Jesus, Snakes and Numbers 21: Context and Context
Author: Bobby Valentine | Filed under: Christian hope, Grace, Hermeneutics, Jesus, Matthew, Numbers
I get many questions every week and do my best to respond to those asking. Last night I got a question and responded. I thought I would use it for my Shabbat Theology today because it gives us a good opportunity to explore the importance of context.
Jesus in Matthew 7.10 says, “If your child asks for bread, will you give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will you give a snake?”
The Question Via Messenger
“In Matthew 7 – Jesus says only an evil father when his child asks for food would instead give a serpent. Jesus says God is not like that. Numbers 21 – The Hebrews complain about not having enough food or water so YHWH sends deadly serpents to bite them. I can’t stop thinking about it once I put these together. Is it possible for New Testament writers or Jesus to be saying the Father is better than the God depicted in the OT? It goes against most of what I have known. But I am curious what others think.”
My Response
Thank you for the question. First I recommend getting and seriously meditating Christopher J. H. Wright’s stellar book, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. It is a very helpful volume.
As I understand them, the texts Matthew 7.10 and Numbers 21.1-9 are not dealing with the same thing by any means. Jesus is not, in any fashion, contrasting the one he calls “Father” with the God of the Old Testament. He is not critiquing Numbers 21. As we shall see the two texts are not related at all. Jesus not only endorses Numbers 11 but uses it to teach about God’s own love (more on that in a moment). The one Jesus calls “Father” is the God of Israel, the God of the Hebrew Bible. There are no exceptions to this.
Grasping the Context of Numbers 21
First, the issue here is not Matthew 7.10 but properly understanding Numbers 21. As with every text in the Bible, Numbers 21 has a context in the Book of Numbers and within the biblical narrative. We need to pay attention to both.
Second, the “Wilderness Generation,” which Numbers 21 is part, does not come in for very positive reviews in the biblical narrative. Not in the Hebrew Bible nor in the NT. In fact, the Wilderness Generation is the paradigm (i.e. pattern) for not merely falling short of God’s glory but of “hard unbelieving hearts” that reject Yahweh, his grace and his acts. Read Psalms 78, Psalm 95, and Psalm 106 (every verse) to get a good grip upon the “Wilderness Generation.”
Remember the Sermonator in Hebrews 3.7-4.13 uses the Wilderness Generation as the model to exhort his congregation to NOT be like that. Also remember what the Feast of Tabernacles is all about: it remembers two things 1) our ancestors rebelled in UNBELIEF and 2) Yahweh in Hesed/grace kept us alive, feed us the bread of angels and gave us his Presence in the Tabernacle (aka God did not abandon Israel!).
Third, Numbers 21 comes in a strategic place in the Book of Numbers (its Hebrew name is “In the Wilderness” which is much more apposite). Numbers itself is part of a larger narrative of redemption. But for our purposes Numbers has three parts.
1) The redeemed by grace people at Mt Sinai (chs 1-10). The People – who have witnessed with their own eyes the “signs and wonders” done, the splitting of the Red Sea and have come to Mt. Sinai. They are not ignorant of the glorious nature of Yahweh’s power and Hesed. They are organized into a “army of the Lord.”
2) The Hardhearted, Unbelieving, Rebellious Generation (chapters 11-25). As soon as the people leave Mt Sinai they decide to rebel in chapter 11. They decide that Canaan is not the promised land but Egypt is! So, they try to stone Moses, they want to embark on an Anti-Exodus, and they reject Yahweh. They are condemned AND graced at the same time. This generation will not enter the Promised Land. But Yahweh does not abandon them. Yahweh spreads a table in the wilderness for them. They are miraculously fed with meat and bread every single day of their lives teaching them that humans do not live by bread alone but by the words that come from Yahweh … and the birds and manna came because of the word of Yahweh. Jesus points to this in his Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6.11) and cites the very text from Deuteronomy 8 reflecting on God’s surpassing goodness to this unbelieving generation (Deut 8.2-4; Mt 4.4). There is nearly an endless cascade of Rebellion in these chapters.
3) The Renewed Generation (Numbers 26-36). There is not a single reported rebellion in this section. After God’s divine intervention.
A Close Look at Numbers 21 Itself
Third, Numbers 21 comes at the end of this long sordid tale of hard-hearted rebellion. Now notice what comes immediately after this story of the snakes and bronze serpent. It is the story of Balaam. Balaam was a hired seer to CURSE the people of God. But Yahweh saved Israel and turned the curses into blessings. While the snakes were in the camp, without a single Israelite knowing what is happening, the “spiritual warfare” for their very lives is fought and Yahweh graces even the hardhearted, unbelieving, Wilderness Generation. This story, Numbers 22-25, shows us “the Father” who cares for his children even when they are disciplined, even in the midst of their unbelieving rebellion.
This context throws Numbers 21 in considerably different light. Note what is actually in the text itself. In 21.1-3, Yahweh grants the Wilderness Generation victory over the Canaanites. God is Good! God will take care of Israel. They are blessed.
Suddenly, in the very next verse – in the face of Yahweh’s grace – the people recapitulate chapter 11. They 1) speak against Yahweh (he just saved them!) and Moses. 2) They declare that Yahweh has brought them into the Wilderness to die. 3) They reject God’s bread and describe it as “miserable” (v.5).
Yahweh has in fact miraculously fed this Generation every single day for almost 40 years. The rest of the Bible views the manna as a delicacy and the “bread of angels” (Ps 78, again read the whole Psalm and Psalm 95 and 106). The ancient Jewish book, Wisdom of Solomon, describes the wonder of manna in this fashion:
“You gave your people the food of angels,
and without their toil you supplied them with bread ready to eat,
providing every pleasure and suited to every taste.
For your sustenance manifested your sweetness toward your children;
and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it,
was changed to suit everyone’s liking”
(Wisdom of Solomon 16.20-21, NRSV).
The Wilderness Generation in Numbers 21, after 40 years of grace and divine Presence, was in the exact same spot as they were when they rebelled in Numbers 11. They have rejected Yahweh, they have mocked his gifts, they want to RETURN TO EGYPT.
There is absolutely no comparison of Yahweh to a father who gives his children a snake. In fact, THIS GROUP is the very group that Yahweh defends against Balaam. And after he does, they recapitulate the Golden Calf! They commit adultery with the Baal of Peor! (Numbers 25).
Fourth, the Wilderness Generation did NOT ask God for food and receive a snake. The Wilderness Generation was fed by God every day. The Wilderness Generation REJECTED the gift and mocked it. And God defended them in the next chapter.
But as God refused to allow the hard-hearted unbelieving generation into the promised land, he does punish them. He allowed the serpents to enter the camp. Many scholars have pointed out that the serpent was a symbol of both life and death in the ancient near east. The serpents brought in punishment on the Wilderness Generation. But at the same time Yahweh uses that symbol to get them to trust in him. That is they had to finally trust the word that came from Yahweh’s mouth and look to the snake to be delivered from death. The irony is immense.
Context matters.
Fifth, as we draw this to a close, I repeat that Yahweh still did not abandon the Wilderness Generation. Rather in one of the greatest stories of spiritual warfare in the Bible, that not one single Israelite had any inkling was going on, Yahweh the God of Hesed who forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin turned a curse to a blessing for people who were being disciplined at that very moment.
And Jesus believed every word of it. When Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover, a festival that celebrates the God of Israel saving that Wilderness Generation from slavery, he met a man named Nicodemus. Jesus referred to an episode from that Exodus narrative – the Wilderness Generation is the Exodus Generation – the Bronze Serpent. And for Jesus, the Bronze Serpent was the perfect parallel to proclaim the astonishing love of God. God loved the UNBELIEVING Generation in the Wilderness, and battled for it; and God SO Loves the World that also does not believe. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and whoever believes in him may have eternal life”
(John 3.15). And then John exclaims “For God so loved …”
The response of the Wilderness Generation in the face of their astonishing unbelief was they had to believe that God was using that symbol of death to become the instrument of life. The response of the Generation of Jesus – and our own – is exactly the same. God has used the symbol of death to become the instrument of life.
Our Father, the God of Israel, loved the Wilderness Generation. They could not out sin Yahweh’s Hesed. And in spite of themselves Yahweh continued to love them, bless them, feed them … even when they had no clue he was fighting a life and death battle on their behalf.
That is, as I understand it, what Numbers 21 is about.
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