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