The Deadly Wilderness of Serpents and the Bald Man

"And they went out into the wilderness of Shur" (Exodus 15:22). This is the wilderness of Kuv. They said concerning the wilderness of Kuv that it was eight hundred parasangs by eight hundred parasangs, all of it full of serpents and scorpions, as it is said, "who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions" (Deuteronomy 8:15). And it says, "The burden of the beasts of the South: through the land of trouble and anguish, of the lioness and the lion, of the viper" (Isaiah 30:6) and so on, and a viper is none other than the akhas-serpent. They said that when this akhas-serpent sees the shadow of a bird flying in the air, the bird immediately dies and drops down limb by limb. Even so, "They did not say: Where is the LORD who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of the shadow of death" (Jeremiah 2:6). What is "the shadow of death" (tzalmavet)? A place of shadow (tzel) and death (mavet) with it. Rabbi Abba said: This matter our great teacher related to me. There was a certain man in the Land of Israel, and they used to call him Merutah [the Plucked One]. Once he went to gather wood on the top of the mountain, and he saw a serpent sleeping, but the serpent did not see him. Immediately the hair of his head fell out and no hair grew on him until the day of his death, and so they called him Merutah.