Snakes, Mountains and Moses

View from Mt. Nebo and King’s Highway, linking ancient Edom, Moab and Amman Kingdoms.

Jordan is a country full of surprises, mainly of how many Biblical sites there are. One of my favorites is Mt. Nebo, the traditional site thought to be where Moses hands over the reins to his number 2 in command, Joshua. Was it because Moses was tired and decided to give up leadership to the next generation? Hardly.

Nothing Moses did seems to have been motivated by anything but his clarity about God’s direction, which he had to learn as we all do. Whether it was leaving the wilderness to return to Egypt where he was a wanted man, or herding his often-recalcitrant fellow Hebrews through a generation of wilderness, Moses listened to God most of the time, and bore the weight of consequences when he didn’t, as in this case.

The decision not to enter ‘the Promised Land’ was based on a Biblical directive he disobeyed. The account (in Numbers 20, NRSV) explains that the Israelites were in the wilderness called Zin, without water. Turning to God in prayer, he got his answer:

⁷ The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ⁸ Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock (emphasis added) before their eyes to yield its water. Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.

…but chose to ignore it….

⁹ So Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he had commanded him. ¹⁰ Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” ¹¹ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice (emphasis added) with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank. 

…and suffered the consequences.

¹² But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” 

Talk about having a dramatic moment?! Did Moses succumb to that all too modern malady of performing for the crowds? Isn’t it more dramatic to strike the rock for all to see then simply talk to it when few could hear? Perhaps that was Moses’ reasoning– something we’ll never know.

But we do know that Moses learned an important lesson in obedience, as did his brother Aaron who was also disobedient. This is where the Bible is the best literal guidebook for travelers. Numbers 20 and 21 continue the saga of the journey to freedom, how the King of Edom forbade entrance into his territory, even if the Israelites kept to themselves on The King’s Highway (the very road on which our bus traveled!).   Lesson learned: keep going (and listening) despite the obstacles that arise, regardless of how daunting.

God directs them around Edom (near today’s Petra, and part of ancient Edom), along the Red Sea. Aaron goes to die on Mt. Hor, the most prominent peak visible from today’s Petra. Once again the people complain and this time serpents are sent (Num. 21:7-9).

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. 8 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.” 9 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.

So visitors to Mt. Nebo today are treated to an enormous brass sculpture of a serpent on a pole. One traveler observed how it looked like the medical profession’s symbol, sometimes explained as sourced from the Greek mythology of Hermes, who is given a staff by Apollo, the god of healing. They obviously don’t know their Scripture!

Mt Nebo photo credit: “Nebo04(js)” by Jerzy Strzelecki – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

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