The Bronze Serpent Symbolism — 2 Kings 18

The bronze serpent that Moses made in the wilderness for those bitten by snakes was a symbol of salvation. However, as time passed, the Israelites turned it into an idol and offered sacrifices to it, and King Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent in order to put an end to this idolatry.

The Bronze Serpent Symbolism — 2 Kings 18 Daily Word

The bronze serpent is called “Nehushtan” in Hebrew, and refers to the bronze serpent Moses made in the wilderness for those bitten by snakes (Num 21:1-9), which came to be treated as an idol during the period of the monarchy (2 Kgs 18:4). When the Israelites who had come out of Egypt complained in the wilderness about the heat, the harsh journey, and especially the lack of food, God sent fiery serpents among them as punishment.

The Meaning of Nehushtan, the Bronze Serpent, Found in 2 Kings 18:4

The Israelites had been burning incense and offering sacrifices to the bronze serpent, which had been called Nehushtan up until the time of Hezekiah. Nehushtan means “a piece of bronze.” Accordingly, given that this name appears at the end of the verse — after the account of what Hezekiah did with “the bronze serpent that Moses had made” — it is more natural to understand this as describing the situation after the bronze serpent had already been destroyed. This interpretation also gains plausibility from the fact that the name Nehushtan can convey a compound meaning.

That is, “Nehushtan,” as transliterated, evokes both the noun nachash, meaning “serpent,” and the noun nechoshet, meaning “bronze.” Beyond its meaning of “merely a piece of bronze,” the precise nature of the object is not made entirely clear. However, a cultic lamp bearing an image of a face — identified as Asherah — flanked on both sides by two serpents was discovered in a Late Bronze Age stratum in Palestine, suggesting that a form of serpent worship, syncretized with Asherah worship, existed at that time.

This archaeological evidence indicates that the memory of the bronze serpent did not develop into a pure form of faith, but was instead corrupted through its mixture with foreign idolatrous religions. Hezekiah gave the object this contemptuous name in order to make clear to the people of the southern kingdom of Judah — who called it “the bronze serpent Moses made” and were worshiping it — that it was nothing more than a piece of bronze shaped like a serpent, and furthermore, that it was nothing but a ritually defiled idol.

This practice appears to have influenced not only Israel but also the surrounding Mesopotamian cultures and later Hellenistic culture as well (in the Greek world, Asclepius, the god of medicine, is depicted holding a staff entwined by a serpent — an image still found on ambulances today). Indeed, a bronze bowl engraved with an image of a serpent on a pole was excavated from Nineveh.

Later, Jesus used the image of the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole as an illustration when teaching Nicodemus, who came to him in the night seeking truth, explaining the way to eternal life. That is, just as the serpent was lifted up on the pole, Jesus himself would be lifted up and die on the cross, and he emphasized that whoever looks to this cross will receive salvation (John 3:14-15).

Source: Oxford Bible Commentary (2 Kgs 18), Dictionary of Biblical Background

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