The interesting circumstance as related in the very opening of the Bible concerning the subtlety of the serpent, and the direct application of it to the devil, renders it a subject of peculiar importance in a work of this kind that it should be noticed.
I do not mean, however, by what I have said, to enter into all the wonderful relations which we meet with in sacred record concerning the serpent. It will be sufficient to all the purposes I mean to offer upon the subject, to observe that the Great and Almighty Author of Scripture hath in many places plainly declared that by the serpent is intended the devil, yea, the devil is expressly called the old serpent. (Re xii,9) I beg that this may be fully understood. And it were to be much wished that the sense of it was as fully impressed upon the mind of every reader. (See Job 26:13; Isaiah 27:1)
The whole tenor of Scripture, therefore being directed to set forth the devil under this image and figure of the serpent, there appears a beautiful analogy between the brazen serpent lifted, up in the wilderness at the command of God, and the Lord Jesus lifted up on the cross for the salvation of his people by the same authorityand for this plain reason, because none but the serpent of all the creatures in the creation of God was cursed; and therefore none but the serpent among the creatures of God could be the suitable type or figure to represent Christ when redeeming, his people from the curse of the law, "being made a curse for them." And as the simple act of faith in the Israelite in the wilderness, when beholding the brazen serpent as typical of Christ, became the sole means of recovery when dying under the effects of the serpent's poison in the old dispensation, so the simple act of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ becomes the sole cause of salvation when dying under the consequences of sin and Satan under the New. Indeed so Christ himself explained it and so the faithful in all ages have understood it; and, no doubt, thousands who are now in glory, while they were upon earth, accepted this beautiful illustration of the subject, and lived and died in the most firm conviction of the truth of it, to the Lord's glory, and their souls' happiness.
I have thought it worth while to be the more particular on this point, not because there is the least question to be made of our Lord's own illustration of this subject, but because some doubts have arisen whether it was truly a serpent which beguiled Eve, or some other creature. But while the uniform testimony of Scripture is with this subject, and the devil is continually called by the name of serpent through the whole of the Bible, and while the faithful in all ages have, without a single instance of departure, received no other idea, it should seem the safest method to accept the good old way of translation, assured that if the fact had not been so, God the Holy Ghost would have taught the church accordingly.
The objection arising from the Serpent's being endowed with speech and reined in conversing with our first mother, and persuading her by argument, is no more in reality an objection than that of the ass possessing both in the instance of Balaam's history. Both were miraculous; both induced by the sovereign power of God for the accomplishment of the Lord's purposes. And of the two examples of the kind, surely, the great event of man's apostacy became a much more important occasion for such a miracle than the condemnation of a single character like Balaam.
I cannot help making a farther remark, that the Hebrew name for serpent (Nechash) is the general name used throughout the whole Scripture. And it is not only an ingenious but a beautiful thought of Mr. Parkhurst in his Lexicon, page 390, that the reason for which Moses in the wilderness when commanded to make the figure of a fiery serpent, made it of brass or copper, was not only because it was the nearest in resemblance to the colour of the serpent, but also from the noxious qualities of poison in it. For, saith Mr. P. "as man, no doubt, was acquainted with animals long before he had any knowledge of minerals and their qualities, it seems highly probable that the primeval language might in some instances, and where there was a similarity of qualified, describe the latter by names deduced from those which were at first given to the former. And in the present case it is observable that copper is not only of a serpentine colour, but resembles those noxious animals in its destructive properties, being in all its preparations accounted poisonous." All this is strikingly just upon the presumption that the word (Nechash) he rendered, as it hath uniformly been rendered, serpent, by all the translators of the Bible for centuries; but, if another beast of the field be substituted the beauty in the resemblance, is lost.
It is worthy of farther remark, in confirmation, that the church all along considered the word (Nechash,) which is rendered in our translation serpent, to have been uniformly connected with the idea of this beast; for we find, in the days of Hezekiah, that in his removing the brazen serpent which Moses had made, and calling it not immediately (Nechash,) but Nehushtan, thus playing upon the word, but still preserving the idea of the thing itself the good old king plainly, proved what the judgement of the church concerning it was in his day. Hezekiah saw that Israel had idolized the type, and forgotten the thing signified, therefore in removing it, and calling it Nehushtan, he aimed to direct the minds of the people from the type and shadow to him it was intended to prefigure. (See 2 Kings 18:4. See Nehushtan.)