The Bronze Serpent

Numbers 21

            More complaining—do you sense a theme? This time the punishment takes the form of an infestation of venomous serpents. A strange punishment, and even stranger cure: all they had to do was look at a bronze serpent to be healed.

            This story has all sorts of resonances. First, from Genesis 3, where the agent of humanity’s fall is a serpent. In Numbers 21, the Israelites are living in that fall and continuing in their sinful way. The agent of the original fall becomes the agent of the curse of that fall and they die from the bite of a serpent. Second, John 3 explicitly references this incident, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:13-14). There’s a beautiful line in our liturgy that says that our Lord Jesus, “accomplished the salvation of mankind by the tree of the cross that, where death arose, there life also might rise again and that the serpent who overcame by the tree of the garden might likewise by the tree of the cross be overcome.” Third, the healing of the Israelites didn’t take any extraordinary work, just looking on the bronze serpent. Similarly, our faith is no kind of work: faith is simply looking on Jesus and trusting that what He did He did for me.