It’s Not Cool to Be a Fool

Time and again, the Children of Israel confronted God and their leader, Moshe, with rebellious complaints which had the potential to unravel the fabric of the desert community. Each time, the rebellious parties were punished in a distinctive way and the story in this week’s parshah is no exception:

And the people spoke against God and against Moshe: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread and no water and we loath the wretched bread.” And the Lord sent against the people the viper-serpents, and they bit the people, and many of the people of Israel died. (Numbers 21:5-6)

When the people came to terms with their wrongdoing, they pleaded with Moshe, as their advocate, to stem the punishment and Moshe interceded on their behalf. God, in turn, offered a curious remedy which mirrored the punishment:

“Make you a viper and put on a standard, and so then, whoever is bitten will see it and live. And Moshe made a serpent of bronze and put it on a standard and so then, if the serpent bit a man, he looked on the serpent of bronze and lived. (Ibid. 8-9)

While I will not venture here into the realm of biblical anthropology, this remedy seems clearly apotropaic, namely, an act of sympathetic magic, namely, by looking at the bronze serpent, one was cured. This bronze serpent was apparently preserved and stored in the holy of holies and.makes a reappearance in a story from the period of the kings, when Hizkiyahu (King Hezekiah) had it destroyed because the people began to worship it:

He broke the bronze serpent that Moshe had made, for until that time the children of Israel had been offering sacrifices to it; it was called Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4)

This clearly fits in with the idea that the people thought the bronze serpent had magic powers and took this idea just a little bit too far, turning it into a deity. And, despite the fact the Moshe fashioned this object at God’s behest, a rabbinic midrash confirms the probity of Hizkiyahu’s act:

Hizkiyahu king of Judah did four things (of his own accord) and his judgment coincided with God’s… He broke the bronze serpent in pieces and his judgment coincided with God’s. (Avot d’Rabbi Natan version a, chapter 2, Schechter ed. pp.11-12)

For this very reason, during the period of the Mishnah, the rabbinic understanding of the Torah’s story totally reframes its significance, emphasizing it as a means to focus one’s faith on God rather than on a seemingly magical object. Apparently, the sages were also aware of the very real danger of turning “holy” objects into gods:

Similarly, you can say: The verse states: “Make for yourself a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he sees it, he shall live” (Numbers 21:8). Once again it may be asked: Did the serpent kill, or did the serpent preserve life? Rather, when the Jewish people turned their eyes upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if not, they rotted from their snakebites. (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:8)

For the sages, as for King Hizkiyahu, the bottom line is the clear realization that sometimes people can fall prey to being misled and veer from what is right and truly important, requiring subtle (or not so subtle) reminders. This is true in religion and equally true in all of life’s aspects.