You Want Egypt? I'll Give You Egypt.

Numbers 14:1-4:

Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron; the whole congregation said to them, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become booty; would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?" So they said to one another, "Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt."

It is treacherously easy to overspiritualize the Old Testament, especially when it comes to the narratives. If centuries of allegorical interpretation weren't enough to drive this point home, it won't take you long to find a dozen contemporary sermons full of "principles" and "timeless truths of Scripture" painstakingly extracted from the stories of the Old Testament. Whether these practices are useful or proper is another question; the point here is that we are dealing with a record of events. Are there principles here? Truths of scripture? Yes. There is much to be learned in today's passages about God, faith, even politics. But that is not what the narratives primarily are.

What's more, we are dealing with a record of human events. There are a lot of things in the OT narratives that are easy to label 'supernatural'; and while this word is sometimes difficult to shake free of its Deistic trappings, it certainly is more fitting than 'natural'. Nevertheless we read about real people, actual humans. Putting aside for the moment questions of historicity, it should not sound too strange to sat that Moses was a human political and religious leader, Korah was a human revolutionary, and so forth.

In the passage at hand, the Israelites are facing another another human issue: military difficulties. The Israelites have just found out from the agents they have sent into Canaan that the land will be nigh impossible to conquer. It is full of well-protected cities and equally well-armed warriors. One can easily imagine running across a similar passage in a history of, say, Alexander the Great's conquests.

The real intrigue here is that the Israelites, or at least some factions within the larger group, also propose a practical human solution to their issues. "Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt," say the Israelites to one another. In other words, let's replace Moses with someone more competent, and change our policy. The real problems here are our intentions for conquest. This plan has been wrong from the start!

Numbers 21:5-9:

The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

About 40 years later, not much has changed: the Israelites are still worn down and poorly provisioned at the end of four decades of hard survival in the wilderness following their failed attempt to take Canaan's hill country. It is now difficult to find food and water, and the food they do have they find unacceptable. Spiritual allegories and life principles present themselves by the dozen (and this is not necessarily a problem) but we must keep in mind that these are real issues, human events. It is precisely as real issues and human events that these two passages begin to come into a fresh and meaningful light, and take on a meaning that is decidedly more than human.

A recurring theme in the wilderness narratives is the suggestion, when the situation becomes dire, to return to Egypt (cf. Exodus 14:11-12 and
Numbers 11:5, 18-20). The story of the serpents in Numbers 21 can be read as the subversive fruition of that suggested solution. It is not overly imaginative to think of aging Israelites telling their children stories of their old lives in Egypt. Life in Egypt was remembered as difficult but good; a demanding life, but worth it all for the benefits the Israelites enjoyed there. And what splendor was in Egypt! Awesome pyramids, grand cities, majestic rulers -- Egypt truly was a place of glory, power and ideals.

One of the most vivid symbols of Egyptian glory was the serpent, sticking in the Israelites' minds, we may think, much as the hammer and sickle sticks in the minds of former Soviet citizens. But it seems that, at times at least, the serpent did not symbolize oppression for the wandering Hebrews, but salvation. Time after time they urge their leaders to take them back to Egypt, until finally, at a time when most of the group knows only stories of the greatness of Egypt, the Israelites receive salvation from the serpent. The people wake up one morning to find serpents everywhere -- much as their former masters woke up one morning to find frogs everywhere -- and before they know it, the plagues of Egypt have come upon them in new form. Far more than their firstborns die; this serpent kills without judgment. God subverts the symbol of Egypt in order to show his people what Egypt really is. And when the Israelites finally are saved, it is when God co-opts for Himself the symbol of the salvation to which Israel had been looking. Egypt remains symbolized by the serpent, but Egypt no longer symbolizes salvation. God is, as He reminds His people all through the exodus narratives, the one "who brought you out of the land of Egypt." Salvations belongs to YHWH alone.