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Numbers

About this book
Chapter 21

1 When the Canaanite king of Arad who lived in the Negev heard that Israel was approaching along the road to Atharim, he fought against Israel and took some of them prisoner. 2 So Israel made a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will indeed deliver this people into our hand, then we will utterly destroy their cities.”⁠ 3 The Lord listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites, and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. So the name of the place was called Hormah.⁠ 4 Then they traveled from Mount Hor by the road to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became impatient along the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness, for there is no bread or water, and we detest this worthless food.”⁠ 6 So the Lord sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people; many people of Israel died.⁠ 7 Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he would take away the snakes from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and set it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.”⁠ 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived.⁠ 10 The Israelites traveled on and camped in Oboth. 11 Then they traveled on from Oboth and camped at Iye Abarim, in the wilderness that is before Moab on the eastern side. 12 From there they moved on and camped in the valley of Zered. 13 From there they moved on and camped on the other side of the Arnon, in the wilderness that extends from the regions of the Amorites, for Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites. 14 This is why it is said in the Book of the Wars of the Lord,⁠ “Waheb in Suphah and the wadis, the Arnon 15 and the slope of the valleys that extends to the dwelling of Ar, and falls off at the border of Moab.” 16 And from there they traveled to Beer; that is the well where the Lord spoke to Moses, “Gather the people and I will give them water.” 17 Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, O well, sing to it! 18 The well which the princes dug, which the leaders of the people opened with their scepters and their staffs.”⁠ And from the wilderness they traveled to Mattanah;⁠ 19 and from Mattanah to Nahaliel; and from Nahaliel to Bamoth; 20 and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the country of Moab, near the top of Pisgah, which overlooks the wastelands. 21 Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, saying, 22 “Let us pass through your land; we will not turn aside into the fields or into the vineyards, nor will we drink water from any well, but we will go along the King’s Highway until we pass your borders.” 23 But Sihon did not permit Israel to pass through his border; he gathered all his forces together and went out against Israel into the wilderness. When he came to Jahaz, he fought against Israel. 24 But the Israelites defeated him in battle and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the Ammonites, for the border of the Ammonites was strongly defended. 25 So Israel took all these cities; and Israel settled in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages. 26 For Heshbon was the city of King Sihon of the Amorites. Now he had fought against the former king of Moab and had taken all his land from his control, as far as the Arnon. 27 That is why those who speak in proverbs say, “Come to Heshbon, let it be built. Let the city of Sihon be established! 28 For fire went out from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon. It has consumed Ar of Moab and the lords of the high places of Arnon. 29 Woe to you, Moab. You are ruined, O people of Chemosh!⁠ He has made his sons fugitives, and his daughters the prisoners of King Sihon of the Amorites. 30 We have overpowered them; Heshbon has perished as far as Dibon. We have shattered them as far as Nophah, which reaches to Medeba.”⁠ 31 So the Israelites lived in the land of the Amorites. 32 Moses sent spies to reconnoiter Jazer, and they captured its villages and dispossessed the Amorites who were there. 33 Then they turned and went up by the road to Bashan. And King Og of Bashan and all his forces marched out against them to do battle at Edrei. 34 And the Lord said to Moses, “Do not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand. You will do to him what you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.” 35 So they defeated Og, his sons, and all his people, until there were no survivors, and they possessed his land.

Texts in conversation

Compare Numbers 21:9 and 2 Kings 18:4

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

2 Kings 18 tells how Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent made by Moses in Numbers 21, which had become an idol, connected to its origins as an ancient Near Eastern deity. Once a symbol of healing, it was now seen as a forbidden object of worship.

Passages

Numbers 21:9

Hebrew Bible
7 Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he would take away the snakes from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and set it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived. 10 The Israelites traveled on and camped in Oboth. 11 Then they traveled on from Oboth and camped at Iye Abarim, in the wilderness that is before Moab on the eastern side.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Numbers

2 Kings 18:4

Hebrew Bible
2 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what the Lord approved, just as his ancestor David had done. 4 He eliminated the high places, smashed the sacred pillars to bits, and cut down the Asherah pole. He also demolished the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been offering incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. 5 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; in this regard there was none like him among the kings of Judah either before or after. 6 He was loyal to the Lord and did not abandon him. He obeyed the commandments that the Lord had given to Moses.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Kings

References

"... Jews of later ages surely did believe that no other gods but their own are real, so how did monotheism arise? What led the people of Israel to such a radical conclusion? There is a hint about the answer to this question in the narrative of biblical history. The historical books of scripture describe a development that would recur every few generations: the appearance of a religious reformer who would attack the nation’s tendency to idolatry and demand the removal of previously acceptable customs. For example, the Torah relates that when “fiery serpents” invaded Israel’s encampment in the desert, Moses himself crafted a similar creature out of bronze or copper and set it up to view: “if a [living] serpent bit a man, he gazed upon the copper serpent and lived” (Numbers 21:9). One might have thought that the copper serpent’s association with Moses gave it legitimacy, but years later the reforming King Hezekiah destroyed it, even though he knew that Moses himself had made it, because “the people of Israel had offered it incense, calling it Nehushtan.” (2 Kings 18:4 ... The name is a play on the Hebrew word nehoshet, meaning “bronze” or “copper.”) Over the centuries, many objects of veneration were thus excluded from the life of the nation, until finally only one God was left ..."
Robert Goldenberg, The Origins of Judaism: From Canaan to the Rise of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 34.
"... In the Legend of Kirta, El created a goddess for the express purpose of delivering King Kirta from a mortal malady that no existing deity was capable of curing. The creation of Shatiqat is tied solely to the immediate situation of the narrative, namely, saving Kirta’s life. This particular goddess appears to meet the requirements stipulated above for being on the level of divine hierarchy of the artisan gods. The goddess had a clearly defined area of specialization in which she is quite competent, since the king did indeed recover. In the passage itself the goddess does only what she was requested to do and nothing more, but the narrative is much too short to determine whether or not she was envisaged as having volition of her own. Shatiqatu appears nowhere else in the texts from Ugarit, neither in narrative nor ritual sources, so all that exists with which to define her is a single literary composition. It is possible either that Shatiqatu was a recognized, though minor, deity in a Syro-Palestinian cult, or that she was a literary invention concocted for the plot development of this particular legend. In either case, it would be reasonable to assume that she was presented in a manner deemed plausible to the contemporary audience. A similar deity appears in biblical narratives, though no proper name is given to the god. The story of the creation of the image of the deity, as the story now appears, leaves the divine nature of the seraph out of the narrative (Numbers 21:8-9) ... that the passage refers to the institution of a cult for a healing deity can be seen in the passage that recounts the later destruction of the cultic image (2 Kings 18:4) ..."
Lowell K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 139.

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Numbers 21:9 and 2 Kings 18:4

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