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Concept
Nehushtan
Summary
In the biblical Books of Kings (2 Kings 18:4; written c. 550 BC), the Nehushtan (נְחֻשְׁתָּן Nəḥuštān nəħuʃtaːn) is the name given to the bronze image of a serpent on a pole. The image is described in the Book of Numbers, where Yahweh instructed Moses to erect it so that the Israelites who saw it would be cured and be protected from dying from the bites of the "fiery serpents", which Yahweh had sent to punish them for speaking against him and Moses ().
According to the Book of Kings, King Hezekiah institutes an iconoclastic reform that included the destruction of "the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan".
The term is a proper noun coming from either the word for "snake" or "brass", and thus means "The (Great) Serpent" or "The (Great) Brass".
The English Standard Version of the Bible and the majority of contemporary English translations refer to the serpent as made of "bronze", whereas the King James Version and a number of other versions state "brass". 2 Kings 18:4 is translated as "brasen" in the King James Version. The Douay-Rheims 1899 edition has "brazen". Eugene H. Peterson, who created a loose paraphrase of the Bible as The Message (2002), opted for "a snake of fiery copper".
Snake cults had been well established in Canaan in the Bronze Age: archaeologists have uncovered serpent cult objects in Bronze Age strata at several pre-Israelite cities in Canaan: two at Megiddo, one at Gezer, one in the Kodesh HaKodashim (Holy of Holies) of the Area H temple at Hazor, and two at Shechem.
According to Lowell K. Handy, the Nehushtan may have been the symbol of a minor god of snakebite-cure within the Temple.
Serpents in the Bible#Serpent of bronze
In the biblical story, following their Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites set out from Mount Hor to go to the Red Sea. However they had to detour around the land of Edom (Numbers 20, 25). Impatient, they complained against Yahweh and Moses (Numbers 21), and in response God sent "fiery serpents" among them and many died.
Official source
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