And their grumbling had some pretty fiery consequences.
We find ourselves in the book of Numbers (Bamidbar in Hebrew, meaning "in the wilderness") chapter 21. The Israelites are trekking away from Mount Hor, trying to skirt Edom, and they are not happy campers. "Why did you make us leave Egypt to die in the wilderness?" they whine to Moses and to God. "There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food!" Sound familiar? We've all been there, right?
And God's response? Let's just say it wasn't exactly a gentle pep talk. The text tells us, "The Lord sent fiery serpents against the people. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died." (Numbers 21:6)
Fiery serpents. What exactly were these creatures? The Torah doesn’t elaborate. Some say they were literally burning hot to the touch. Numbers Rabbah 19:22 suggests they were called fiery serpents because they burned the soul. Ouch. Whatever they were, their bite was often fatal, and the people were in serious trouble.
Panic-stricken, they went to Moses, admitting, "We sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Intercede with the Lord to take away the serpents from us!" (Numbers 21:7) So, Moses, ever the faithful leader, intercedes on their behalf.
And then comes the really strange part. God tells Moses, "Make a fiery figure and mount it on a standard. And if anyone who is bitten looks at it, he shall recover." (Numbers 21:8)
So Moses does just that. He creates a copper serpent – a Nehushtan, as it's sometimes called – and puts it on a pole. And wouldn't you know it, when anyone who had been bitten looked at the copper serpent, they were healed!
Now, isn't that a little…odd? I mean, setting up a copper serpent on a pole? It seems dangerously close to idolatry, right? It certainly raised eyebrows later on. We see in 2 Kings 18:4 that King Hezekiah eventually destroys the copper serpent because the people were burning incense to it!
So, what's going on here? Why would God instruct Moses to create something that looks suspiciously like an idol?
Well, the Midrash Rabbenu Bahya, Rabbi Bachya ben Asher’s commentary on Numbers, suggests these fiery serpents were no ordinary snakes. They were, in fact, offshoots of the primordial serpent in the Garden of Eden. That's a heavy connection!
And it gets even more interesting. The Midrash, quoting Bava Batra 16a, equates the serpent, Satan (the Accuser), the Yetzer ha-Ra (the evil inclination), and the Angel of Death, saying they are all one and the same! So, these "fiery serpents" could be seen as manifestations of our own inner demons, our own negative impulses.
Perhaps the copper serpent wasn't about idol worship at all. Maybe it was about confronting our own inner "serpents," acknowledging our mistakes, and turning towards healing. Maybe the act of looking at the serpent on the pole was a symbolic act of facing our own negativity, our own Yetzer ha-Ra, in order to overcome it.
It’s a powerful image, isn’t it? This idea that the very thing that harms us can also be the key to our healing, if we're willing to look at it, to confront it, to learn from it. What "fiery serpents" are biting at you right now, and what "copper serpent" might you need to create to find healing and wholeness?