Nehushtan

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.--2 Kings 18:4

The reform of Hezekiah was one of the high points of Israel's history during the period of the kings. The brazen serpent which had played such an important role in the wilderness wanderings of the chosen people (Numbers 21:5-9) had become worshipped as a relic. Seeing how it was being used, Hezekiah had it broken in pieces so that the Israelites could no longer burn incense to it. He further demeaned it by renaming it Nehushtan, which means "a thing of brass"--in other words, a brass object of no special significance.

In Romans 1:23, Paul speaks of this tendency of man to build his own visible objects of worship replacing the invisible realities behind them: "And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things."

This was the problem with Israel when they built the golden calf in their fear that Moses would not come down from Mt. Sinai (Exodus 32). The same tendency is noted in Habakkuk 1:14-16, "And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous." The worship was directed to the net instead of to God who made the fish for man's meat.

In a very real sense, the brazen serpent of Moses' day was a symbol of the cross of Christ. Only too frequently today we see the death of Christ trivialized by conspicuous golden jewelry. If this is worn only for its aesthetic effects, the cross becomes, like the brazen serpent in Hezekiah's day, "a thing of metal." It is not the instrument of the death that we must worship, but the one who died thereon. If the visible object replaces the invisible reality, it is to be discarded and called Nehushtan--a worthless thing.