» "Th» Dahi»t*n " ia Field'i Book of EcmUm. Wisdom, 121,
396 LOOK AND LIVE
n.
A Way of Escape.
The way is — (i.) a brazen serpent lifted up on a pole ; (ii.) a Sin-bearer lifted up on the cross.
L The Brazen Serpent
1. The command to make a brazen or copper serpent, and set it on some conspicuous place, that to look on it might stay the effect of the poison, is remarkable, not only as sanctioning the forming of an image, but as associating healing power with a material object. Two questions must be considered separately — What did the method of cure say to the men who turned their bloodshot, languid eyes to it ? and What does it mean for us, who see it by the light of our Lord's great words about it ? As to the former question, we have not to take into account the Old Testament symbolism which makes the serpent the emblem of Satan or of sin. Serpents had bitten the wounded. Here was one like them, but without poison, hanging harmless on the pole. Surely that would declare that God had rendered innocuous the else fatal creatures.
^ That to which they were to look was to be a serpent, but it was to be a serpent triumphed over, as it were, not triumphing, and held up to view and exhibited as a trophy. Around on every side the serpents are victorious, and the people are dying. Here the serpent is represented as conquered and, we may say, made a spectacle of, and the people who see it live. Strong were the serpents in their power of death, but stronger was G-od in His omnipotence of life, and the life triumphed.
^ The sight of the brazen serpent was as though God's spear had pierced the plague, and held it aloft before their eyes, a vanquished, broken thing. It was not one of the serpents ; it was an image of all and any of them ; it was the whole serpent curse and plague in effigy.^
2. How could a cure be wrought through merely looking at twisted brass ? It seemed, indeed, to be almost a mockery to bid men look at the very thing which had caused their misery. Shall the bite of a serpent be cured by looking at a serpent ?
' R. S. Talbol
NUMBERS XXI. 8, 9 397
Shall that which brings death also bring life? But herein lay the excellency of the remedy, that it was of divine origin ; for when God ordains a cure He is by that very fact bound to put potency into it. He will not devise a failure or prescribe a mockery. It should always be enough for us to know that God ordains a way of blessing us, for if He ordains, it must accomplish the promised result. We need not know how it will work, it is quite sufficient for us that God's mighty grace is pledged to make it bring forth good to our souls.
tL The Sin-bearer.
1. It is strange that the same which hurt should also heal ; that from a serpent should come the poison, and from a serpent the antidote of the poison; the same inflicting the wound, and being in God's ordinance appointed for the healing of the wound. The history would sound a strange one, and would suggest some underlying mystery, even if it stood alone, with no after- word of Scripture claiming a special significance for it. But it is stranger and more mysterious still when we come to the Lord's appropria- tion of it to Himself. The Son of Man, healer and helper of the lost race whose nature He took, compared to a serpent! Of what is the serpent the figure everywhere else in Scripture? Not of Christ, but of Christ's chiefest enemy ; of the author of death, not of the Prince of life. Disguised in a serpent's form, he won his first success, and poisoned at the fountain-head the life of all our race. His name is " the Old Serpent " ; while the wicked are a "serpent seed," a "generation of vipers," as being in a manner born of him. Strange therefore and most perplexing it is to find the whole symbolism of Scripture on this one occasion reversed, and Christ, not Satan, likened to the serpent.
There is only one explanation which reaUy meets the diffi- culties of the case. In the words of St. Paul, to the effect that Grod sent " His own Son *» the likeness of sinfvl flesh, and for sin," we have the key to the whole mystery.
2. The "sign of salvation," as it is called in the Book of Wisdom, which Moses was commanded of God to make, was at once most like the serpents which hurt the people, and also most unlike them ; most like in appearance, most unlike in reality. In
398 LOOK AND LIVE
outward appearance it was most like, and doubtless was fashioned of copper or shining brass that it might resemble their fiery aspect the more closely ; but in reality it was most unlike them, being, in the very necessities of its nature, harmless and with- out venom ; while they were most harmful, filled with deadliest poison. And thus it came to pass that the thing which most resembled the serpents that had hurt them, the thing therefore which they, the Israelites, must have been disposed to look at with the most shuddering abhorrence, was yet appointed of God as the salve, remedy, medicine, and antidote of all their hurts ; and approved itself as such ; for " it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." Unlikely remedy, and yet most effectual ! And exactly thus it befell in that great apparent paradox, that " foolishness of God," the plan of our salvation. As a serpent hurt and a serpent healed, so in like manner, as by man came death, by man should come also the resurrection from the dead ; as by " one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one should many be made righteous"; "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ," the second Adam, '* shall all be made alive."