Snake on a Stick

Numbers 21:4-9:

^"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 impatient 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." [NIV]

For several reasons, the story of the bronze serpent on a pole is one of the weirder stories in the Old Testament. In spite of the questions it raises, however, it's given only six verses. With five verses of introduction, we have a biblical studies nightmare. To cap off the weirdness, however, it has a one-verse conclusion.

One little verse.

          I have discovered that this short verse hides almost the entire story of what really happened out in the wilderness.

          Remember that the tribes of Israel are made up of thousands of people. You think it's difficult getting a community of one hundred people--like we have here in Nineveh--to do something all together? Try thousands of freed, but grumpy and hungry slaves! Early on I had reason to suspect that this one verse, verse 9, glosses over a whole lot that actually happened but didn't get recorded . . . for some reason.

          Well, at long last, scholars have found the truth. The excavation of the Hot Erthan Al-Getout archaeological site has unearthed the oldest known manuscript of the book of Numbers. Several additional phrases appear between our verses 8 and 9 of chapter 21. Finally, much of the mystery of this strange story has been revealed. Here's what really happened.

          Moses, after praying and receiving his message from the Lord, said to his elders, "God says to make a serpent and set it on a pole. Anyone who gets bitten by a snake just has to look at it, and she'll be healed."

          This news sent the elders' meeting into a veritable tornado of questions and concerns.

          The first and loudest group, as usual, was the Budget Committee. Now, bear in mind that since leaving Egypt the Israelites had been living on God's quail and manna. All of their jewelry had been melted down either for a Golden Calf (which incident they'd rather forget about) or for the sanctuary furniture. So the Israelites had no money. (What's more, by the way, they were still a bit put out by the fact that the priests got all the gold furniture and everyone else was left to sit on rocks and eat off of sandstone slabs.) Anyway, they've got no money. And nothing makes a Budget Committee grumpier than knowing there's no money and hearing that there's a construction project coming up.

          "Where are we going to get the metal?" they cried. "Think about the bidding process! We're going to have to get three estimates to make sure we don't get ripped off by the Midianites. Did God think about that, Moses?"

          Meanwhile, the quiet guys on Building and Grounds quickly realized that if this thing was going to get made, they would just have to do it themselves. Frankly, they were somewhat excited about having some more work; after all, when your tribe lives in tents and pulls up stakes every three months, there's no "building" to take care of and not a lot of "grounds" worth landscaping. Their main concern was finding someone to climb the ladder to polish the bronze snake once it was set up. In a strange coincidence, everyone on Building and Grounds was afraid of heights.

           This was a problem they'd solved before, though: they figured they'd just make the new guy do it. And next time they needed to polish the snake, they'd just get another new guy.

          When the Budget Committee had exhausted its first round of complaints, the Fellowship and Events Committee chimed in. They decided that since so many people had died from the bites of venomous snakes in the last week, the congregation needed something to boost morale. At the unveiling of the bronze serpent, they said, the Israelites should hold an ice cream social.

          Who wouldn't appreciate a little Tutti Frutti ice cream in the desert? And since they'd be charging the Edomites, the Midianites, and the Canannites, they could earn a little money to appease the Budget Committee.

          When an elder asked about entertainment at the ice cream social, they suggested the famous ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. After all, if he could earn a full-time income performing with a jalapeno on a stick, why not a snake on a stick? It was a sad moment when someone informed them that Jeff Dunham would not be born for another five thousand years. "Who let the prophets in?" they said. "They're always getting our hopes up."

          At the mention of an ice cream social, the Israelite Women's ministry let out a collective groan. They were just barely recovering after umpteen hundred funeral dinners. Now they would certainly be expected to make cake!

          The Israelites hadn't seen a Wegman's (or a Price Chopper, for that matter) since they left Egypt, and everyone knew that good frosting was really hard to come by in the wilderness. "No rest for the weary," said the Women's Ministry Chair. "You men just go take care of that bronze serpent. We'll make the cake. We'll frost it in bright green, with a smiley face on it."

          At this point the Sabbath School Superintendent piped up.

          The Sabbath School curriculum had just finished the section on Genesis 3. The teachers had spent six solid weeks telling the kids that the serpent is the Devil. Now, after a week of terrifying news reports about people being bitten by poisonous vipers, the first-graders were going to come to Coffee Hour and find a neon green, smiley-faced Satan staring at them from under a layer of buttercream frosting? What would the parents think?

          Just as things began to get heated over the cake-and-frosting debate, the Pentecostal contingent of elders spoke up. (Yes, there were Pentecostals, even in Moses' day. Don't believe it? Pray that the Lord will give you the gift of wisdom.) They declared that a time would come when the True Believers would pick up snakes in their hands and not be injured. They couldn't find it in the Torah, but they knew it was written down somewhere--or would be.

          So wasn't all this business with poisonous serpents just a trial from the Lord to test their faith? Maybe what God wanted them to do was drop all this stuff with fake snakes and baked cakes and just believe with all their hearts!

          As everyone stared, incredulous, at this latest turn in the discussion, some folks from the weekly Torah Study group raised a point of order.

          Back at Mount Sinai--it seemed like forty years ago now--God had given the people certain important commandments. The Second Commandment said they shouldn't make an image of anything--including, presumably, serpents--on earth or in heaven. Why was Moses talking about making a bronze serpent on a stick that people would go to for healing? Maybe this was the real test from God!

          Aaron, Moses' brother, was more disturbed about this bronze serpent thing than anyone else. He was on Building and Grounds, so he knew he'd get roped into helping to make the object. But he also vividly remembered the last time he melted some metal to make the image of an animal--a golden cow, to be specific. It nearly got him and the rest of Israel burnt to a crisp by the fiery anger of Almighty God. So you might understand that he was a little gun-shy on the project.

          When the possibility of scuttling the project came up, most people were relieved. Most, that is, except the Youth Group. The teenagers had already begun to figure out how the morning after its unveiling they would run a pair of hot pink boxer shorts up the snake-pole. In the tent next to the elders' meeting, they had already begun making teams for t-shirt designs. The current favorite was "I got bitten by a serpent of God, and all I have to show for it is this dumb t-shirt."

          Even the youth leaders were getting excited. They had started to devise games in which kids had to crawl on their bellies through Jell-O and ring a bronze bell to win. They were making sign-up sheets for Jell-O makers, and one was on the phone to Oriental Trading Company ordering a thousand rubber snakes. (Yes, Oriental Trading Company has been around that long.)

          In the midst of all this wrangling about the serpent on a staff, no one paid much attention to the prophets.

          That's the problem with being a prophet, you know: No one pays attention to you until it's too late or you're too tired and ornery to repeat your message. So if you're considering a career path, only become a prophet if you have no other choice. Even trash collection is probably a more satisfying job pursuit than prophetic ministry.

          At any rate, the prophets, claiming inspiration from the Spirit of God, were saying that the Israelites ought to just get on with the making of this serpent. Let people get healed, then put the incident in the past. Definitely do not record this long conversation about ladders, frosting, and first-graders eating an effigy of Satan. They believed that the real significance of the snake on a pole was to be a sign for future generations.

          They said that in the distant future, in a strange act that no one could have foreseen, people would raise someone else up on a tree. Folks would think this someone was cursed and poisonous, but it would turn out that when folks came to him, they would be healed.

          They kept saying his name would be Joshua (which made Moses' assistant Josh more than a little nervous), not knowing that by the time their prophecy came true, the name would be pronounced more like Yeshua, or Iesous, or Jesus. This Jesus would refer back to their story of the serpent on a pole to refer to his own death and ability to heal all humanity of their sin. So this weird episode with snakes in the wilderness would become a symbol of God's sometimes strange ways of bringing salvation to humanity.

          But nobody got that.

          Instead, by now just about every special interest group in Israel had jumped onto the dog pile with its own opinion on how this serpent thing was to get done--or if it should be done at all. At this point the Personnel Committee saw some dangerous waters brewing. The Israelites had a tendency to complain like a bunch of overtired toddlers, and they drew a very fine line between complaining against God and trying to lynch Moses.

          They called a recess to the meeting--after all, everyone cools down a bit after a cup of coffee and a snack--and pulled Moses aside. By the time the recess was over, Moses had an idea for the elders of Israel.

          Moses said that with all these questions and bickering about the bronze serpent, he couldn't lead this thing alone. He decided, therefore, to put the project under the direction of a Herpetological Management Organization. That's business lingo for "people in charge of getting this serpent thing done." Of course, as soon as people learned that to get healed they were going to have to go through an HMO, their excitement died. So what could have become the biggest Rally Day in the history of Israel--complete with a green Satan-shaped cake and twisted balloon animals--finally went down in the book of Numbers like this:

"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."

          I'm not sure the discovery of this ancient manuscript changes much for us, except maybe to make me grateful. I thank God that our healer is not a metal sculpture on a pole, to fret over and maintain. I thank God that our healer came in human flesh, suffered our sin, blazed the trail into death before us, and rose again for our eternal life. I thank God for Jesus Christ--and the prophets who make his name known.

~ emrys