2. The Destruction of the Object (2 Kings xviii, 4). — The next stage in the history of the brazen serpent sliows how easily even a legitimate symbol, retained beyond its time, after it had ilone its work, might be- come the occasion of idolatry. It appears in the reign of Hezekiah as having been, for some undefined period, an object of worship. The zeal of that king leads him to destroy it. It receives from him, or had borne before, the name Nehushtan (q. v.). AVe are left to conject- ure when the worship began, or what was its locality. Ewald's conjecture {Geschichte, iv, G22) that tiU then the
SERPENT OF BRASS
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SERPENT OF BRASS
serpent may have remained at Zalmonah, the object of occasional pilgrimages, is probable enough. It is hardly likely that it should have been tolerated by the reform- ing zeal of kings like Asa and Jehoshaphat. It must, we may believe, have received a fresh character and become more conspicuous in the period which preceded its destruction. All that we know of the reign of Ahaz makes it probable that it was under his auspices that it received a new development, that it thus became the object of a marked aversion to the iconoclastic party who were jjrominent among the counsellors of Hezekiah. Intercourse with countries in which ophiolatry pre- vailed— Syria, Assyria, possibly Egypt also — acting on the feeling which led him to bring together the idola- tries of all neighboring nations, might easily bring about this perversion of the reverence felt for the time- honored relic.
Here we might expect the history of the material object would cease, but the passion for relics has pre- vailed even against the history of the Bible. The Church of St. Ambrose at Milan has boasted for centu- ries of possessing the brazen serpent which Moses set up in the wilderness. The earlier history of the relic, so called, is matter for conjecture. Our knowledge of it begins in the year A.D. 971, when an envoy was sent by the Milanese to the court of the emperor John Zi- misces at Constantinople. He was taken through the imperial cabinet of treasures and invited to make his choice, and he chose this, which, the Greeks assured him, was made of the same metal as the original ser- pent (Sigonius, Hist. Regn. Itul. bk. vii). On his re- turn it was placed in the Church of St. Ambrose, and popularly identified with that which it professed to rep- resent. It is, at least, a possible hypothesis that the Western Church has in this way been led to venerate what was originally the object of the worship of some Ophite sect.
3. The Apocryphal Notices of the Object. — When the material symbol had perished, its history began to sug- gest deeper thoughts to the minds of men. The writer of the book of Wisdom, in the elaborate contrast which he draws between true and false religions in their use of outward signs, sees in it a avftlioXov fTwrjjpi'at,', ff di'di.n'T](np e'lToAf/c vofiov aov ; "he that turned him- self was not saved by the thing that he saw {oid to Bt- wpovix'ivov^), but by thee that art the Saviour of all" (Wisd. xvi, 6, 7). The Targum of Jonathan para- phrases Numb, xxi, 8, "He shall be healed if he direct his heart imto the Name of the Word of the Lord." Philo, with his characteristic taste for an ethical, mj'S- tical interpretation, represents the historj' as a parable of man's victory over his lower, sensuous nature. The metal, the symbol of permanence and strength, has changed the meaning of the symbol, and that which had before been the emblem of the will, yielding to and poisoned by the serpent pleasure, now represents (Tw0po- avvt], the ai'riTraStc uKoXaaini; (papj^iciKov (De Agri- cult.). The facts just stated may help us to enter into the bearing of the words of John iii, 14, 15. If the par- aphrase of Jonathan represents, as it does, the current interpretation of the schools of Jerusalem, the devout rabbi to whom the words were spoken could not have been ignorant of it. The new teacher carried the lesson a step further. He led him to identify the "Name of the Word of the Lord" with that of the Son of man. He prepared him to see in the lifting-up of the cruci- fixion that which should answer in its i)ower to heal and save to the serpent in the wilderness.
4. Our Lords Allusion to the Object (John iii). — A full discussion of the typical meaning here unfolded be- longs to exegesis rather than to a dictionary. It will be enough to note here that which connects itself with facts or theories already mentioned. On the one side the typical interpretation has been extended to all the details. The pole on which the serpent was placed was not only a type of the cross, but was itself crucial in form (Just. Mart. Dial, c. Tnjph. p. 322). The serpent
was nailed to it as Christ was nailed. As the symbol of sin, it represented his being made sin for us. The very metal, like the tine brass of Rev. i, 15, was an em- blem of the might and glory of the Son of Man (comp. Lampe, ad loc). On the other, it has been maintained (Patrick and Jackson, id siipici) that the serpent was from the beginning, and remains still, exclusively the symbol of evil ; that the lifting-up of the Son of man answered to that of the serpent because on the cross the victory over the serpent was accomplished. The point of comjjarison lay not between the serpent and Christ, but between the look of the Israelite to the outward sign and the look of a justifying faith to the cross of Christ. It will not surprise us to find that in the spiritual, as in the historical interpretation, both theories have an ele- ment of truth. The serpent here also is primarily the emblem of the " knowledge of good and evil." To man, as having obtained that knowledge by doing evil, it has been as a venomous serpent, poisoning and corrupting. In the nature of the Son of Man it is once more in har- monj' with the divine will, and leaves the humanity pure and untainted. The crucifixion is the witness that the evil has been overcome by the good. Those who are bitten by the serpent find their deliverance in look- ing to him who knew evil only by subduing it, and who is therefore mighty to save. Well would it have been for the Church of Christ if it had been content to rest in this truth. Its history shows how easy it was for the old perversion to reproduce itself. The highest of all symbols might share the fate of the lower. It was possible even for the cross of Christ to pass into a Ne- hushtan (comp. Stier, Wo?-(]s of the Lord Jesus, on John iii, and Kurtz, Hist, of the Old Covenant [Eng. transl.l, iii, 344-358).— Smith.