A little over a quarter of a century ago, Bruce Wilkinson published a runaway Christian best seller titled The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life. It attempted to show that one of the greatest principles of the whole Bible was contained in the obscure two-verse passage I Chronicles 4:9-10 buried in the midst of an extended genealogical listing. At that time, it came to the attention of the elder board of the church I was attending. The members of the board were almost exclusively chosen for their reputation as independent businessmen in the community rather than for any special spiritual qualities they may or may not have possessed. In fact, to my knowledge, not a one of them ever bothered to attend a single adult Sunday school class.
But somehow the elders found out about this book and so were wildly enthusiastic about sharing this hitherto hidden secret that they summarily co-opted one of the larger teaching rooms for themselves, leaving the class regularly meeting there to scramble for another spot. They also advertised their class to the point where many in the congregation who had been attending their own class for years abandoned them for what promised to be a unique opportunity to be let into that hidden secret themselves.
The elders managed to scrape together a little over a month's worth of teaching on Wilkinson's book and then promptly abandoned that class without any prior warning, leaving all those attending wandering around the following week wondering where their teachers had disappeared to.
Subsequently, our associate pastor of adult education, who did know quite a bit more than a little theology, came out with a scathing critique of Jabez and the whole thing died down. So with that salutary warning in mind, I will attempt with only a slight tongue-in-cheek approach to make another mountain out of a molehill.
It begins with a reconsideration of the semi-symmetrical structure for Deuteronomy 8 I had previously developed based solely on parallels in thoughts and themes within the chapter (see Figure 1 below): .
Figure 1: Earlier Proposed Organization
A. Obey and Prosper (1)
B. Disciplining in the Wilderness (2-5)
[Keep the Commandments (6)]
C. Prospering in the Promised Land (7-10)
[Keep the Commandments (11)]
C'. Prospering in the Promised Land (12-13)
[Do not Forget God (14a)]
B'. Testing in the Wilderness (14b-16)
[Do not Forget God (17-19a)]
A'. Disobey and Perish (19b-20)
But if instead one goes more with actual verbal parallels, the following more detailed picture emerges:
Figure 2: Key Words in Deuteronomy 8
commandment I command you you must observe
that you may occupy the land
your ancestors
remember the LORD you God
has led you 40 years
to humble you
He humbled you
by feeding you manna
The LORD God disciplines you
keep the commandments of the LORD
the LORD your God is leading you
to a good land
with good food
and iron and copper
eat your fill
bless the LORD your God for
the good land
do not forget the LORD your God
by failing to keep his commands
when you have eaten your fill
silver and gold are multiplied
forgetting the LORD your God
who led you out of Egypt and led you*
through the wilderness
He fed you manna
to humble you
remember the LORD you God
your ancestors
do not forget the LORD you God
did not obey the voice of the LORD your God
Notice that this set of repetitions does not neatly fit into any of the more common structures utilized in Scripture such as parallelism or chiasm. Instead (especially if one ignores the four references to keeping God's commands which punctuate the text at regular intervals) one can see that it winds back and forth just as a snake slithers on the ground in order to get enough traction, especially in sand or dirt, to move forward. And therefore, at least in my mind, it is a word picture appropriate to the highly circuitous route by which God led the people around the wilderness for 40 years in order to test and purify them to the point where they were prepared to enter the Holy Land at last after their now dead ancestors had turned back at its border the first time for fear of its inhabitants.
But that does not by any means exhaust the meaning of the picture. By visually representing a snake, we are powerfully reminded of other key points in Scripture in which a snake appears:
First as the tempter in the Garden of Eden who led Adam and Eve astray and was punished by being forced to “eat dirt” while it moved.
This was followed by the biting serpents in the wilderness (see Numbers 21) whose poisonous bite could only be cured by gazing at the bronze effigy on a pole that was set up.
The above incident is recalled in our passage under present consideration (see v. 8:15)
Then II Kings 18 represents one of the high points in the historical books in that it describes the many purifying acts carried out under the righteous King Hezekiah's reign, including the destruction of the bronze serpent which had apparently become a spiritual trap for the people who had begun to worship it in place of God.
But the serpent makes yet further appearances in the New Testament:
Luke 10:13 has Jesus proclaiming that He saw Satan fall from the sky.
In a clearly prophetic passage in John 3:14-15, Jesus compares the serpent being lifted up in the wilderness with Himself being lifted up (on a cross) so that all who look on him might be cured of their sins and also lifted up.
Satan appears as a dragon/serpent in Revelation 12 who is about to devour the woman's baby as soon as it is born, but God transports her to the wilderness where she can be nourished.
The identity of Satan with the serpent of Genesis is again spelled out in Revelation 20:2-3 as God throws him down even further into the pit.
Kostenberger comments that “the primary analogy established in the present passage [John 3:14-15] is not that of the raised bronze serpent and the lifted up Son of Man; rather Jesus [or John, since the lack of punctuation in the Greek makes the point ambiguous] likens the restoration of the people's physical lives as a result of looking at the bronze serpent to the people's reception of eternal life as a result of 'looking' in faith at the Son of Man. Yet, as in the case of wilderness Israel, it is ultimately not a person's faith, but rather the God in whom the faith is placed, that is the source of salvation (cf. Wis. 16:6-7).”
I would agree with Kostenberger wholeheartedly except for one point. I think that the direct comparison between the serpent and the lifted-up Jesus on the cross is quite germane to the whole meaning of the OT passage. Jesus on the cross took on all our sins and the associated death penalty so that we could also equate him very well symbolically with the death of the evil snake. And just as the snake was lifted up, so too were Jesus and all who gaze on him lifted up to glory.
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