GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
NUMBERS 21:4-6
The Bronze Snake
4 They set out from Mount Hor along the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, but the people became very impatient along the way.
The route of Israel at this point is easier to understand and follow. They pulled up their tent stakes, rolled up all the curtains and flaps, waited for the Levites to pack up the Ark and the tabernacle, and then they turned south and headed back down toward the Red Sea in order to go around Edom the long way. It was heartbreaking, and, as the Hebrew text says, “their souls grew short” (“they became very impatient”). They were headed in the wrong direction. They had gotten up to the edge of the Promised Land and then had to turn back. They wanted to get to the Dead Sea, but they were getting closer and closer to the Red Sea with every passing hour on the march.
The southernmost strongholds of Edom– Teman, Paran and Mount Seir– were within sight of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern arm of the northern Red Sea. These places may have been the farthest limits of Edom’s reach (Obadiah 1:8-9), but they were not too far for God to act on behalf of his people (Habakkuk 3:3). The Israelites were passing by all these places. They could see them if they just looked left as they walked. But impatience and frustration overtook them, and an old sin crouching at their door.
5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? Look, there is no food! There is no water! And we are disgusted by this worthless food!”
These were the complaints that this generation of Israelites had heard as children. Their fathers, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers had said these same things (Exodus 17:3; Numbers 11:4), and God had rebuked them for it. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and their families had died because of this complaint. Miriam had been struck with leprosy for opposing Moses’ leadership. Thousands had been put to death from plague or fire or been swallowed by the earth for just this kind of complaint, and the whole nation had been punished again and again for it.
They imagined that the manna and water were just prison food. When they had complained at Taberah, it was because they wanted meat (Numbers 11:4). God gave them something even better in those days, because it was then that the seventy elders prophesied. God gave them his Word to speak. These complaining Israelites had been nothing but children when they left Egypt, many of them had not even been born yet, and so this talk of theirs about what they lost by leaving Egypt was just foolishness and idiocy.
The Lord said about them: “I am the Lord our God wo brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me” (Psalm 81:10-11; Micah 6:4). In those earlier days, a few people were punished with death, and the whole nation looked and failed to learn. Now something new was going to happen.
6 The LORD sent venomous snakes among the people, and the snakes bit the people. As a result many people from Israel died.
The place where they were was the Arabah, the deep depression of land, hot, arid, and miserable, to the far south of the Dead Sea, so far south that they were once again close to the Red Sea. It is called “the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions” (Deuteronomy 8:15). Here the people were attacked by poisonous snakes. Of the thirty-three varieties of snakes in Palestine, twenty are poisonous. The poison of snakes was well-known and feared by the people (Psalm 140:3; Job 20:16; Deuteronomy 32:33). The cobra in particular has a venom or poison which can kill a grown man within half an hour of being bitten.
Groups of snakes are usually called nests or pits. In America, a group of rattlesnakes is often called a rhumba after the twisting dance, but this was no nest that the people stumbled into. God clearly and definitely sent these snakes among the people. He might have used natural means to do this (snakes will flee from fire) or he may have used supernatural means, driving them with his divine command or by the actions of angels. But however it was done, the snakes arrived and attacked the people, and people began to die from the poison. This was a deadly and severe judgment of their unbelief. Unlike the earth opening to swallow Korah or the fire singeing the edges of the camp, this plague did not attack some of the people, but everyone. They were all afraid. The text does not say how many were bitten, only that “the snakes bit the people,” and many died. Perhaps almost all of them were wounded; surely they all felt the burning of this judgment, whether in their flesh, in their fear, or deeply and spiritually in their hearts. “Who will be next?” was the question of the hour, “My children? My spouse? Myself?” “Who can endure God’s fierce anger?” (Nahum 1:6). The Lord said: “I showed no pity when your fathers angered me” (Zechariah 8:14).
Most readers already know what God’s solution would be, and that this required a spiritual answer, not a medical one. Therefore we should also look at the snakes in a spiritual way, even though they were a physical and a very real danger. Their poison was lethal. But do not misunderstand: the snakes were not an allegory for sin or false teaching. They were a punishment, and in this way they were a foretaste of the agony of hell. How can any of us escape from the fiery pain of hell, the lake of fire that is the second death, or everlasting punishment for the first death, which is unbelief (Revelation 20:14)? When God allows us to suffer pain in this lifetime, it can be a reminder of the pain we flee from by fleeing to Christ. By sheltering ourselves in the compassion and forgiveness of Jesus, we find the only place where God will turn from his anger so that we will not perish (Jonah 3:9). This is the “refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel” (Joel 3:16). Or as he says all the more simply: “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4).
When we see someone in “the day of his misfortune… the day of his disaster… the day of trouble” (Obadiah 1:12,13,14) we have the gospel to share, the gospel of forgiveness, the gospel that is the saving hand of God, stretched out to rescue and save (Daniel 9:15). God’s wrath is turned aside from us because it was inflicted and spent in its entirety on Christ. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him” (Isaiah 53:5). Through Jesus, “the Lord has taken away your punishment” (Zephaniah 3:15). “Come,” the prophet calls, “let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us. He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds” (Hosea 6:1). He says: “My Spirit remains among you. Do not fear” (Haggai 2:5). This is the work of our loving Savior, who comes with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2; Jeremiah 33:6) and whose healing lasts for all eternity.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Numbers 21:4-6 Poisonous snakes