CYOA - Look to the Snake

4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”

6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 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.

8 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.” 9 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, they lived.

I was so excited to write on this passage because it is so bizarre! I mean the snakes are obviously no fun but then the bronze snake blows my mind!!!??? I mean why not have Moses' staff turn into a snake again and eat all the other snakes or maybe stick the ten commandments on a pole... or a bronze replica of the ten commandments... or a statue of Moses... But no, a bronze snake. Literally, looking to the snake was to receive God's salvation... Reflect on that statement for a moment. Does it creep anyone else out? That one looked to God by looking at the snake... Ok but maybe it makes sense because they are being attacked by snakes. So by having the symbol of salvation be a snake, no one will get confused and think God is a snake... they will remember Yahweh and the his deliverance from the snakes... Maybe? Nope: by 2 Kings 18:4, Israel is offering incense to the thing.

I did a word search on snake and serpent and it is a surprising common way of talking about something bad, being used mostly in a negative sense. However, the bronze snake is a weird kind of exception/non exception. There is also Gen 49:17 which is a prophecy about Dan in which snake imagery is kind of used as a positive negative and the staff into a snake trick in Exodus. In Matthew 10:16 we have Jesus command to be as shrewd as snakes. And you have Jesus' statement in John 3:14-15 directly referencing Numbers 21:

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.

And that is it.

Ok, now I want to give you the part that really freaks me out. Perhaps you have heard of Asclepius. The Greek God of medicine and healing.... Symbolized as a snake entwined on a staff... Still the common symbol for medicine/medical stuff...

So the Israelites are dying from snake bites and they need healing and they look to a bronze snake on a pole, i.e. Asclepius and they are healed. Except that Yahweh instructs this action and timeline-wise the connection must be from Israel to Greece and not the other way around if a real connection exists at all. To push this just a bit further, Asclepius is killed by Zeus for... raising people from the dead!!! Early church father Justin Martyr presented Asclepius as explicitly foreshadowing Jesus' ability to heal for the Greeks and is used as an example to show how Jesus' resurrection and ascension was not in any way unbelievable because this is already what Greeks believed about Asclepius!

OK. So we have the bronze serpent, to Asclepius, to Jesus. Furthermore, there is some scholarship and strong archaeological evidence to suggest that the Bathesda healing (John 5:1-15) was a confrontation with the pagan cult of Asclepius. So the question then... is this all part of God's glorious plan to save people in confusing ways that wind up getting people side tracked but eventually somehow lead to Jesus? Is the story of the snake which gives/offers life but ultimately leads people astray merely an extension of Eden? How do we reconcile the snake as both a symbol of judgement/punishment and salvation? Are we doomed to a story of redemptive violence? Are we supposed to not notice the phallic undertone in the descriptions of snakes and poles being lifted into the air?