The Bronze Serpent — Bible audio story cover art

The Bronze Serpent

Numbers 21:4-9

The cure looked exactly like the thing that was killing them.

The Israelites are impatient again, complaining about the food and the journey. God sends venomous snakes among them. People are bitten. People die. They come to Moses in panic: We sinned. Pray that God takes the snakes away. Moses prays. God's solution is strange — he doesn't remove the snakes. Instead, he tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. The poison still flows, the snakes still strike, but there's now a way to survive. You just have to look up.