A snake on a pole

They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"

Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

The LORD said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived (Numbers 21:4-9).

The Israelites did a lot of complaining during their years in the desert. They had been slaves in Egypt until God sent Moses to free them and lead them to Canaan, the land promised to their ancestors. But the trip through harsh desert terrain was difficult, and the people accused God of taking them into the wilderness to starve when they could have stayed in Egypt and at least have eaten their slaves’ rations. In response, God began sending the Israelites manna; we read in Exodus chapter 16, in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: `Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.' " The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed...The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. Through the miraculous appearance of manna, God made sure that His chosen people remained well fed.

But the Israelites found other things to complain about. When they finally arrived at the edge of Canaan, they sent twelve spies into the land to assess its defenses. When ten of the twelve spies claimed that Canaan was too well fortified to conquer, the people complained that Moses had led them from a safe life of slavery in Egypt to death by violence in Canaan, and many wanted to return to Egypt. Because they rejected God’s gift of a land of their own and did not trust Him to protect them in war, God sentenced the Israelites to wander for 40 years in the desert until all those who did not have faith in God had died on the journey.

At the time of today’s Old Testament reading, the Israelites had been walking in the desert for years. Yet they still had not learned their lesson about complaining—indeed, on this day their complaint was the most insulting of all their years in the wilderness. They complained to Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"

Once again, the Israelites show their lack of faith in God. They suppose that all God and Moses have in mind is to let God’s people die of hunger and thirst in the desert. But the thing that truly makes this the most ungrateful complaint of all is their final words: "And we detest this miserable food!"

That ‘miserable food’ was the manna that God had faithfully given them ever since they had entered the desert. That ‘miserable food’ was the food that didn’t taste like bland rice cakes or unleavened bread, but like wafers made with honey. That ‘miserable food’ would be described this way in Psalm 78: Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens; he rained down manna for the people to eat, he gave them the grain of heaven. Men ate the bread of angels; he sent them all the food they could eat. The Israelites despised the gracious mercy of God, given to them through a daily, visible miracle.

In response to this great insult, the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The original Hebrew language translates literally as ‘fiery snakes’ because of how their poisoned bite burned. It didn’t take long for the people to adjust their attitude and repent; they said, "We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us." But God did an interesting thing—He did not take the venomous snakes away. Instead, He had Moses make a snake out of bronze and put it on a pole. The people were then instructed to look at the snake on the pole—if they did, they would not die from the snakebites.

Why did God offer relief in this unusual way? Jesus gives us the answer in St. John chapter 3: Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. To understand the bronze snake on the pole, we must seet it superimposed over the cross of Christ.

First, the snakes. We meet our first serpent in chapter 3 of Genesis, where Satan speaks from the disguise of a snake in order to tempt Eve into rebelling against God. Ever since that event, mankind has had an instinctive dislike for snakes. For the Israelites, the snake represented the power of Satan and sin, the power that curses us and sentences us to hell. The snakes that invaded the Israelites’ camp caused death by their bite; the Israelites surely understood that God chose to punish them in this way to remind them that the venom of sin results in painful, eternal death.

Why a bronze snake? First of all, bronze is a metal that has red highlights to it; in the bright sun, the bronze snake would have had a burning quality to its appearance which would remind the Israelites of the venomous bite. But the bronze serpent, being made of metal, was powerless to kill; it hung in symbolic death upon a pole. This bronze serpent was no longer a bringer of death—in fact, God had made it a bringer of life. Anyone who looked at it would, by God’s decree, be spared from the death inflicted by the snakes. Life came to anyone who had faith in the promises of God, and looked upon the bronze snake believing that he would be saved.

Through this action, God was telling the Israelites a great deal about the Messiah who was to come. In the Israelite camp, death by snakebite was everywhere; in our modern world, death by the poisonous effects of sin is everywhere. In the Israelite camp, God did not send the snakes away, but He did provide a way to be safe from death by snakebite; today, God does not send sin away, but He has provided a way to be safe from the eternal death that being poisoned by sin will result in. In the camp, the way to avoid death was to trust God’s promise of rescue and look up at the snake on the pole in faith; in our lives, the way to avoid hell is to trust in God’s promise of rescue and look up at the Son of God on the cross with faith.

The only way to be rescued from certain death is by the mercy of God. The Israelites would certainly have died in the wilderness if God, in His mercy, had not fed them miraculously with manna. We would certainly end our lives in hell if God, in His mercy, had not sent us His Son Jesus Christ to give us renewed life. In the Gospel of John, Jesus compares Himself with the manna of God; in chapter 6 He says, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world... I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Jesus is the gift of God that gives life beyond the grave. Jesus is the sinless Son of God who took on the form of sinful man so that He could take our sins upon Himself and put their power to death on the cross. The Israelites looked up at the bronze snake on the pole, and saw the power of the snakes’ bites brought to an end; we look up at our Savior on the cross, and see the power of sin to condemn us brought to an end.

At he heart of the Israelites’ constant complaining was the problem that they did not believe in God’s love for them, nor did they trust in His power to save them. So God gave them a rescue that only worked for those who had faith in Him—if you did not believe that your life could be saved by doing something as foolish as looking at a metal snake on a pole, you were doomed to a painful death. There is a lesson here for us. We live in a world that does not believe in God’s love or trust in His power to save; God has provided us rescue, but it is a rescue that only works for those who have faith in Him. If a person does not believe that his life can find eternal love and purpose by doing something as foolish as looking at a holy man dying on a cross, he is doomed to a life empty of purpose and an eternity void of love. He will look at the manna that God offers to feed him, and dismiss it as ‘miserable food’. But for we who look at that cross with love in our hearts for the Son of God who gave everything for us there, we have the assurance of purpose-filled lives and unending love beyond the grave. We see in Jesus the bread of life, and we gratefully feed on that bread through hearing His word, reading His Bible, and receiving His body and blood through the bread and wine of holy Communion. We do not ‘detest’ the bread from heaven, we treasure it, because Jesus declared, I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10). We are thankful that the Son of Man was lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.