Jesus is the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), the Serpent-Crusher (Gen. 3:15), the prophet like Moses (John 6:14), the New David (Matt. 22:42–45), the long-awaited Shepherd (Ezek. 34:23; John 10:11).[1] To this list, should we add the greater, true, or last serpent!? If you recoiled with blood boiling horror at this reptilian image, then you have good biblical instincts—but you also have a problem. Jesus compared himself to a snake in John’s gospel. In John 3:14–15, Jesus says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
1. This article is adapted from chapter five of David Vincent Christensen, “The Lamblike Servant: Exodus Typology and the Death of Jesus in the Gospel of John” (PhD diss, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021).
What does Jesus mean by comparing himself to this serpent in Numbers 21, and how does it relate to his death on the cross? In order to read John 3 correctly, we will travel back into the wilderness to examine Numbers 21. After seeing what the serpent on the pole means in context, we’ll come back to John’s gospel to see how Christ on the cross fulfills that serpentine scene.
Look and Live (Numbers 21:4–9)
Let’s rehearse what happened in Numbers 21:4–9 as we seek to understand the significance of the serpent:
4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 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. 8 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.” 9 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. (Numbers 21:4–9)
When God’s people continually rebel in the wilderness, they show a sinful preference for Egypt that manifests in a lack of faith in Yahweh (Num. 11:5, 18; 14:2–3; 16:13; 20:5; 21:5). Every time they are grumbling, the green grass on the other side is Egyptian bluegrass.[2] This leads us to expect that God’s response in Numbers 21 might have something to do with Egypt.[3] The people’s reason for preferring Egypt and questioning Yahweh’s plan (Num. 21:5) is that they reject the very manna that God has provided to sustain them.[4] Their cynical response to God evidences a distrust and dissatisfaction with God’s plan and provision. God responds immediately by sending seraph (ESV’s “fiery”) serpents in Numbers 21:6.
2. Whether or not grass grows in Egypt is immaterial to this metaphor.
3. John D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 145.
4. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 1:551n5. Alter suggests it is possible “the people are saying that they retch when they try to eat the bread” (1:551n5).
Why seraph serpents? Currid rightly suggests that the serpents point to “Egyptian symbolism,” particularly the upright cobra that was worn on Pharaoh’s headdress (see a picture and discussion here).[5] Naselli correctly infers, “It’s as if God said to the complaining Israelites: ‘So you miss Egypt? Here you go. Have some snakes—the signature animal that Egypt idolatrously venerates.’”[6] When the Lord’s serpent swallows Pharaoh’s in Exodus 7, Garrett helpfully comments, “YHWH has co-opted a major symbol of the power of Egypt and of the pharaoh personally. The spiritual guardians that Pharaoh thinks he can depend upon are actually under the direct control of YHWH.”[7]
5. Currid, Ancient Egypt, 147.
6. Andrew David Naselli, The Serpent and the Serpent Slayer, SSBT (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 75.
7. Duane A Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus, KEL (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2014), 275, emphasis added; Currid’s thorough analysis substantiates Garrett’s conclusions: John D. Currid, “The Egyptian Setting of the ‘Serpent’: Confrontation in Exodus 7,8–13,” BZ 39, no. 2 (1995): 203–24; republished in Ancient Egypt, 83–103.
How does the Egyptian symbolism function for the serpent upon the pole? Fretheim gets it right when he says, “Deliverance comes, not in being removed from the wilderness [or even in the removal of the snakes!], but in the very presence of the enemy . . . The death-dealing forces of chaos are nailed to the pole.”[8] The serpent has multiple dimensions which all contribute to the life-giving event: (1) polemical, (2) visual, and (3) vertical.
Polemical
A polemical argument is one directed against a particular opposing viewpoint. In this case, there’s a major polemical dimension (literally[!]) against Egyptian symbolism. The “pole” in Numbers 21:9 is the same Hebrew word that is used to describe a military standard—the insignia of an army that is visible from far away due to it towering above the troops (see, for example, Isa. 5:26; 11:10, 12; 13:2). Currid rightly suggests, based upon an analysis of standards in ancient Egypt, that “the raising up of the bronze serpent on a standard may also be a symbol of Yahweh’s vanquishing Egypt.”[9] By fixing the serpent on a standard, Moses proclaims that Yahweh—and not Egypt—has the power to save (Num. 11:23 cf. Isa. 59:1);[10] for, Yahweh is a victorious warrior (cf. Exod. 15:1–18) displaying a token of his defeated enemy. Thus, the polemical dimension highlights Yahweh as the exclusive savior, the victorious warrior. To ignore or distrust Yahweh’s offer of salvation is to set oneself against the victorious warrior (Num. 21:5), the only means of salvation. It is to side with the creature rather than the Creator. Thus, the serpent “image also symbolized the destruction of Egypt (which had occurred during the Exodus plagues) and of those who wished to return to Egypt and her ways.”[11] In other words, the judgment remains for those who continue in unseeing unbelief.
8. Terence E. Fretheim, “Life in the Wilderness,” Dialog 17, no. 4 (1978): 270.
9. Currid, Ancient Egypt, 149; Naselli, Serpent, 76–77.
10. Currid, Ancient Egypt, 149–55.
11. Currid, Ancient Egypt, 149.
Visual
Looking (Num. 21:8–9) is the means by which one receives Yahweh’s salvation. This Hebrew term sometimes communicates the idea of “trusting” when people are the subject (Gen. 15:5; 19:17; 1 Sam. 16:7; Ps. 34:5; 119:18).[12] Milgrom rightly points out the need for obedience in looking: “Only those who heeded [God’s] command to look at the snake would recover.”[13] The latent concept of trust is also suggested by people’s confession of sin and request for the intercession of Moses as their mediator (Num. 21:7): they are turning from their sinful preference for Egypt and turning to (i.e., trusting) Yahweh for deliverance.
12. In Genesis 15:5, it is used of Abram looking to the sky, numbering the stars in faith that Yahweh will keep his promise that his offspring would number similarly. In Genesis 19:17 (cf. 19:26), the verb is used to describe a longing glance back from where the Lord brought Lot and his family out and symbolizes distrust in the severity of the Lord’s judgment. In 1 Samuel 16:7, Samuel is not supposed to trust in (look upon) the appearance of Jesse’s son as a sign of Yahweh’s favor. Psalm 34:6 (34:5, ET) indicates that “those who trust in (look to) Yahweh . . . shall never be ashamed.” Psalm 119:18 pleads, “Open my eyes that I might behold (and believe!) wondrous things from your law.” These sufficiently demonstrate that seeing can imply a component of trust depending on the context.
13. Jacob Milgrom, Numbers במדבר: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 174.
Vertical
Finally, the vertical dimension of the serpent’s placement upon a standard is easily overlooked. Gray helpfully observes that the Hebrew word translated in Numbers 21:8 as pole (nēs) “is generally used of a conspicuous object round which people, especially troops, mustered . . . here it seems to mean . . . a pole sufficiently high to be conspicuous.”[14] Simply put, there is symbolic significance that the serpent—by being placed sufficiently high—is removed and distanced from the people (vertically). God symbolically answers their request in Numbers 21:7 to “take away” the serpents—not by removing the physical serpents but by removing from the people their preference for Egypt and the judgment he set upon them. Naselli helpfully comments on this dimension: “Lifting the snake on a pole symbolized that God would draw the curse away from his snakebitten and faith-filled people.”[15] In other words, the salvation Yahweh offers symbolically depicts the removal of the judgment he sent upon them in the form of serpents.
To recap, the salvation provided by Yahweh in Numbers 21 is polemical, visual, and vertical. Polemically, the uplifted serpent indicates Yahweh is the victorious warrior who delivered them from Egypt, making himself the exclusive savior. Visually, the call to look and live must be obeyed; ignoring and disbelieving the salvific gift of Yahweh will result in death because the people were bitten already (John would say “condemned already”; John 3:18). Vertically, the uplifted serpent symbolizes Yahweh’s removal of his judgment for all who obediently look. Therefore, this episode in Numbers 21 shows the people’s sinful preference of something other than God (Egypt), their unbelief, and God’s provision of salvation from divine judgment. These are some of the very same themes we’ll see as we turn to Jesus’s allusion to Numbers 21 in John 3.
14. George Buchanan Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers, The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1903), 278, emphasis added.
15. Naselli, Serpent, 76.
As Moses Lifted Up the Serpent (John 3:13–21)
The apostle John presents Jesus’s being lifted up in death as the necessary and exclusive means by which God saves sinners from sin, unbelief, and the judgment thereof.[16] The allusion to Numbers 21:4–9 in John 3 draws upon peoples’ sinful preference for something other than God, unbelief, and salvation from divine judgment. Let’s consider the passage:
16. In saying that it is necessary, I mean that John makes clear that it must happen this way (3:14). By saying that it is exclusive, I mean that John describes Jesus’ being lifted up as the only way to be saved (8:24–28).
13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. (John 3:13–21)
In John 3, Jesus’s being lifted up and being given to save (John 3:13–17) shines forth upon the backdrop of condemnation (John 3:18), humanity’s preference for darkness (John 3:19), and ultimately, the backdrop of wrath upon unbelieving disobedience (John 3:36).
The comparison between the serpent episode of Numbers 21 and Jesus’s being lifted up in John 3 is typological[17] in many respects. That is, Numbers 21:4–9 foreshadows or previews the way God saves sinners from his wrath through Jesus being lifted up on the cross. As with all typology, there is an escalation from the type (in this case, the raising up, the looking, the healing, etc.) to the antitype (looking to the raised up Jesus on the cross, etc.). I compiled ten correspondences in the table below to help us see the connection and escalation for John.
17. E.g., Henry Alford, The Greek Testament: An Exegetical and Critical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Guardian Press, 1976), 1:717–18; Jörg Frey, “‘Wie Mose die Schlange in der Wüste erhöht hat . . .’: Zur frühjüdischen Deutung der ‘ehernen Schlange’ und ihrer christologischen Rezeption in Johannes 3,14f,” in Schriftauslegung im antiken Judentum und im Urchristentum, ed. Martin Hengel and Hermut Löhr, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 73 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994), 185–205; Fletcher, Signs, 168–71; Naselli, Serpent, 77–78.
|
Typological Correspondences Between Numbers 21 and John 3 | ||
|
Numbers 21 |
John 3 |
Escalation |
|
People sinfully preferred Egypt (Num. 21:5, 7) |
People love darkness and evildoing (John 3:19–20). |
Internal dimension of sin foregrounded. |
|
State of judgment from God (Num. 21:6–7) |
State of judgment from God (John 3:18–21, 36) |
Eschatological Judgment |
|
Moses intercedes (Num. 21:7). |
Jesus intercedes for all who will believe (John 3:17:20–26). |
Intercessor is lifted up. |
|
God offers [physical] salvation (Num. 21:8–9). |
Jesus offers eternal salvation (John 3:14–17). |
Jesus is the offeror of eternal salvation. |
|
The serpent is lifeless, and the offered life must come from Yahweh. |
John says that Jesus has life in himself (John 3:15; 5:26).[18] |
The lifted up one has life in himself. |
|
Salvation is contingent upon looking at the serpent (Num. 21:8–9). |
Salvation is contingent upon belief in Jesus (John 3:14–18, 36). |
Belief/trusting in the offeror is foregrounded. |
|
The serpent is elevated upon a standard (Num. 21:8–9) to be savingly seen. |
Jesus is elevated in his being lifted up to save all who see/believe (John 3:3:14; 6:40). |
The offeror is lifted up; the lifted up one saves. |
|
People must implicitly trust Yahweh’s word (Num. 21:8–9). |
People must trust in the name of God’s Son (John 3:18 cf. 17:26). |
Trust is foregrounded and placed in the lifted up one. |
|
Serpent symbolizes judgment and their sinful preference. |
The lifting up-event symbolizes the people’s sin (cf. John 8:24, 28). |
Jesus does not represent sin or judgment directly, though being lifted up in crucifixion does. |
|
Looking to the serpent symbolizes trusting Yahweh’s word (Num. 21:8–9). |
Looking to Jesus often is trusting him in John (e.g., John 6:40; 19:37). |
The object of looking is the object of trusting. |
18. The phrase en autō in 3:15 modifies echē. John, in every other case, uses eis with pisteuō (e.g., 3:16, 18) and uses en regularly with echō (e.g., 4:44; 5:26, 39; 6:53). So C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 214.
The Only and Necessary Way to Save Sinners
Jesus is lifted up to provide all who believe with eternal life in himself (John 3:15), apart from which we would perish (3:16). The event of (1) being lifting up to save, (2) from God’s judgment against sin, and (3) received by faith is the focal point of the typological comparison. The comparison is not one of identity—that Jesus is snakelike—but one of action—that Jesus saves from God’s wrath like Numbers 21. His identity in the passage is the Son of Man (3:14). This action “must” happen (John 3:14), or no one can be saved. John’s primary reference to Jesus being lifted up is his death by crucifixion, which one can see by comparing the other places where Jesus mentions being lifted up (John 8:28, and especially John 12:32–34).[19] John 3:16–21 begins to elaborate upon the necessity of the life-giving event of Jesus’s being lifted up described in John 3:14−15.
19. John 3:14–15 (1) fits the usage elsewhere in John 8:28; 12:32–34 of being “lifted up,” (2) refers to the giving of life which elsewhere results from Jesus’s death (John 6:51–58; 10:28 cf. 10:10–18), and (3) fits the pattern of early Christian testimonies about God giving his son to die for sinners (Gal. 1:4; 2:20; 4:4–5; Rom. 8:3, 32). See esp. John E. Morgan-Wynne, “The Cross and the Revelation of Jesus as Ἐγώ Εἰμι in the Fourth Gospel (John 8.28),” in Studia Bib 1978: Papers on the Gospels from the Sixth International Congress on Biblical Studies, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, vol. 2, JSNTSup 2 (Sheffield, UK: JSOT, 1980), 219–26. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that lifting up only refers to Jesus’ death by crucifixion because it functioned as a kind of double-entendre—simultaneously connoting both exaltation/glorification and vertical transportation in crucifixion.
Because of the Character of God the Creator (John 3:14–17)
The necessary lifting up of the Son of Man in John 3:14 is explained by the active giving of the Son by God in John 3:16. The gift of God’s “only son” is motivated by and an embodiment of his love as Creator. This is the first reason that Jesus being lifted up is necessary: the character of the Creator—loving, merciful, just. As an explanation of John 3:14–15, the giving of John 3:16 includes both the lifting up of Jesus in death upon the cross (John 3:14) and the Father’s sending of the Son into the world (John 3:17). Thus, the giving of the Son encapsulates the entirety of Jesus’s incarnation to exaltation through crucifixion-resurrection.
John contrasts perishing/eternal life (John 3:16) and condemnation/salvation (John 3:17) to ultimately highlight the Creator’s merciful plan of salvation. Man is unable—of himself—to come to God, just as the Israelites were unable to save themselves in Numbers 21. As Carson beautifully writes, “God’s love is to be admired not because the world is so big and includes so many people, but because the world is so bad.”[20] This is why Jesus being lifted up is necessary: fallen humanity’s condition of being “condemned already” in 3:18. Therefore, the state of fallen humanity, in some sense, necessitates Jesus being lifted up, and that is the focus of John 3:18–20.
20. D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991)., 205.
Because of the Default and Dire State of Fallen Humanity (John 3:18–21)
The dire state is the default verdict of the one who does not believe in John 3:18, and John clarifies that this state of unbelief distrusts the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Distrust in Jesus’s name is a rejection of the Creator, the true Light coming into the world (John 1:9).[21] That this sinful rejection of Jesus is an eternal matter of life or death is evident from John 5:24, because the one who believes does not come into judgement but has passed from death into life. Thus, the sphere of darkness is the realm of sin and death, and Jesus became incarnate to save fallen humans from this default sphere.
21. Carson comments about the phrase about the true light coming into the world, “If the logos is the true light which comes into the kosmos [world] (1:9), it is because the kosmos is characterised by darkness. If God sent Christ so that the kosmos might be saved by him (3:17), it is because the kosmos is lost without him” (D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002], 164). This makes their rejection of Jesus all the more poignant and pitiable.
In John 3:19, the rejection of the Creator is framed as a situation and response. After the incarnation of God the Son as Jesus (the situation), people made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27) responded not by reciprocating his love but by loving the darkness more than the Light. The audacity and atrocity of this is apparent: image-bearers exist to commune with and represent their Creator,[22] and being an image-bearer is essential to being human.[23] This, therefore, inverts the creation-order: whereas God brings light from darkness (Gen. 1:2–4), offers the light of life (John 8:12 cf. 1:9; 3:19), and gives his Son in love (John 3:14–17), John depicts image-bearers recoiling from the true Light, loving darkness (cf. John 12:43), and simmering with hatred for Jesus (John 3:19–20 cf. 7:1, 7). Although they are formed for the Lord’s glory (Isa. 43:7 cf. John 17:24), mankind is given to vainglory (John 5:44), and Jesus concludes, “they loved the glory that comes from man rather than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43). Fallen humanity, at root, remains in darkness and death (John 3:19–20 cf. 5:24; 12:46) because they harbor a love, a controlling preference, for something other than their Creator.
22. See esp. Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 5–101; cf. Matthew S. Harmon, The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People Tracing a Biblical Theme Through the Canon, ed. D. A. Carson, NSBT 54 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), 7–17; Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 214–49.
23. Hoekema, Image, 66–67. Genesis 9:6 gets at this fundamental nature of image by citing it as the reason murder is abhorrent—image gives humanity dignity and worth.
In John 3:20, John explains that darkness is loved because it conceals evil deeds, whereas the Light convicts about them as it exposes them. The Light’s exposé entails the conviction of those who love the darkness (cf. John 8:46; 16:8), as Lincoln comments, “The context is one in which the light judges the darkness and so the notion of the conviction of the guilt of evil deeds can hardly be absent.”[24] Thus, fallen humanity’s controlling preference for their evil deeds instead of their loving Creator naturally gives rise to guilt, which remains for those who insist they “see” clearly (John 9:39–41). Conversely, coming to the light leads to life (John 8:12) and is evidenced by what one does (cf. John 8:29, 34, 38–41): the one who does truth (John 3:21) is evidently one who is of the truth who heeds Jesus’ voice (John 18:37 cf. 10:4, 16).
How does the controlling preference for darkness (John 3:19–20) necessitate Jesus’s being lifted up? John 12:46 helps clarify what John 3 has been saying: Jesus came into the world as the Light so that all who believe in him might not remain in darkness (John 12:46). Thus, fallen humanity’s default and dire state necessitated the incarnation of God the Son, and the Father sent his Son into the world (incarnation) so that they might be—not condemned—but saved (John 3:17), to remedy their default state (John 3:18). I showed earlier how this salvation is an elaboration upon the salvific event of Jesus’s being lifted up. Therefore, fallen humanity’s default verdict and dire state necessitated Jesus’s being lifted up because apart from the death of God’s only-begotten Son in their place humanity is condemned already (John 3:18), being citizens of the sphere of death (John 5:24).
24. Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 2005), 155–56, emphasis added.
Conclusion
In summary, in strong correlation to the serpent raised upon a pole in Numbers 21, John presents Jesus being lifted up in death as the necessary and exclusive means by which God saves sinners from sin, unbelief, and the judgment thereof. Jesus’s being lifted up is necessary (John 3:14) for at least two reasons: (1) because of the character of the Creator (John 3:16–17) who has previously revealed himself as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6 cf. John 1:14–18), and (2) because of the default and dire state of fallen humanity—remaining in the sphere of darkness and death (John 3:18–20, 36 cf. John 5:24; 12:46). Humanity harbors a love, or a controlling preference for, something other than their Creator—in one case described as the slavery of Egypt, in another case described merely as “darkness.” In Numbers 21 and John 3, salvation from God’s judgment comes from the Creator himself and not creatures.
Indeed, Jesus is the last Adam, the Serpent-Crusher, the prophet like Moses, the New David, the long-awaited Shepherd. And in that holy list of fulfillments, we should not add the greater serpent because, as we have seen, he fulfills the event and not the object. God calls everyone to look upon this exalted Son, and by seeing him with the eyes of faith, to live. On the cross, Jesus is lifted up as the Lamblike Servant, so that God’s wrath might not remain upon us (John 3:36).[25] Apart from Christ, we are all already condemned by divine judgment, and the venom of sin works through the veins of our souls to pull us toward ultimate death. The call of Numbers 21 and John 3 is to look at the Son on the cross—to look at the character of God, to look at what our sin deserves, to behold the only possible means of salvation—and to live!
