Biblical Oddities: Nehushtan

A few years ago I was sitting in church when my friend Donnie approached me with a book of Bible trivia questions. He asked me if I would be willing to answer some of its questions, and I said sure. At this point I was feeling pretty confident; I thought I had a good understanding of the Bible and could do decently well when it came to trivia.

The very first question he asked me was this: what is nehushtan? I had absolutely no idea. I didn’t even have a guess. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

As it turns out, nehushtan is the name of the brass serpent that Moses made. Back when Moses was leading Israel through the wilderness, Israel decided to sin yet again. This brought down God’s judgment upon them:

Numbers 21:5: “And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.
6 And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”

Israel asked Moses to pray for them so that God would get rid of the serpents. When Moses prayed, however, God did something unexpected:

Numbers 21:7: “Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
8 And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
9 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.”

Instead of removing the serpents, God had Moses make a replica of the serpent and put it on a pole. When a person was bitten, all they had to do was look upon the serpent that Moses had made and they would be saved. (You can see the clear parallel between the serpent on the pole and Christ on the cross.)

The serpent on the pole appears a great deal later, in the book of 2 Kings. There we find out that it had become an object of worship and was leading the Israelites into idolatry:

2 Kings 18:4: “He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and 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.”

There it is – the word “nehushtan”.

Israel turned God’s symbol of salvation and grace into an idol, so it had to be destroyed. And that is the story of nehushtan.