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The Year of the Snake ?
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My family started the first day of Chinese New Year at the Sunday service at Barker Road. Pastor Malcolm used the theme of the Year of the Snake in a wonderful sermon which contrasted popular fears of the snake with the good news of Jesus who compares himself to a snake in John 3:14-15.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
Jesus was clearly alluding to the story in Numbers 21:8-9 where we are told that “Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”
The ancient story strikes modern readers as strange. How can just “looking” at a bronze snake save anyone from a snake’s venom? It sounds like an ancient superstitious ritual of magic.
From a cultural and historical point of view, one could argue that the use of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 was based on the ancient theory or logic of sympathetic power: you use a snake to kill a snake; you use a thief to catch a thief (compare another intriguing story in 1 Samuel 6:4-5 where the outbreak of rats was countered by making a golden rat).
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