Copper Snake

Moses made a serpent of copper and placed it on the pole, and it will be that anyone who was bitten will look at it and live. (Numbers 21:9)”

The Children of Israel were punished with fiery serpents for speaking against G-d and Moses. After the people came to Moses and admitted their sin, Moses prayed and HASHEM instructed him to make a fiery serpent and place it on a pole. When the people looked up at the pole they were healed from their snake bite.

Christians claim that the serpent of copper represents their deity’s supposed redeeming death on a pole (the cross). They insist that those who want to be saved from physical and spiritual death have to look to the cross to be saved as the Children of Israel looked up at the pole. By default the Christian deity is thus compared to a snake, the most cunning and corrupting of creatures, the creature that enticed Eve to disobey HASHEM. The snake on the pole is not an object to be worshiped. It isn’t the serpent or pole that gives life or death, but that they look upward and subject their hearts to HASHEM to receive healing.

King Hezekiah destroyed many items that were functioning as idols during his reign, one of them being the copper snake. People were revering something from the physical world as if it were divine. It was eliminated when corrupted in this manner. It was not the intended purpose of the copper snake to be worshiped as a god.

“He removed the high places, shattered the pillars, and cut down the Asherah-trees; he [also] ground up the copper serpent that Moses had made – for until those days the Children of Israel used to burn incense before it… (II Kings 18:4)”