🔢WEB · Numbers 21:8
What does Numbers 21:8 mean?
"Yahweh said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”"
— Numbers 21:8 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
The people spoke against God, and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this disgusting bread.”
Yahweh sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. Many people of Israel died.
The people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against Yahweh, and against you. Pray to Yahweh, that he take away the serpents from us.” Moses prayed for the people.
Yahweh said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”
Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of brass, he lived.
The children of Israel traveled, and encamped in Oboth.
They traveled from Oboth, and encamped at Iyeabarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrise.
Explanation
Numbers 21:8 records God's instruction to Moses during a crisis in the wilderness. The Israelites, weary from their journey, had complained bitterly against God and Moses, and in response God sent venomous snakes among them as a form of judgment. Many people were bitten and died. When the people recognized their sin and pleaded with Moses to intercede for them, Moses prayed on their behalf, and God responded with this remedy: Moses was to fashion a bronze snake, mount it on a pole, and lift it up so that anyone who had been bitten could look at it and live. The instruction is startlingly simple — not a medicine, not an antidote, but a command to look.
The context is essential to understanding the verse
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