Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 343 · December 9
Brass on a Pole
“And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”
Is the trouble here that God sent the snakes, or that the cure was a snake? Two readers stall here in different places, and the chapter helps neither of them in the way they want.
Start with the first. The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Nothing softens that. It follows a complaint about the food, our soul loatheth this light bread, which sounds small until you notice who was doing the feeding. Then read what the people asked for and what they got. Pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. He did not take them away. Moses prayed, and the answer was a pole and an instruction to look, which means the snakes were still in the camp that night and every night after, and survival ran through a daily act of attention. If you have prayed for something to be lifted and been handed a way to live with it instead, this is the oldest version of that in the book.
The second reader has Scripture agreeing with him. Some seven hundred years later Hezekiah brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan, which means roughly a piece of bronze. What had saved them became what they served, and a good king had to destroy it. Jesus took the image up without hesitating. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. The metal had no power in it and never did.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 343 is The Keeper Who Never Sleeps (Psalm 121:3).