The Serpent Upon A Pole

The Serpent Upon A Pole

Part 1

Exodus 20:4-5
(4) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
(5) Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

Deuteronomy 5:8-9
(8) Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:
(9) Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,

So as one can see, Torah tells us that it is not only a sin to make an image in any form which is in heaven or beneath the earth but that it would carry a severe penalty of even death to them that practice this art.

As the tribes of Hebrews move about in the desert of Sinai towards the land of Canaan they were tired and disgusted with their uprooted security of slavery and we read in oral Torah, that at this time Aaron was now dead and Moses was near death. The king of Edom has refused them passage through his land causing them to take another route to their destination which resulted in them being attacked by the Canaanites and having to backtrack eight camping stations that they had previously used. They were disgusted and came to believe that they would certainly perish.

That and the fact that the previous generation of adults had been on this exodus for 38 years and had all perished in this exodus from Egypt. This was the new generation that always had Aaron and the Clouds of Glory to protect them and now they were turning away from the Clouds of Glory and striking towards the land of promise. It seemed to God that they were ungrateful for the manna and well of Miriam. Here we see that this takes place in 1274 BCE and a year from this time [1273] Moses will also be dead.

The Hebrews did not know that in one year the journey would be done or that the manna and water of Miriam would cease. They did not realize that God had given them the manna that cleaned and nourished their 248 organs of the body or the need to eliminate waste from the body as the manna eliminated the need to defecate. All they understood was that their protected easy life suddenly ceased and now they had to endure hardship. They demanded better food and living conditions and this angered the Most High. But more than all of this was the fact that this new generation wanted to live with their own government and not by the theocratic form that they now are under.

It is hard to believe that 2488 years ago the serpent was told by God that I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel. Genesis_3:15

Numbers 21:5-9
(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.
(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.

Quote
Yet, there is more to the story. Let’s take a look when this issue first is discussed: Bemidbar (Numbers) 21:6And YAHUAH sent את eth fiery serpents among the people, and they bit את eth the people; and much people of Yashar’el died.

Let’s take a look at the Ivriyt (Hebrew): Num 21:6 וישׁלח v’y’shelach יהוה YAHUAH בעם b’am את eth הנחשׁים h’nachashiym השׂרפים ha’seraphiym וינשׁכו v’y’nashachu את eth העם h’am וימת v’y’moot עם am רב rab מישׂראל׃ m’yashar’el Num 21:6 v’y’shelach YAHUAH b’am את eth h’nachashiym ha’seraphiym v’y’nashachu את eth h’am v’y’moot am rab m’yashar’el Num 21:6 v’y’shelach (And he sends) YAHUAH b’am (in people) את eth h’nachashiym (the serpents) ha’seraphiym (the burnings/the seraphiym) v’y’nashachu (and his strike) את eth h’am (the people) v’y’moot (and they die) am (people) rab (many) m’yashar’el (of Yashar’el) INTERLINEAR: And YAHUAH, he sends into the people the serpents, the seraphiym, and their strike, and the people die, many people of Yashar’el.

So, it is necessary to take a closer look at the word here ha’seraphiym. The root word here is saraph (שָׂרַף) (Strong’s H8313), generally interpreted as meaning to be set on fire: to cause to burn; to make a burn or burning; to kindle. Of the 107 appearances of this word in the Tanakh, 106 times it is interpreted as burn, burnt, or burned. However, the word that actually appears here is the masculine plural seraphiym.

And YAHUAH said unto Mosheh: Make a Saraph and set it upon a flag; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live. Num 21:8 ויאמר [v’y’amar] יהוה [YAHUAH] אל [al] משׁה [Mosheh] עשׂה [asah] לך שׂרף [lek saraph] ושׂים [v’seem - put] אתו [eth] על [al - on] נס [nase - flag] והיה [v’hayah – which is] כל [kole - all] הנשׁוך [h’nashak – strike/oppress/press] וראה [v’ra’ah – and see] אתו [eth] וחי [v’chay - life].

A better interpretation reads: And YAHUAH said to Mosheh: Make a saraph and put it on a flag; and it shall come to pass, that all those who are pressed shall see and את eth-live.

But let’s see what Mosheh actually does: Bemidbar (Numbers) 21:9 And Mosheh made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten את eth any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

We have two distinct things going on here. YAHUAH tells Mosheh to put the image of a saraph on a flag – yet Mosheh puts a serpent on a pole. The saraph on a flag was a sign that all those who are pressed by YAHUAH (not a serpent) would see life. Mosheh instead provided a remedy for the serpent’s bite.

Is this what actually appeared in the text? Did Mosheh disobey, or was the text corrupted? Here is the rod lifted by Mosheh – according to the existing text: This rod is known as the Rod of Asclepius, which is a rod wrapped with a single serpent belonging to the Greek god (read: fallen watcher) whose name was Asclepius. This “god" was associated with healing and medicine. He is identified as Amazarek in Chanok (Enoch) 8:3.

Continue to part 2

The Serpent Upon A Pole

Part 2

A Greek philosopher named Cornutus wrote in the Theologiae Graecae Compendium, Chapter 33 that the reason for the serpent on a pole as a sign was as follows: Asclepius derived his name from healing soothingly and from deferring the withering that comes with death. For this reason, therefore, they give him a serpent as an attribute, indicating that those who avail themselves of medical science undergo a process similar to the serpent in that they grow young again after illnesses and slough off old age.

Even today, the Caduceus - the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology - is the symbol of healing and medicine. The Greek Septuagint provides the following: NUMBERS / ΑΡΙΘΜΟΙ 21:8-9 (Septuagint) 8 καὶ εἶπε Κύριος πρὸς Μωυσῆν· ποίησον σεαυτῷ ὄφιν καὶ θὲς αὐτὸν ἐπὶ σημείου, καὶ ἔσται ἐὰν δάκῃ ὄφις ἄνθρωπον, πᾶς ὁ δεδηγμένος ἰδὼν αὐτὸν ζήσεται. 9 καὶ ἐποίησε Μωυσῆς ὄφιν χαλκοῦν καὶ ἔστησεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ σημείου, καὶ ἐγένετο ὅταν ἔδακνεν ὄφις ἄνθρωπον, καὶ ἐπέβλεψεν ἐπὶ τὸν ὄφιν τὸν χαλκοῦν καὶ ἔζη.

8 And Mosheh prayed to YAHUAH [Kurios is always used for the tetragrammaton in the Septuagint] for the people; and YAHUAH said to Mosheh, Make you a serpent, and put it on a signal-[staff]; and it shall come to pass that whenever a serpent shall bite a man, every one [so] bitten that looks upon it shall live. 9 And Mosheh made a serpent of brass and put it upon a signal-[staff]: and it came to pass that whenever a serpent bit a man, and he looked on the brazen serpent, he lived.

The word for serpent in the Greek is the word. ὄφις ophis (Strong’s G3789), and we see in the Septuagint verses that we have this word for serpent (ὄφις), and we see that it is used in both verse 8 and verse 9. This is a notable difference between the Septuagint and the Hebrew textus receptus.

So, the question arises: Did Mosheh disobey YAHUAH and his command to make a seraph and put it on a flag? Or, is the text corrupted by those who redrafted the text after the rise of the Greek world over Yerushalayim? And YAHUAH said to Mosheh: Make a saraph and put it on a flag; and it shall come to pass, that all those YAHUAH presses shall see and את eth-live. What would this flag look like? It would have an image of a saraph, who would have six wings, full of eyes, with two he would cover his face, with two he would cover his feet, and with two he would fly. Yesha`yahu (Isaiah) 6:2-3 Above
Unquote -- Source - Dr. Stephen Pidgeon LLC of the Cepher Publishing Group.


Over 700 years later we see the rest of the story of this Nehushtan upon a pole.

2Ki 18:1-6
(1) Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.
(2) Twenty and five years old was he when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah.
(3) And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did.
(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.
(5) He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him
among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.
(6) For he clave to the LORD, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses.

If Hezekiah was right then Moses was wrong in setting up an image to be worshiped. Both cannot be right. In this case it teaches that Moses did set up a brazen serpent [Nehushtan] on a pole instead of a flag of a Saraph which he was told to do. Thus the scriptures are correct in that it was a brass serpent that had been given to the Hebrews and had become an abomination to God for over six centuries and then destroyed by Hezekiah.

Could this be one of several reasons that Moses was forbidden to enter the promised land?

If Seraphim are lightning bolts and Moses knew about Egypts electrical tech..

The Old Testament has some of the most bat-shart contradictory tales...I can only really laugh at the absurdity at times.
Commandment 6: "Thou shalt not murder."
Moses and his boys left a trail of carnage that makes a Tarantino film look like Sesame Street.

So are you implying that the Hebrew tribe was worshiping the brass serpent on the pole or just looking at it
I am confused. Looking at something is worshiping it?
God blessed the Hebrews even thought they were in open rebellion against Him
The serpents were a plague for sin and then they sin some more and are blessed, what?

You know on the Arc of the covenant had two cherubim made of wood and gold, you have some issues you need to deal with re idol,worship and depictions of creatures

a reply to: Seede
I claim no skills whatever in the use of Hebrew.
But in the case of Numbers ch21, the Biblehub interlinear text seems to use the same word (pole?) in v8 and v9.
biblehub.com...

a reply to: skunkape23

So why arnt US soldiers all charged with the thousands and thousands of deaths in the Middle East, the US government held accountable for the millions of murders they have overseen

If only people engaged their brain this place would be ok.

The bible says pole in both occasion, so why use a different word for interpretation?
Can you tell us what bible are you using?

a reply to: Seede

Good post OP . I will leave this podcast of Dr. Mike Heiser who talks a bit on the subject and come back to the thread a little later . You do make some good observations I had not heard or though about .

I think you have a couple things mixed up
.
Firstly the Hebrews were punished with a plague of serpents in the desert for their own misdeeds and lack of faith.
Moses crafted the serpent from copper.
In Hebrew the word for copper is Nechoshet.
The Hebrew word for snake is nachash.
The phonetic similarity in addition to being mounted high up on the pole was supposed to have The Afflicted Hebrews look up to the serpent on the pole and by looking up it was supposed to remind them of their father in Heaven and that intention was meant to cause the healing and stem the plague.
However in later generations specifically under the rule of King Ahab The Relic (nehushtan)became used as a idolatrous instrument and was later destroyed by the king Hezekiah

really 2488 years ago?

so before the enmity did they all love each other or did the enmity create what we call love?

a reply to: Raggedyman

So are you implying that the Hebrew tribe was worshiping the brass serpent on the pole or just looking at it I am confused. Looking at something is worshiping it? God blessed the Hebrews even thought they were in open rebellion against Him The serpents were a plague for sin and then they sin some more and are blessed, what?

I am as confused as you are in that God cursed the serpent in the garden and then Moses put that same cursed symbol upon a pole to heal. I was absolutely taken aback with that very same as you are saying. I then quoted some Hebrew translations by Dr. Pidgeon which explains that there is some doubt as to whether Moses did as God said.

Dr. Pidgeon also asks --
We have two distinct things going on here. YAHUAH tells Mosheh to put the image of a saraph on a flag – yet Mosheh puts a serpent on a pole. The saraph on a flag was a sign that all those who are pressed by YAHUAH (not a serpent) would see life. Mosheh instead provided a remedy for the serpent’s bite.

So where is the correct answer? Was Moses told to put a Saraph on a pole or a serpent on a pole? Re read Dr. Pidgeon's quotes as he gives several Hebrew translations from his sources and infers that Moses did indeed put a brass serpent upon a pole just as most bibles tells us. But did Moses misunderstand Serpent for Sarph or did Moses simply do as he wished not understanding that a Serpent is not a symbol that represents God. Could Moses have sinned with this Serpent on a pole just as he did when he struck the rock in anger to bring water to them as they were in the Exodus?

I am still confused by the fact that it would have been a sin to embrace an invisible God with a symbol of a Serpent which God cursed above all creation. I do understand that at this time Aaron has just died and that left the leadership or authority in a great turmoil but that does not explain why this serpent on a pole survived for another 700 years more or less and then destroyed by Hezekiah as being evil. The serpent on a pole was intended only for that particular event of being bitten by a viper. Why and how did it morph into a god when Moses most certainly should have known better than to have let it go that far?

Can you offer anything on this?

a reply to: Seede
Just out of curiosity- Your reply to Raggedyman appears on my notifications as a reply to me. If you did reply to him, and he hasn't been notified himself, that supports a theory of mine about a quirk in the ATS software.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I claim no skills whatever in the use of Hebrew. But in the case of Numbers ch21, the Biblehub interlinear text seems to use the same word (pole?) in v8 and v9.

I discussed this with my teacher and he saw my confusion right away. Most all translators of the Hebrew translations are correct in that it is as the scriptures are written and I agree. But that is not my confusion. My question is that Torah taught me that it is an abomination to The Most High to have any graven image of either heaven or earth representing Him and above all else an image of what The Most High had cursed.

Some Hebrew translations do suggest that Moses was wrong. Now that is very serious to Hebrew scholars to say the least but then they are also perplexed as to why it was a serpent upon a pole when their translations tell them it should have been a Saraph on a flag. I am aware that Torah cannot be amended nor should be called into question but then did not 2nd Kings and Hezekiah do exactly that? Is it possible that Moses did not obey God?

Any thoughts?

a reply to: DISRAELI

TextJust out of curiosity- Your reply to Raggedyman appears on my notifications as a reply to me. If you did reply to him, and he hasn't been notified himself, that supports a theory of mine about a quirk in the ATS software.

I doubled checked my postings and it shows that my reply was to Raggedyman. Yes I have had that same thing happen several times. Thanks for the info.

a reply to: Seede
Thank you. I've got an old Business Forum thread on the issue, so I can quote this example as evidence.

a reply to: Seede
is it possible, do you think, that the fault is in later generations, who began looking towards the pole in a way which wasn't originally intended? Then Hezekiah would not be criticising what Moses erected, but what it had become in the interval between Moses and Hezekiah.

There's a possible parallel in the word "baal". Originally, the God of Israel was quite happy to be called by that title. It was acceptable that theophoric names should be given with "baal" as one of the elements. But then it developed into a name used for the gods of the Canaanites, and so it got dropped in the usage of Israel and edited out of people's names. (That's the history that gets misunderstood when people are writing "YHWH and Baal are the same god" threads.)

a reply to: Raggedyman


Hi Raggedy—

The disturbing story in the Torah of ‘Moses And that Bronze Snake-Idol Thingy Set Atop a Pole’ (aka The Snake on a Stick) in the Hebrew bible exists only in a few dismissively short-verses (Numbers 21:7-9) and has its own back-story the contents of which which directly contradict later Torah prohibitions against Yahwistic Levitical priests from setting up graven/molten images or making molten idols much less ritually burning sacred incense to them, i.e. the act of ‘regarding’…) but this snippet of a story follows immediately on the heels of the earlier story in Numbers referring to Moses’ Midianite-African wife against whom the ‘sons of Yisro’el mummured against.’

I do not believe these two Midianite-related stories that were juxtaposed like this in the final version of the narrative to be a co-incidence on the part of Ezra (or any of the later post-Exilic compilers of the Torah) but was meant to be linked in the minds of the listeners to whom this story would have been read aloud in post-Exilic Yahwistic cult-worship events in Palestine after 400 BCE.

Curiously, perhaps, a number of metallic-alloy snake idols (some set into pole-like objects) have been found in the area of Eritraea (i.e. ancient Midian) so it would appear that Moses’ Midianite wife brought along some of her own priests and idols from her own native Midianite religious centres whose foreign cultic practices were later blended with that of the later cult of YHWH—for it is clear that incense was burned to The Bronze Snake On a Pole in the Jerusalem Temple (and in other Yahwistic (and the many partially-Yahwstic or pre-Yahwistic) shrines have been unearthed scattered around the Levant (e.g. sacred snake-idols or images were found inscribed into the walls and altars of Canaanite (pre-Yahwistic) temples and sites around ancient Gezer, Shekhem, Beersheba Hazor & Megiddo from pre-1900 BCE and a stone image of YHWH and a Snake Goddess at the Yahwistic Migdal Synagogue in the Galilee) all the way down to at the time of Hezekiah c. 640 BCE who saw reasons in his 'newly-discovered' version of the Torah in the Temple at Jerusalem to discontinue the ancient (pre-exilic, Mu#e but overtly pagan-influenced) 700-year old custom of burning incense to the Midianite snake goddess, which the later Torah texts refer to as ‘Nehushtan’, (‘Bronze-thingy’) being an ironic mocking play-on-words from the Hebrew-Canaanite-Ugaritic words for ‘serpent’ (=נחש nachash) and ‘coppery’ (= הנחושת nechoshet).

Interestingly H-W-H also is an early Canaanite-Ugaritic term meaning ‘firey-snake’ whose image is 5he forked sepent-tongue and these were the exact letters that were appended to the earlier (abbreviated form of the name YAH representing the post-Exilic clan god of Yisro’el (YHWH) = ‘whose name is YAH’ (as it states overtly in places in the Hebrew Bible, Ps 68:4, Ps 77:12, Ps. 89:8, Ps. 94:7, Ps. 94:12, Psalm 102:18, Exod 15:2, Exod 17:6, proto-Is.12:2, proto-Is 26:4 & proto-Is 38:11 &tc.)

In 2 Kings 18:4, it is clear that YHWH was actually worshipped with incense burning in the Temple at Jerusalem in the form of a snake idol.

In the Egyptian (pagan) temple at Soleb there are snake-like images linked to inscriptions dating from 1350 BCE that have a space dedicated to the ‘Shashu (Midianite) Nomads’ who mined copper in the Egyptian controlled Negev and who worship ‘their own clan-god Yahu’ (and 2 Samuel 22:4-16 depicts YHWH as a fire & smoke-breathing dragon reminiscent of the 7-headed Canaanite dragon called ‘Lotan’ (=Heb. Leviathan), which 7-branched Canaanite design later evolved into the ‘fire-breathing’ candle-lit Menorah in the Temple.

Needless to say, before the time of Hezekiah’s reforms in the 640s BCE, there were many outward aspects of Yisroelite Temple worship which were overtly ‘pre Yisroelite’ in content and form and it took someone with the political-religious authority of someone like King Hezekiah to eradicate it from common worship.

Which indicates that in pre-exilic times before 587 BCE (witness 'King David' dancing naked in front of the Ark--a sacred cult object that no non-priestly Levitical Judaean could ever approach in later times) the Torah existed in a vastly different form than it did after the Exile when YHWH alone was worshipped and Nehushtan, Ba'al and Asherah (the divine Female Consort of YHWH) were all consigned to oblivion in levitical cult practice.

a reply to: Sigismundus

100% what you just said. Excellent.

a reply to: Sigismundus

Snake on a plane?
media.themeetinghouse.tv...

This sermon by Bruxy is worth a listen
Answers some questions better than I can

I guess if we spend so much time exegetting the literal words we lose the context of the message
What God did and why is more important than how we understand the small details

Ancient Hebrew to English, I am still trying to reconcile boiling kids in their mums milk