September 14, 2014
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
First Reading: Numbers 21:4b-9
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091414.cfm
I have heard it said, “Don’t complain when you travel since you’ll just make yourself and everyone else miserable.” It is wise advice, but unfortunately, the ancient Israelites did not adopt such a view for themselves. Instead, when they got tired, bored, and annoyed, they lashed out in anger. Their rage earns them a prompt punishment from God: snakes!
Context
At this point, late in the Book of Numbers, the Israelites are tired from their journey. Miriam and Aaron have just died. The people have won a battle against one nation and are about to fight two more. But sadly, many of the stories in the Book of Numbers are not about victory but failure: complaining to God (chap. 11), Miriam and Aaron’s spat with Moses (12), the people’s refusal to conquer the Promised land (14), the rebellion of Korah (16), Moses disobediently striking the rock (20), and idol worship (25). Just now Israel needs to straighten out some kinks in its relationship with the Lord.
Foolish Bellyaching
What prompts complaining? We see that the people had “their patience worn out by the journey” (Num 21:4 NAB). How frequently this happens to us! Whether on a long drive, a long hike, a long plane ride, it is very tempting to start complaining as we become “worn out” by travelling. The Israelites speak straight from the gut: they are bellyaching about their hunger and thirst. Even though God has provided for them again and again, they even insult his miraculous manna from heaven as lechem haqeloqel, “miserable bread.” Their loathing for God’s gift is alarming, but not surprising. Sometimes our bellies can trump our judgment.
Intercession
On previous occasions, God punished his people for their cantankerous griping. Here their fate is no different. God sends what the text calls “saraph serpents.” Saraph simply means “fiery,” a modifier used to indicate the severity of the snake’s venomous bite. When the Lord commands Moses to erect a serpent on a pole, he uses the word, saraph, as a noun. These saraph snakes should remind us of the seraphim, the “burning ones”, six-winged angels who appear close to the throne of God (Isaiah 6). After snakes bite the Israelites and several of them die from the poisonous bites, they eat humble pie and realize their error. Fortunately, the punishment has its intended effect: conversion. The people come face to face with their sinfulness. They repent and cry out for deliverance. Moses intercedes on their behalf, as he had done several previous times (e.g., Num 11:2; 14:13-19), and God provides a saving path for the penitents.
Snake on a Stick
Oddly, the Lord commands Moses to fashion a copper serpent and mount it on a pole. This command is surprising, because it seems to go against the Ten Commandments’ dictum not to make a “graven image” (Exod 20:4 RSV). Yet this image is not meant to be worshipped, but to be a means for the people to obtain divine aid. Later in the history of Israel, the snake image is still lying around and when people start worshipping it as an idol-god they call Nehushtan, King Hezekiah has to destroy it (2 Kgs 18:4). These stories together show that sometimes we can twist God’s purposes and use a good thing for an ill purpose. What had been a source of salvation becomes an occasion for sin. Incredibly, archaeologists have unearthed a small copper serpent at an Egyptian-then-Midianite shrine from the same time period as Moses. The 14th century BC shrine to Hathor is at an Egyptian mining site called Timna. It was taken over by the Midianites around 1150 and they erected a tent over the site. The discovery of the serpent hints at the veracity of the episode in Numbers 21 and provides us with an example of what Moses’ serpent might have actually looked like. The fact that the artifact is copper also suggests we translate, nehoshet, a word that can mean copper or bronze, as “copper.”
A Slithering Therapy
The copper serpent on a stick strikes us as such a strange method for healing people of snake bites and seemingly contrary to the spirit of the Law. Yet many items that would normally defile a person under the Law often serve, in a ritual context, to purify. For example, the blood or ashes of dead animal are used to purify people and ritual objects such as the altar. It accords with the idea of “the punishment fits the crime,” only in reverse. Here the serpent, which was the means of punishment, is now becoming the means of deliverance. That which normally makes unclean now makes clean. That which normally harms, in this special ritual context, brings salvation. (As an aside, I should mention that this snake has nothing to do with the snake on a post found on the side of ambulances, which is the Rod of Asclepius, Greek god of healing, or with the mistaken use of the caduceus as a medical symbol.)
Looking for Salvation
Notably, the people do not have to touch the copper serpent for deliverance, only look at it. The look itself is sufficient ritual contact for the healing to take effect. Jesus cites the copper serpent as a foreshadowing of his own salvific role, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15 RSV). In each case, there is a turning toward, a looking, which allows the person in desperate need to obtain redemption. It brings to mind Isaiah 45:22, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (RSV).
We find salvation not by closing our eyes or hiding in dark corners, but by opening our eyes and looking—like Hagar looking for water in the desert (Gen 21:19), like the blind men healed by Jesus, like St. Paul when Ananias prays over him (Acts 9:17-18). Catholic teaching even describes heaven in terms of sight: the Beatific Vision. Jesus, the Light of the World, is the true source of salvation and we can come to him by looking at him lifted up in the tragedy and triumph of the cross.
