather extreme and even horrific. Yahweh sends poisonous serpents/snakes into the camp, so that they might bite and kill a portion of the community, doesn’t sound all that loving (if you believe God is loving and merciful). The word poisonous is interesting. The Hebrew word is saraf, which can be translated as fiery or burning. The same term is used in Isaiah 6 to speak of the burning coals that are used to remove Isaiah’s sin (Is. 6:1-7). The plural of saraf is serafim, which is used to describe a certain group of angelic beings the seraphim. So, might these snakes on the plain here really be angelic beings, a category of what Esther Hamori calls God’s Monsters?   

It's at this point in the story, with members of the community lying dead from snake bites, that the people go to Moses and ask him to intervene. As Esther Hamori puts it, “Stricken with fear and venom, the people quickly repent and ask Moses to prevail upon God to get rid of the snakes. God responds—but not be getting rid of the sakes. Instead, he tells Moses to ‘make a seraph’ (Moses will turn out conveniently to have some bronze on hand) and pop it on a pole, explaining that anyone lying around bitten and dying will be able to look up at it and live.” [God’sMonsters, p. 17]. The good news is that they’re healed, and hopefully, they’ve learned their lesson. Don’t complain about what God is up to, or so it seems. Again, Hamori writes that while the snakes bear responsibility for killing off a portion of the community and infecting others, “The Mob boss who sends killers out to do a job for him is no less responsible for the outcome than those who work under him. This is not God’s finest hour” [God’s Monsters, p. 18]. Since it’s not God’s finest hour, it’s also a story that’s difficult to preach and teach.

The good news here, if there is good news, is that God heals the people using the bronze snake on a stick. It’s a symbol that many will recognize, for it is the symbol used by the medical profession to symbolize their vocation. It’s also an image picked up by the Gospel of John. In Jesus’ discussion of salvation with Nicodemus, Jesus tells Nicodemus that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn. 3:14-15). Thus, in John, Jesus connects the belief in the crucified Christ with the snake that Moses created and lifted up. Both bring salvation/healing to those who believe (see). As John Kaltner notes, “Whereas in Numbers 21 a person who had been bitten by a poisonous snake needed only to look upon the bronze serpent to be healed, it is now faith in Jesus that is required, and it will lead to the reward of everlasting life for the person who believes” [Connections, p. 78].

It is worth noting that a symbol of healing and salvation, whether a bronze serpent on a stick or a cross, can become an idol. As it is recorded in 2 Kings, during Hezekiah’s attempt to reform Judah’s religious life by removing idols from the Temple and elsewhere, “he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan” (2 Kings 18:4).

This is one of those passages that raises questions about our understanding of God’s nature. It’s one of several stories where people of faith, including Abraham and Moses, intervene on behalf of the people, responding to God’s apparent short temper. The challenge here is to recognize that this side of the story is presented in Scripture without turning to Marcion’s answer, such that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of Jesus. In Marcion’s view, the God of the Old Testament, the God of Abraham and Moses, is the demiurge, the evil creator god, who is overcome by the loving God of Jesus. The problem is that this seemingly easy answer to a problem is the one Christians turn to. In doing so, they divorce Christianity from its parent. It’s good to remember that both Testaments speak of God in ways that we may find problematic.   

We hear this story of the snakes on the plain during Lent. While the passage raises questions about the nature of God that are worth exploring, it also speaks of the healing power of God’s grace that restores us to spiritual health after we break the covenant. That is, when we murmur against God and God’s purposes when we seek to go our own way, there is a path to wholeness. As the Gospel of John relates, that path involves holding fast to Jesus. So, as Barbara Brown Taylor interprets this passage, perhaps what Moses does here is make “it possible for them to gaze upon what they are afraid of,” and in doing so, “they gain access to its healing power.” Now, as Taylor also notes, we need to distinguish between magic and faith in God. So, she writes: “If the people believed that the bronze serpent was responsible for their cure, then that snake was an idol and Hezekiah was right to snap it in two. But if looking up at the serpent reminded the people to lift their hearts to God, then the snake was a sacrament. Looking up at it, they looked through it to their only Physician, who alone was their Health, their Salvation, and their Cure” [Feasting on the Word, p. 103]. As such, we are reminded during this Lenten season that the healing power of the covenant is rooted in God’s grace which we experience as an act of faith.