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From poisonous snake to wooden cross

February 3, 2025

Author: Andreas Rother

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Listen to it

A torture instrument inside the church? The ancient Romans would have been horrified by the cross on the wall—making a murder weapon a sign of salvation.

Bible History was the name of a book in a mottled linen cover that I read up and down as a child. Two stories in it confused me: Absalom left hanging in mid-air while the mule he was riding kept going and the story of the bronze serpent.

Dangers in the desert sand

How long had they been stumbling through that huge pile of sand and rubble called Sinai? The Israelites were running on empty. They had dragged themselves through the desert hungry and somewhere along the way they had started to complain.

“So the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died,” it says in Numbers 21: 6. How could that be? Had they really offended God so that He sent a life-threatening punishment? Where was the heavenly Father, the God of love?

Reading with the eyes of Jesus

I no longer have my children’s Bible, unfortunately. Today I read other things, such as the essay “Images of God and the true God”. The way in which the authors of the Old Testament describe God reflects the cultural and religious context of their time, it says there. Jesus Christ reveals the true nature of God to humanity. “From this we conclude that we must interpret the Old Testament from the point of view of the Son of God,” the Chief Apostle says.

Great, because Jesus Himself interpreted the matter of the brazen serpent: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3: 14–15). And how does that help? Let’s take a closer look.

The power behind the sign

It was called Nehushtan and was probably made of bronze. This was the image of a serpent that Moses made at the command of God to save His people and put it on a pole. “If a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived,” Numbers 21: 9 tells us.

Were the people worshipping an idol? Later, yes. This is precisely why King Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it”, 2 Kings 18: 4 reports.

But here, in the desert, it was about something completely different: “For he that turned himself toward it was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by thee, that art the Saviour of all,” it says in Wisdom 16: 7.

The new sign of salvation

At its core, the brazen serpent is not about specific transgressions by the Israelites or alleged emotional outbursts by God. Rather, it is about the sign of salvation that had been put on a pole and the necessity of looking up to it.

There is the parallel that Jesus draws: the Son of Man, that is, He Himself, must also be lifted up. By this the gospel of John means the death of Christ on the high cross—the new sign of salvation. And why “must”? So that “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”.

Looking up in faith

The sign of salvation in the Old Testament stands for short-term survival. The sign of salvation in the New Testament promises eternal life: salvation from the poison of remoteness from God in the desert of earthly life.

Therefore, let us look to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith”, it says in Hebrews 12: 2. For Jesus made the beginning with the baptism of water and the Spirit, accompanied us with His word and His meal, and in the end wants to give His grace to all who believe in Him. Just as Luke 21: 28 promises: “Look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”


Photo: Ai Studio – stock.adobe.com

February 3, 2025

Author: Andreas Rother

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