Israel traveled from Mount Hor by the Red Sea road to go around Edom. The long route made the people impatient. They spoke against God and Moses, asking why they had been brought from Egypt to die in the wilderness. They said there was no bread or water and that they loathed the miserable food.
The LORD sent poisonous snakes among the people. The snakes bit them, and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and confessed that they had sinned by speaking against the LORD and Moses. They asked him to pray that the snakes be taken away. Moses prayed for them.
God told Moses to make a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole, so that anyone bitten who looked at it would live. Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. When a snake bit someone, that person looked at the bronze serpent and lived.
On the wilderness road they had despised, snakes entered the camp and people died. They returned to Moses and named their speech as sin. After Moses prayed, he set up not a living snake but a serpent made of bronze. The person who had been bitten looked at it and lived.
The road from Mount Hor did not pass directly through Edom. Israel had to turn by the Red Sea road, and the longer journey made the people impatient. They spoke again against God and Moses, saying there was neither bread nor water in the wilderness and despising the food already given. Poisonous snakes entered the camp, bit people, and many died.
The people named their speech against the LORD and Moses as sin. They asked Moses to pray that the snakes would be removed, and Moses prayed for them. God did not say that the snakes would disappear. Instead God told Moses to make a poisonous serpent and put it on a pole, so that a bitten person who looked at it would live. Moses made the serpent of bronze and raised it on the pole.
People in the camp were still bitten by snakes. Yet when a bitten person looked at the bronze serpent raised on the pole, that person lived. The episode begins on the detour road and moves through the people’s confession and Moses’s prayer. It ends with the bronze serpent standing on the pole and the bitten person who looks at it living.
God’s command was to make the likeness of a poisonous serpent, and Moses made it of bronze. Again and again, a person bitten by a snake looked toward the pole and lived. The road that began with complaint ends at that concrete action: the bitten person looks at the bronze serpent and lives.