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Naked Bible Podcast Episode 103 explores the often-misunderstood passage in Numbers 21:4–9, where Moses is instructed to make a bronze serpent and lift it up for Israel’s healing after yet another episode of rebellion in the wilderness. Dr. Michael Heiser guides listeners through the ancient Near Eastern background, biblical symbolism, and theological layers of this strange but powerful story.
Heiser shows how the imagery of the serpent—typically associated with sin or evil—is here transformed into a symbol of life and healing through divine command. He dives into how this event becomes a key typological moment, later referenced by Jesus in John 3:14–15, where Christ compares his own upcoming crucifixion to the lifting up of the serpent.
The episode also touches on related passages like 2 Kings 18:4, where King Hezekiah destroys the bronze serpent (Nehushtan) after it becomes an object of idolatry. Heiser carefully addresses why the serpent was not inherently evil, how serpents functioned in ancient iconography, and what the pole and fiery serpents symbolized in Israel’s wilderness theology.
If you've ever been confused by the bronze serpent or wondered why Jesus would associate Himself with it, this episode offers a compelling and coherent biblical answer grounded in context, theology, and typology.
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Excellent episode sir! I look forward to each and every Saturday. Thank you!
Quick question:
Without getting too much into next week’s episode… You made a very compelling case for essentially mosaic authorship of Torah but with Genesis 1-11 being of Babylonian exile authorship. Great stuff. Agreed on all points. Then I got to thinking: how would Genesis 1-11 being Babylonian not cause serious problems for mosaic authorship? The tabernacle is set up as the Garden of Eden. The lampstand is the Tree of Life. Cherubim on the curtain. The priests approach YHWH in East –> West fashion. etc. If Genesis 1-3 wasn’t chronologically in existence for Exodus-Deuteronomy then why is Exodus 25 and other chapters clearly setting the Tabernacle up to be the Garden of Eden? Can you help me reconcile that?
Very glad to hear that books are coming back! I love every podcast but gun to my head I’d have to say going through books chapter by chapter is probably my favorite followed in close pursuit by the episodes where David Burnett makes an appearance. Looking forward to Origins of the OT, Obediah, and whatever book follows that!
Thank you for all that you do!
Respectfully,
Nathan
Thanks!
Excellent episode sir! I look forward to each and every Saturday. Thank you!
Quick question:
Without getting too much into next week’s episode… You made a very compelling case for essentially mosaic authorship of Torah but with Genesis 1-11 being of Babylonian exile authorship. Great stuff. Agreed on all points. Then I got to thinking: how would Genesis 1-11 being Babylonian not cause serious problems for mosaic authorship? The tabernacle is set up as the Garden of Eden. The lampstand is the Tree of Life. Cherubim on the curtain. The priests approach YHWH in East –> West fashion. etc. If Genesis 1-3 wasn’t chronologically in existence for Exodus-Deuteronomy then why is Exodus 25 and other chapters clearly setting the Tabernacle up to be the Garden of Eden? Can you help me reconcile that?
Very glad to hear that books are coming back! I love every podcast but gun to my head I’d have to say going through books chapter by chapter is probably my favorite followed in close pursuit by the episodes where David Burnett makes an appearance. Looking forward to Origins of the OT, Obediah, and whatever book follows that!
Thank you for all that you do!
Respectfully,
Nathan
Great podcast once again, couldn’t the bronze serpent be similar to that of the Asherah that was worshipped also in Kings? Do you think that Ben Sommer’s hypothesis in Bodies of God is convincing, that the Asherah idols were destroyed and the D scribes wanted to make sure that divine fluidity worship was stamped out of YHWH religious practices and only keeping the two-YHWH worship? Could the bronze serpent also have similarities with Van Toorn view of YHWH in the DDD where he says that there was poly-YHWHism worship?
I love that I can listen to these podcasts and feel like I have come away more intelligent than I have started. There is always something to be gained by listening, even if you don’t walk away with a full understanding. For instance, it had never occurred to me to consider that the ancient Israelites that were wondering in the desert with Moses maybe had never heard of the Genesis 3 account. Again, it is testament to the necessity of understanding the proper context of the material you are reading. Too easily one can forget that we have the benefit of a collection of scribes operating over centuries of time building what we call The Bible from scrolls, tablets, and other ancient manuscripts. Whereas, no such compendium existed for the ancient near easterner!
I loved the line “come away more intelligent” – thanks; the goal is always to help people learn something.
Dear Dr Heiser, thank you for all the time and effort you put into these podcasts and your other materials, it is greatly appreciated. I must thank you for rescuing me from an anemic approach to studying the Bible.
I have a question on this episode. If, as you suggest, Genesis 1-11 was written during the Babylonian exile (and I agree with you), I am wondering why in Exodus 20:8-11 the rationale for the commandment on the Sabbath day is linked to God’s rest (Genesis 2:1-3). Why is this so if the material from Genesis 1-11 comes from a different period?
Although, I do realize that the rationale for the Sabbath day in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 is quite different from the rationale in Exodus 20:8-11 and this suggests to me that, like other parts of the Torah, some of these things were probably written at different times. Also, the precedent for the Sabbath day in Exodus 16:23 contains no reference to God’s rest after creation.
I would like to know your thoughts on this question – specifically, why is there a reference to Genesis 2:1-3 in Exodus 20:8-11, if Genesis 1-11 comes from a different period? Thank you for your time.
I think you answered your own question (“this suggests to me that, like other parts of the Torah, some of these things were probably written at different times”). One could simply say that the note in Exodus was added later (post Genesis 1-11). As you note, the rationale about creation does NOT appear in the other list of ten commandments in Deut 5. There the rationale is quite different.
This sort of thing (scholars call them “editorial glosses”) are evident elsewhere (Gen 6:4 “and also afterward”; Num 13:33 – “from the nephilim” — which creates the question of nephilim survival after the flood). Sometimes things are deleted. Compare the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions of the law about the slave who wants to join the Israelite household. The reference to presenting the servant “before elohim” is gone in Deuteronomy. I’ve written about why I think this is, but I won’t bore you with that here. If we view inspiration as a process and assign inspiration to the final form of the text, these sorts of editorial items are included in inspiration.
Others would of course argue that Exodus itself is exilic, but I don’t think that approach is necessary or coherent.
Thanks a lot for your answer. I really appreciate it. Interestingly enough, on the same day that I posted my question here for you, I also read Day 5 in your book on ‘100 Insights that Illumine the Bible’ titled ‘Editing was part of the process of Biblical inspiration.’ So, I quite agree with you. Thanks once again!
Great response, but what do you suppose was actually etched on the Stone Tablets that Moses brought down? The text of Exodus implies that the Genesis 1 rationale is what Moses brought down to the people, but if it is post exilic that cannot be the case. So what do you hypothetically think was written on the stones in relation to the 4th commandment (Keeping the Sabbath)
PS
I am also beginning to think that portions of Isaiah 13 & 14 dealing with the ‘oracles concerning Babylon’ are probably editorial insertions. This is especially so if, as some say, Isaiah 1-39 was written in Judah before the Babylonian exile.
you’re welcome!
The actual commands were what would have been on the tablets; the editorializing (and again, Deut is different) would have been added later. There are actually more differences than this one, though smaller.
There are several possible answers:
1) What Shaun says is on the table for the reasons he notes.
2) The Exodus tabernacle account was written later than the Eden account, or at the same time. For instance, in the standard “JEDP” model (P = “priestly” material), the tabernacle account and Gen 1-11 were both considered P.
3) The Tabernacle account is earlier, but was modified (edited) after Gen 1-11 to make positive and negative theological points.
This sort of stuff is why my general rule of thumb is to not care about the order of the books and just work with the “received text” — the final product of the inspiration process — as much as possible. Yet there are things in Gen 1-11 that obviously and undoubtedly have a literary / polemic context that aligns very well with post-Mosaic material. I don’t really care about how it got to be what it is. Source criticism frankly bores me and is ultimately too speculative. I care more about why it is what is — what point was the writer / editor trying to communicate? That’s more important because I believe the process was directed by God.
There are several possible answers:
1) What Shaun says is on the table for the reasons he notes.
2) The Exodus tabernacle account was written later than the Eden account, or at the same time. For instance, in the standard “JEDP” model (P = “priestly” material), the tabernacle account and Gen 1-11 were both considered P.
3) The Tabernacle account is earlier, but was modified (edited) after Gen 1-11 to make positive and negative theological points.
This sort of stuff is why my general rule of thumb is to not care about the order of the books and just work with the “received text” — the final product of the inspiration process — as much as possible. Yet there are things in Gen 1-11 that obviously and undoubtedly have a literary / polemic context that aligns very well with post-Mosaic material. I don’t really care about how it got to be what it is. Source criticism frankly bores me and is ultimately too speculative. I care more about why it is what is — what point was the writer / editor trying to communicate? That’s more important because I believe the process was directed by God.
Well said! Thank you sir!
So then is this similar to my question regarding the Tablets Moses received (on the bottom)? In reality you have one thing, but when scripture is laid down, it supplements it with newer theology. Is this correct.
So regarding the tabernacle, since you said the original Israelites of the desert had no clue as to the Gen 1 story, it means that FOR THEM, the tabernacle did not represent what it would later to the Biblical writers when the editing it all down. Does that sound right? Does this mean theology expands and evolves?
Excellent points!
The imagery in the tabernacle was of the heavens (where God dwelt) and the heavenly abode. The themes are pretty common. You don’t need a text for people to think thoughts like “God has a home in the heavens” and “God created the heavens” and “God’s house is associated with light” etc. etc.
Israelite readers would have had some familiarity with the temple by experience (it existed). Plus there was other textual evidence besides the Torah.
Let’s use an extreme approach — all the Torah was written during the exile in Babylon (granted, not extreme enough for the minimalists, but you get the idea). That doesn’t mean 1 Kings wasn’t written yet. It would have already been in existence, with its Edenic descriptions of its architecture and iconography. We also have to presume (with good reason — the Israelites weren’t hermits in the land with no cross-cultural contact — that Israelites associated God with the sky, mountains, and lush gardens. (And aside from hearing that in terms of broadly Semitic culture, there were other parts of the Hebrew Bible around besides 1 Kings that they could have gotten such messaging from – a lot of it, actually, in psalms and the prophets).
So even if we argued that the psalms and prophets were NOT tying their content into the Torah, and argued that the Torah got all that stuff from the prophets (because the Torah in our example didn’t exist), Israelites would still have been exposed to the same matrix of ideas.
Israelite readers would have had some familiarity with the temple by experience (it existed). Plus there was other textual evidence besides the Torah.
Let’s use an extreme approach — all the Torah was written during the exile in Babylon (granted, not extreme enough for the minimalists, but you get the idea). That doesn’t mean 1 Kings wasn’t written yet. It would have already been in existence, with its Edenic descriptions of its architecture and iconography. We also have to presume (with good reason — the Israelites weren’t hermits in the land with no cross-cultural contact — that Israelites associated God with the sky, mountains, and lush gardens. (And aside from hearing that in terms of broadly Semitic culture, there were other parts of the Hebrew Bible around besides 1 Kings that they could have gotten such messaging from – a lot of it, actually, in psalms and the prophets).
So even if we argued that the psalms and prophets were NOT tying their content into the Torah, and argued that the Torah got all that stuff from the prophets (because the Torah in our example didn’t exist), Israelites would still have been exposed to the same matrix of ideas.