Numbers 21:4 - Meaning and Application

Here is, I. Israel was wearied by a long march around the land of Edom, because they could not go through it the shortest way: “The people became impatient because of the journey” (Numbers 21:4). The road may have been rough, dirty, and tiring. It also frustrated them to take such a long detour and not be allowed to force their way through Edom’s land.

People with a quarrelsome and unhappy spirit will always find something to complain about. II. They showed unbelief and murmuring on this occasion (Numbers 21:5). They had just won a great victory over the Canaanites, and they were still going on from victory to victory. Yet they spoke as if God had done little for them and as if he could not be trusted for the future.

They were upset that they had been brought out of Egypt, and they complained that they did not have bread and water like other people by their own work and care. In fact, they had bread enough and more, but they still said there was no bread. Though they ate the food God sent from heaven, they grew tired of it. The manna itself disgusted them, and they called it light bread, fit for children and not for grown men and soldiers.

What will please those who cannot be pleased by manna? People who want to find fault will find fault even where there is none. In the same way, those who have long enjoyed the word of God can become tired of it and call it light bread. But we must not think less of God’s word because some people despise it. It is the bread of life, real and nourishing food, and it will bring eternal life to all who feed on it by faith, no matter who calls it light bread.

III. God’s just judgment came on them for their murmuring (Numbers 21:6). He sent fiery serpents among them, and many were bitten or stung to death. The wilderness through which they had traveled was full of these serpents all along (Deuteronomy 8:15), but God had kept his people safe from them until now. When they complained, he allowed the serpents to invade the camp as a correction for their sin.

Those who are not thankful for mercy are rightly made to feel judgment. These serpents are called fiery because of their color, their fierce nature, or the burning pain their bites caused. The bites brought fever and a terrible thirst. Since they had complained for lack of water (Numbers 21:5), God punished them with a thirst no water could satisfy. Those who cry out without cause are sometimes given a real reason to cry out.

They had fearfully concluded that they would die in the wilderness, and God let them taste the result of that unbelief. Many of them did die. They had spoken boldly against God himself, and now fiery serpents came into their faces and poisoned them. Their pride had lifted them up against God and Moses, and now God humbled them by using these lowly creatures to afflict them.

The same power that had once protected them from the dangers of the wilderness now turned those dangers against them. The God who gave them quails for food could also send serpents to bite them. All creation stands against those who take up arms against God.

IV. Under this judgment, they repented and begged God for help (Numbers 21:7). They admitted their guilt: “We have sinned.” They named their sin plainly: “We have spoken against the Lord and against you.” It is likely they would not have confessed this if they had not felt the pain of judgment. But the rod softened them. When he killed them, then they sought him.

They asked Moses to pray for them, knowing they did not deserve to be heard and believing Moses had great favor with God. How quickly their attitude changed. The man they had just treated as their enemy they now treated as their best friend. They wanted him to stand between them and God.

Trouble often changes how people think about God’s people, and it teaches them to value prayers they once despised. Moses showed that he had truly forgiven them by blessing those who had cursed him and praying for those who had mistreated him. In this he was a picture of Christ, who prayed for his persecutors, and a model for us to do the same and show that we love our enemies.

V. God then made a remarkable provision for their healing. He did not use Moses simply to announce the judgment. Instead, so that Moses might continue to win the people’s trust, God made him the means of their relief (Numbers 21:8-9). God told Moses to make the shape of a fiery serpent in bronze and set it on a high pole, where everyone in the camp could see it. Anyone bitten by a fiery serpent was healed by looking at the bronze serpent.

The people asked God to take the serpents away (Numbers 21:7), but God chose not to do that. He gives effective help in the best way, though not always in the way we expect. The people who did not die for their sin were still made to feel its pain, so they would repent more deeply and humble themselves. They also received their cure through God, by Moses’ hand, so they would never again speak against God and Moses if possible.

This way of healing was completely miraculous, and it becomes even more striking if some naturalists were right in saying that looking at bright, polished brass harms people bitten by fiery serpents. God can accomplish his purpose by using means that seem opposite. The Jews themselves said the bronze serpent did not heal them by sight alone, but that, as they looked at it, they looked up to God as the Lord who heals.

There was also much gospel meaning in this act. Our Savior said so himself (John 3:14-15): as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish. Notice the likeness. First, there is a likeness between their disease and ours. The devil is the old serpent, a fiery serpent, and that is why he appears as a great red dragon (Revelation 12:3). Sin is the bite of this fiery serpent. It hurts the troubled conscience and poisons the hardened conscience. Satan’s temptations are called his fiery darts (Ephesians 6:16). Lust and passion inflame the soul, and so do the terrors of the Almighty when they stand against us. In the end, sin bites like a serpent and stings like an adder, and even its sweetness turns into the poison of asps.

Second, there is a likeness between their remedy and ours.

It was God himself who designed and prescribed this remedy for the fiery serpents. In the same way, our salvation through Christ was the plan of infinite wisdom, and God himself found the ransom. The cure was also very unlikely, just as salvation through Christ’s death seemed foolish to many. To the Jews, Christ crucified is a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, foolishness.

Moses, the leader who lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, points us to another truth. The law serves as a schoolmaster, a teacher that leads us to Christ, and Moses wrote of him (John 3:14-16). Christ was also lifted up by the rulers of the Jews, who came after Moses. What healed the people was shaped like what had injured them. In the same way, Christ, though completely free from sin, was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that is, he truly took human nature in a fallen world (Romans 8:3). He was so like sinful men that people assumed he was a sinner (John 9:24).

The bronze serpent was lifted up, and so was Christ. He was lifted up on the cross (John 12:33, 34), where he became a public sight for the world. He was also lifted up through the preaching of the gospel. The word used for the pole can mean a banner or standard, and Christ crucified stands as a banner for the people (Isaiah 11:10). Some understand the lifting up of the serpent as a picture of Christ triumphing over Satan, the old serpent. On the cross he bruised Satan’s head and made a public display of the rulers and powers he had overthrown and destroyed (Colossians 2:15).

There is also a close likeness between their receiving the cure and ours. They looked and lived, and we, if we believe, shall not perish. It is by faith that we look to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). We must see our wound and our danger, receive God’s witness about his Son, and trust his promise that we will be healed and saved if we submit to his direction. The bronze serpent would not heal anyone who refused to look at it. If some kept staring at their wound and would not look up, they surely died. If they treated God’s remedy lightly and ran to natural medicines instead, trusting those, they rightly perished. In the same way, if sinners despise Christ’s righteousness or give up hope of benefit from it, their wound will surely be fatal.

But whoever looked to that healing sign, even from the farthest part of the camp, and even with a weak and tearful eye, was certainly healed. So whoever believes in Christ, even with weak faith, will not perish. There are weak believers for whom Christ died. It may be that for some time after the serpent was raised up, the camp of Israel was still troubled by the fiery serpents. Some have also guessed that they carried the bronze serpent with them through the rest of their journey and set it up wherever they camped. When they settled in Canaan, they may have placed it somewhere within the land. It seems unlikely that the Israelites would have gone so far into the wilderness to burn incense to it, as we later find they did (2 Kings 18:4).

Even those who are rescued from the eternal death that sin deserves must still feel sin’s pain while they live in this world. Yet, if we are not at fault, we may have the bronze serpent with us still, always ready to be looked to in every need, by carrying about the dying of the Lord Jesus.