The Bronze Serpent
After yet another complaint about the manna, venomous snakes enter the camp; Moses raises a bronze serpent on a pole, and whoever looks up at it lives.
Skirting the land of Edom, the people lost heart again: why did you bring us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness — there is no bread and no water, and our soul loathes this insubstantial bread. The complaint contradicted itself: there is no bread, and we are sick of it. Fiery serpents came into the camp and people died of the bites. The nation confessed — we have sinned in speaking against the Lord and against you — and asked Moses to pray. The answer was unusual: make yourself a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone bitten who looks at it shall live. Moses made it of bronze, a pun in Hebrew between nachash and nechoshet. Seven centuries later the object survived and became an idol receiving incense, until King Hezekiah smashed it, an act the Bible praises. The same thing served as a cure and as an idol; the difference lay not in the bronze but in where the viewer was looking.