Chapter 30—Fiery Serpents
As the people journeyed from Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to
compass the land of Edom, they were much discouraged, and com-
plained of the hardships of the way.” And the people spake against
God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of
Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there
any water? and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent
fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people? and much
people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said,
We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee.
Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses
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prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a
fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that
every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses
made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole. And it came to pass,
that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of
brass he lived.”
The murmurings of the children of Israel were unreasonable, and
the unreasonable always go to extremes. They uttered falsehoods in
saying that they had no bread nor water. They had both given them
by a miracle of God’s mercy. To punish them for their ingratitude,
and complaining against God, the Lord permitted fiery serpents to
bite them. They were called fiery, because their bite produced painful
inflammation, and speedy death. The Israelites, up to this time, had
been preserved from these serpents in the wilderness, by a continual
miracle; for the wilderness through which they traveled was infested
with poisonous serpents.
Moses told the people, that God had hitherto preserved them, that
they had not been harmed by the serpents, which was a token of his care
for them. He told them it was because of their needless murmurings,
complaining of the hardships in their journey, that God had permitted
them to be bitten of serpents. This was to show them that God had
preserved them from many and great evils, which if he had permitted
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