4/20/20 - The Serpent

Numbers 21:8

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Gen. 3:15

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.”

The symbolism of the serpent.  The serpent was to bruise/bite the heal of the One, the Son of Man, through whom redemption would come.  Here the judgement is coming by serpents, bruising the offspring if the woman.

Redemption comes by looking at the serpent impaled on a cross.  It was, I think, Henry Scogul who called it,  “the death of death by the death on the cross.”  The head of evil bruised by the cross.

Jesus connected the dots as he would say later in John 3:14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.  The offspring of the woman, The Son of Man, as he called himself, bruising the head of the serpent.

Thanks be to God!