The Fiery Snakes of Numbers 21:5-9
Practical magic or retrospective justification?
The Torah portion called Chukkat ( Numbers 19:1–22:1) is full of oddities but perhaps none is more unusual than the account of the fiery snakes in Numbers 21:5–9. The incident occurs in the 40th year of the Israelites wandering in the desert, after the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, and after the famous episode of Moses’s striking of the rock to produce water.
The people – and these were the new generation of the desert, those who were under 20 at the time of the exodus and those born since that time – “spoke against God and Moses,” dissatisfied with the food they have been provided. They detested the manna. The new generation was no more grateful for the support they were given than the old one had been, it seems.
As punishment, God sent “fiery serpents among the people. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died.” (Num 21:6)
As the previous generation had done, the people then approached Moses in fear and remorse, asking him to intercede with God on their behalf. Moses once again complied and God again ultimately relented, providing an unusual cure for the bites of the snakes.
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery figure and mount it on a standard. And if anyone who is bitten looks at it, he shall recover.’ Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the copper serpent and recover.” (Num 21:8–9)
This passage presents a number of problems for Jewish commentators. The copper serpent is created on Divine command, but it seems to clearly violate prohibitions against use of magic and divination. Jewish sages generally argued that the serpent figure itself did not bring about the healing. Rather, it distracted those bitten from their pains and made them look to God for relief. Rashi notes that “Our Sages said, ‘if the Jews looked upward and subordinated their hearts to their Father in heaven, they would be cured.’” Ibn Ezra, though, simply concludes that, “the mind of the One on high is far beyond our meager powers to understand.” From a Jewish religious perspective there is no reasonable explanation for the actions taken or their power to cure.
Some Christian scholars and preachers have taken a different view of both the controversy that brought about the attack by the snakes and the importance of the copper snake created to cure the people. The manna the people had come to loathe, calling it “this miserable food,” is associated with the consecrated communion host. Having become the body of Christ through transubstantiation it is accorded the highest honor and care. The disrespect shown by the people is the cause for the outbreak of fiery serpents, they argue.
The Gospel of John 3:14 is then looked to for an understanding of the copper serpent: “And 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.” So, the copper snake affixed to a pole and held up to the gaze of those bitten is a prefiguring of the crucified Christ whose saving power delivers all who suffer.
There is another explanation for the inconvenient passage, though. One that is grounded in archeological evidence. One that requires no assent to the powers of magic or divination and does not find justification in the beliefs of a religion created over twelve centuries later.
It does depend on a willingness to acknowledge that the biblical text as we have it today was redacted; or edited and compiled; well after the fact; and that it made use of several major strands of textual tradition.
The copper serpent referred to in the Book of Numbers appears to show up again in the Book of 2 Kings. It is associated with the reformer king Hezekiah, whose reign over the southern kingdom of Judah in the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE. In 2 Kings 18:3–4, we read,
“He (Hezekiah) did what was right in the sight of the Lord just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the high places (unsanctioned places of worship), broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. 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.”
That passage tells us that, five centuries or so after the Israelites entered the land, they were using the figure of a bronze serpent in worship practices. And it seems the figure might have been in the Temple itself. Hezekiah, the reformer, understood that to be prohibited and he stopped it, destroying the figure that had been used. Jewish commentators have generally accepted that the figure destroyed by Hezekiah was the same one created by Moses in the desert. But that is not necessarily the case.
The text in Numbers 21 that contains the “fiery serpents” story is attributed by scholars to the Elohist, or E Source.[1] E is one of the principal strands of biblical material used by a final editor, known as the Redactor, to compile the text of the Five Books of Moses as we have them today. Scholars understand the E Source to have been created in the Northern kingdom of Israel during the two centuries or so that the North and South were separate kingdoms. The Northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE.
The alternate theory of the seemingly impossible passage in Numbers 21 is that it was inserted in that text to create an “origin story” for the actual copper serpent destroyed by Hezekiah. It explains where the copper snake came from and justifies it as being created by Moses at the command of God.
It seems that the fact of the snake’s use in worship could not be denied. So, an explanation was needed that mitigated the damage. If Moses created the figure at God’s command, its prior use could be excused on the basis of ignorance and custom. But Hezekiah knew it was improper and needed to end the practice.
A Long History of Snake Figures
We know that the process of occupying the land promised to the Israelites took place gradually over an extended period. We know that the Israelites did not really wipe out the seven nations as the Bible tells us they were commanded to do. The evidence suggests that, while there were wars and there was killing and displacement, it was not complete. For the most part, the Israelites settled among the existing peoples and, over the course of a couple of centuries, through intermarriage and shared experiences, a new population, created from the seven nations and the Israelites, appeared on the land.
Nor were the religious practices of the seven nations completely supplanted by those of the Israelites. The books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings make that clear. We know now, from archeological evidence, that serpent figures had been a part of the religious observances of the inhabitants of the promised land for many centuries before the arrival of the Israelites.
Maciej Münnich finds that “the cult of metal serpents … is firmly attested in archeological data” from the area.[2] He writes that, “Seven certain, and maybe nine instances of serpents associated with cultic activity in the area” have been found.”
- The oldest bronze serpent, dated to 1650–1550 BCE was excavated at Meggido, about 20 miles southeast of Haifa.
- Another one from Meggido is dated to 1250–1150 BCE.
- One bronze serpent has been found at Tel Mevorach in the Carmel area dated to 1500–1300 BCE.
- Two bronze serpents have been found in the Temple of Hazor in the Upper Galilee, dating to 1300–1200 BCE
- One bronze serpent has been found in a Midianite temple near Timna, about 30 miles north of Eilat, dating from 1200–1100 BCE.
- The newest verified example is from Tel Gezer, about 6 miles southwest of Ramleh. It dates from 1100–900 BCE.
- Two serpent figures were found in 1957 in Shechem, about 30 miles north of Jerusalem, but no archeological information about those figures has been published.
With the exception of the find in the Midianite temple near Timna, all of those are from areas that were a part of the Canaanite territory that the Israelites were told to occupy. All were within the area that became the Northern kingdom.
The outlier, the one in the Midianite temple near Timna, shows a clear association of metal serpents with Midianite worship practices. And we know that Yitro, Moses’s father in law, was a priest, and maybe the high priest, of Midian. Moses lived in Midian for about 60 years, and we can assume he became familiar with their practices.
The use of serpent figures in the cultic practices of the area promised to Israel is not unique to that area. Karen Joines, for example, has found that serpent figures were widely used in the ancient Middle East. She writes, “At least 17 bronze serpents lay in the Early Bronze Age strata of the Assyrian mound of Tepe Gawa,” in northeastern Iraq near modern-day Mosul.[3] Imagery associated with serpents in cultic use has also been found in Phoenicia, Syria, and Egypt.
Jewish commentators, confronting the text as we have it, devised a wide range of explanations for the creation and use of what seems an object of practical magic; all of them aware of the difficulty of justifying the seemingly unjustifiable. Christian commentators have used the Hebrew text to explore and advance an understandable agenda; but in a way that seems opportunistic.
The evidence we now have of the widespread use of metal snakes in cultic practices in the area, and quite specifically in the area that the Israelites entered and settled in, certainly allows the alternate hypothesis.
Yes, the copper snake of 2 Kings 18 was very likely a cultic symbol, an expression of practical magic, used by the Israelites contrary to explicit prohibitions found elsewhere in the biblical text.
The passage in Numbers 21 was probably inserted to provide an origin story for the copper snake destroyed by Hezekiah.
It was a provenance with the impeccable authority of both God and Moses.
[1] See, for example: Friedman, Richard Elliott. The Bible with Sources Revealed. New York. Harper Collins. 2003 pp 277-8.
[2] Münnich, M., & מיוניך, מ. (2005). פולחן נחשי ארד בכנען ובישראל / The Cult of Bronze Serpents in Ancient Canaan and Israel. Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies / איגוד: מבחר מאמרים במדעי היהדות, יד, 39-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23531298
[3] Joines, K. R. (1968). The Bronze Serpent in the Israelite Cult. Journal of Biblical Literature, 87(3), 245–256. https://doi.org/10.2307/3263536