The Snake Attack and the Copper Serpent

When the people grumbled about their journey in the desert, Hashem sent a plague of fiery snakes. To bring healing, He told Moshe to make a serpent and place it on a pole, but didn’t specify what it should be made of.

Why did Moshe choose copper? The Ramban explains: copper resembled the color of the desert snakes. The similarity in sound between nachash (snake) and nechoshet (copper) reinforced the connection.

Why Add to the Trauma?

Why would Moshe show a snake to people traumatized by snakes? Imagine a child bitten by a dog: showing him a picture of a dog immediately afterward would seem cruel.

The lesson: sometimes what appears to harm us is also the source of healing. Just as the bitter waters at Marah were sweetened by a tree, or the salt water was purified by Elisha’s salt, the snake itself became the vehicle for healing. What seems bad can contain hidden good. Everything comes from Hashem. There is no true evil, only concealed purpose.

What About Working With Nature?

The normal course of life is for Hashem to operate through nature; He asks for our hishtadlut within the natural order. This is seen with Noah and the flood, where the name Elokim (numerically equal to HaTeva, nature) is used. Hashem instructs Noah to build a physical ark.

But there are moments, like the copper snake, where healing comes outside nature, completely miraculously. Here the Torah uses the four-letter name of Hashem, the name that transcends time and space.

In those moments, Hashem shows us that salvation can come from the very place we least expect. Pain begins to lift when we look higher and remember that beneath the surface lie deeper truths about our suffering.