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וישׁלח7971 יהוה3068 בעם5971 את853 הנחשׁים5175 השׂרפים8314 וינשׁכו5391 את853 העם5971 וימת4191 עם5971 רב7227 מישׂראל׃3478

Ge 3:14,15 De 8:15 Isa 14:29; 30:6 Jer 8:17 Am 9:3,4 1Co 10:9

Verse 6. Fiery serpents] µypr�h µy�jnh hannechashim hasseraphim.

I have observed before, on Gen. iii., 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 Gen. iii. is most difficult to be ascertained.

Seraphim is one of the orders of angelic beings, Isa. vi. 2, 6; but as it comes from the root Pr� saraph, which signifies to burn, it has been translated fiery in the text. It is likely that St. Paul alludes to the seraphim, Heb. i. 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 humourem 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 endeavours 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?

Ver. 6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people , etc.] Of which there were great numbers in the deserts of Arabia, and about the Red sea; but hitherto the Israelites were protected from them by the cloud about them, but sinning, the Lord suffered them to come among them, to punish them; these are called fiery, either from their colour, for in Arabia, as there were serpents of a golden colour, as Aelianus relates, to which the brazen serpent, after made, bore some likeness, so there were others in the same parts of Arabia of a red or scarlet colour, as Diodorus Siculus says f303 , of a span long, and their bite entirely incurable; or else they are so called from the effect of them, exciting heat and thirst in those they bit; so Jarchi says, they are so called because they burn with the poison of their teeth: these, very probably, were flying ones, as may seem from ( Isaiah 14:29) and being sent of God, might come flying among the people and bite them; and such there were in the fenny and marshy parts of Arabia, of which many writers speak f304 , as flying from those parts into Egypt, where they used to be met by a bird called Ibis, which killed them, and for that reason was had in great veneration by the Egyptians; and Herodotus f305 says they are nowhere but in Arabia, and also that they of that kind of serpents, which are called Hydri, their wings are not feathered, but like the wings of bats, and this Bochart takes to be here meant: and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died ; for, as before related from Diodorus Siculus, their bites were altogether incurable; and Solinus says, of the same Arabian flying serpents, that their poison is so quick, that death follows before the pain can be felt; and of that kind of serpent, the Hydrus, it is said by Leo Africanus f309 , that their poison is most pernicious, and that there is no other remedy against the bite of them, but to cut off that part of the member bitten, before the poison can penetrate into the other parts of the body: the Dipsas, another kind of serpent, which others are of opinion is designed, by biting, brings immediately a thirst on persons, intolerable and almost not extinguishable, and a deadly one, unless help is most speedily had; and if this was the case here it was very bad indeed, since there was no water: Solinus says, this kind of serpent kills with thirst; Aristotle speaks of a serpent some call the sacred one, and that whatsoever it bites putrefies immediately all around it: these serpents, and their bites, may be emblems of the old serpent the devil, and of his fiery darts, and of sin brought in by him, and which he tempts unto, the effects of which are terrible and deadly, unless prevented by the grace of God.

וישׁלח7971 יהוה3068 בעם5971 את853 הנחשׁים5175 השׂרפים8314 וינשׁכו5391 את853 העם5971 וימת4191 עם5971 רב7227 מישׂראל׃3478