Numbers 21:6

Verse Numbers 21:6. Fiery serpents] הנחשים השרפים hannechashim hasseraphim. I have observed before, on Genesis 3:1, that it is difficult to assign a name to the creature termed in Hebrew nachash; it has different significations, but its meaning here and in Genesis 3:1 is most difficult to be ascertained. Seraphim is one of the orders of angelic beings, Isaiah 6:2; Isaiah 6:6; but as it comes from the root שרף saraph, which signifies to burn, it has been translated fiery in the text. It is likely that St. Paul alludes to the seraphim, Hebrews 1:7: Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a FLAME of FIRE. The animals mentioned here by Moses may have been called fiery because of the heat, violent inflammation, and thirst, occasioned by their bite; and consequently, if serpents, they were of the prester or dipsas species, whose bite, especially that of the former, occasioned a violent inflammation through the whole body, and a fiery appearance of the countenance. The poet Lucan has well expressed this terrible effect of the bite of the prester, and also of the dipsas, in the ninth book of his Pharsalia, which, for the sake of those who may not have the work at hand, I shall here insert.

Of the mortal effects of the bite of the dipsas in the deserts of Libya he gives the following description: -

"Signiferum juvenem Tyrrheni sanguinis Aulum

Torta caput retro dipsas calcata momordit.

Vix dolor aut sensus dentis fuit: ipsaque laeti

Frons caret invidia: nec quidquam plaga minatur.

Ecce subit virus tacitum, carpitque medullas

Ignis edax, calidaque incendit viscera tabe.

Ebibit humorem circum vitalia fusum

Pestis, et in sicco linguam torrere palato

Coepit: defessos iret qui sudor in artus

Non fuit, atque oculos lacrymarum vena refugit."

Aulus, a noble youth of Tyrrhene blood,

Who bore the standard, on a dipsas trod;

Backward the wrathful serpent bent her head,

And, fell with rage, the unheeded wrong repaid.

Scarce did some little mark of hurt remain,

And scarce he found some little sense of pain.

Nor could he yet the danger doubt, nor fear

That death with all its terrors threatened there.

When lo! unseen, the secret venom spreads,

And every nobler part at once invades;

Swift flames consume the marrow and the brain,

And the scorched entrails rage with burning pain;

Upon his heart the thirsty poisons prey,

And drain the sacred juice of life away.

No kindly floods of moisture bathe his tongue,

But cleaving to the parched roof it hung;

No trickling drops distil, no dewy sweat,

To ease his weary limbs, and cool the raging heat.

Rowe.

The effects of the bite of the prester are not less terrible:

"Nasidium Marsi cultorem torridus agri

Percussit prester: illi rubor igneus ora

Succendit, tenditque cutem, pereunte figura,

Miscens cuncta tumor toto jam corpore major:

Humanumque egressa modum super omnia membra

Effiatur sanies, late tollente veneno."

A fate of different kind Nasidius found,

A burning prester gave the deadly wound;

And straight, a sudden flame began to spread,

And paint his visage with a glowing red.

With swift expansion swells the bloated skin.

Naught but an undistinguished mass is seen;

While the fair human form lies lost within.

The puffy poison spreads, and leaves around,

Till all the man is in the monster drowned.

Rowe.

Bochart supposes that the hydrus or chersydrus is meant; a serpent that lives in marshy places, the bite of which produces the most terrible inflammations, burning heat, fetid vomitings, and a putrid solution of the whole body. See his works, vol. iii., col. 421. It is more likely to have been a serpent of the prester or dipsas kind, as the wilderness through which the Israelites passed did neither afford rivers nor marshes, though Bochart endeavors to prove that there might have been marshes in that part; but his arguments have very little weight. Nor is there need of a water serpent as long as the prester or dipsas, which abound in the deserts of Libya, might have abounded in the deserts of Arabia also. But very probably the serpents themselves were immediately sent by God for the chastisement of this rebellious people. The cure was certainly preternatural; this no person doubts; and why might not the agent be so, that inflicted the disease?