Posted on 06/30/2015 6:51:57 PM PDT by Faith Presses On
Question: "What was Nehushtan?"
Answer: The word Nehushtan occurs one time in the Bible, in 2 Kings 18:4, “He [Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).”
Second Kings 18:4 points back to Numbers 21:6–9, “Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 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...'”
In the time between Moses and Hezekiah, the Israelites began worshipping the “fiery serpent” Moses made out of bronze...
While He does not refer to it as “Nehushtan,” Jesus does mention the bronze serpent in John 3:14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Just as anyone who was bitten by a serpent could be healed by looking to the bronze serpent Moses lifted up, so can anyone look to Jesus, who was lifted up on the cross, to be spiritually healed, delivered, and saved.
Interestingly, the word Nehushtan appears to simply mean “piece of brass.” Perhaps Hezekiah named it “Nehushtan” to remind people that it was only a piece of brass...
(Excerpt) Read more at gotquestions.org ...
That wasn’t it’s name. It was an epithet to make the people stop worshiping it as an idol.
Nobody said it was its name.
Hezekiah called it that, and the Hebrew word used there is the same used in Genesis 30 to describe children of Jacob being named. It’s an object not a living person or thing but it was an idol so so far as something like that coukd be said to have a name, it does have one, given by Hezekiah.
Sounds like Obamasnare.
>>Nobody said it was its name.
That’s odd. I see the word “name” twice in the post I responded to.
>>Just learned of this name. I’d never noticed nor heard it mentioned before that the bronze serpent had a name.
>>Hezekiah called it that, and the Hebrew word used there is the same used in Genesis 30 to describe children of Jacob being named. It’s an object not a living person or thing but it was an idol so so far as something like that coukd be said to have a name, it does have one, given by Hezekiah.
The snake had existed for generations without having a name. When Hezijiah “named” it, he was saying it in the way that a wife would tell a husband that his fish trophy had to go: “get THAT THING out of my living room.” Nehushtan means “that bronze thing”. Hezijiah was saying, “stop worshiping that bronze thing.”
>>Sounds like Obamasnare.
Most social programs are bronze snakes that are worshiped as idols. LOL.
Only in the sense that Hezekiah called it such, as an epithet. Kinda like “diabolos”. But yes, I was not looking at the post you responded to, but the article excerpt.
I do understand the point you’ve been making but don’t agree.
The article here itself actually mentions Hezekiah “naming” the brass serpent.
And if you search for “name” and “Nehushtan” you’ll see that Nehushtan is a name is the prevailing interpretation.
One Bible dictionary entry I read, though, says the passage is better translated to mean that “one called it Nehushtan” (I can’t remember the exact phrase right now) rather than “he called it Nehushtan”, and that meant people were calling it that prior to Hezekiah destroying it.
>>And if you search for “name” and “Nehushtan” you’ll see that Nehushtan is a name is the prevailing interpretation.
The translations vary enough that we can wonder what he meant. I choose to think he meant that they should stop worshiping “that bronze thing”, even though it had a wonderful history of Moses being ordered by God to build it. The lesson is that even things of God can become idols and must be discarded or put away to refocus attention on god himself.
By declaring Nehustan to be a proper name, you take away the emotion of the moment as Hezekiah points at a sacred relic and calls it nothing but a thing.
No, Christians with some authority (like writers of authoritative Bible dictionaries), as well as Jewish and also secular sources, like Dictionary.com, say it’s a name. Bibles capitalize it for that reason. I also don’t see any lessened impact due to that, including whether it was Hezekiah who named it that or the people prior to Hezekiah’s time. The important thing is that it was an idol that was destroyed, as the Lord willed. I’m going to keep researching it a bit on the point of who called it Nehushtan, but as I said, it’s not important next to the importance of an idol being destroyed.
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