Nehushtan

Biblical Text and Content

The name Nehushtan appears only in 2 Kings 18:4. King Hezekiah of Judah carried out a religious reform in which he removed the high places (altars built on elevated sites), broke the sacred pillars (standing stones), and cut down the Asherah poles. At that time he also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. The text gives the reason, "for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it," and then adds, "and he called it Nehushtan."

Background

The origin of the bronze serpent is recorded in Numbers 21:4-9. When the people complained in the wilderness, a plague of fiery serpents struck them. At God's command Moses made a serpent of bronze and set it on a pole, and anyone who had been bitten and looked at it lived. Several centuries later, by the time of Hezekiah, this bronze serpent had become an object to which incense was offered. The text does not say how the serpent was preserved in the intervening centuries or where it was kept. The view that it stood in the Temple in Jerusalem is an interpretive inference.

The Hebrew Nehushtan resembles both nechoshet, meaning "bronze" (or copper), and nachash, meaning "serpent." For this reason, many interpreters regard the name as a wordplay meaning something like "a piece of bronze" or "bronze serpent."

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

The Nehushtan episode shows that even an object God provided as a means of deliverance can become idolatry when it becomes an object of worship in its own right. The New Testament does not use the name Nehushtan. However, in John 3:14-15 Jesus says, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up," likening the bronze serpent to his own death on the cross. Christian interpretation therefore regards the bronze serpent as a type of Christ.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Who gave the name: The Hebrew verb rendered "he called it" in the KJV can be read either as "he (Hezekiah) called it" or impersonally as "it was called" (literally, "one called it"). The first reading holds that Hezekiah disparaged the bronze serpent by calling it "nothing but a piece of bronze." The second holds that Nehushtan was a name the people were already using.
• Jewish tradition: The Mishnah (the compilation of Jewish oral law) is reported to teach that the bronze serpent itself did not save anyone; rather, the people were healed because, in looking upward, they turned their hearts to God. Wisdom of Solomon 16 makes a similar point. The Wisdom of Solomon is accepted as deuterocanonical by the Catholic Church and classified as apocryphal by Protestants.
• Controversy over images and sacred objects: Since the Reformation, Protestant traditions have frequently cited this passage to criticize the veneration of images and sacred objects. The Catholic Church distinguishes between adoration (worship), which is due to God alone, and the veneration of images and saints, and therefore does not regard this passage as forbidding veneration as such.
• Scholarly discussion: Some scholars interpret the passage in connection with the veneration of serpent symbols in the ancient Near East. The text itself, however, identifies this bronze serpent as the one Moses made.

In the Korean Church

In Korean church preaching, Nehushtan frequently serves as an illustration warning against the tendency for objects, traditions, buildings, or institutions that once served as reminders of past grace to become objects of faith themselves.