Numbers 21:6-9 (C, U)

[Josh]

Numbers 21:6-9

6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

8 The LORD said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

[Josh]

This is an interesting one because it's one of the relatively few passages in the OT that Jesus Himself (in the Gospels) overtly says is a reference to Him*. This is how Jesus viewed this bronze serpent passage in His conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to Him secretly:

"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

(John 3:14-15)

So, Jesus sees this passage as having double referents: one, the immediate context of the Israelites and the plague of snakes, but another far-reaching one, symbolic of Jesus being lifted up on the cross in order to save mankind.

Of course, most of this passage is really pretty vague as far as it's predictive power-- in fact, the immediacy of the originally context seems to preclude it from being a predictive prophecy beyond serving as a nice typology for Jesus' death.

However, I do find one detail a bit uncanny.

It has to do with the strange fact that a serpent symbol was used to bring healing. In the ancient world at large serpents were seen as associated with healing, but in the Hebrew context, of course, the serpent was seen as the bringer of evil into the world. Why choose the symbol for evil to heal the Israelites?

I think there's a wonderfully Christological answer to this found in the New Testament:



God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(2 Corinthians 5:21)


One of the fascinating truths about Jesus' atonement for us on the cross was that He took our sins upon Himself as a sacrifice.

I don't think it's a coincidence then that God gave the Israelites this predictive object-lesson- that the embodied sins of the world hanging on a rod/cross would be the means through which God would deliver all peoples.

Furthermore, I'm not sure if ancient rabbis took this passage as messianic. That would be interesting to find out.

To read more on this passage on our Bible studies forum, take this link: www.aletheia.proboards76.com/index.cgi?board=numbers&action=display&thread=1180312285



*No doubt Jesus pointed out many such passages that aren't recorded for us in the Gospels (see Luke 24:27)