Bible symbol · 2 lenses
What Does Serpent Mean in the Bible Read through 2 lenses
Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent?
What does serpent mean in the Bible?
The serpent first appears as a deceiver, questioning God's word to Eve (Genesis 3:1), and Revelation 12:9 calls the old serpent the devil. It can also bring healing and wisdom: Moses's bronze serpent saves those who look at it (Numbers 21:9), and Jesus tells his followers to be wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16).
Where serpent appears in the Bible
1 Corinthians 10:9
Let’s not test Christ, as some of them tested, and perished by the serpents.
2 Corinthians 11:3
But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
2 Kings 18:4
He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because in those days the children of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan.
Serpent through 2 lenses
Same symbol, 2 ways of seeing it. Tap one to jump to it.
Christian Psychology · Matthew 7:10
Christian Psychology
The mind afraid of its own creator half expects that reaching out for life will draw back something that bites. So it learns to ask for little, or not to ask at all, guarding itself against a gift that might turn on it. But this dread is the ego speaking, projecting its own capacity for attack onto the gentle source it cannot see clearly.
What answers a sincere asking is never poison wearing the shape of a favor. The fear of the serpent lives in the one who asks, never in the One who gives.
- Fish: the living help the mind truly seeks, sustenance that carries the spirit forward
- Serpent: the feared betrayal, harm disguised as a gift, the projection of the ego's own wish to attack
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Esoteric · Exodus 4:3
Esoteric
The rod set down becomes a serpent, and a power held upright as a tool shows itself as the raw force it truly is. The rod is the spinal channel gripped by the will, and cast down it reveals the coiled energy asleep at the base, the serpent of life that frightens the very self who let it go. The lower mind flees because it fears the force just uncovered in its own body.
What looked like a plain staff was living power all along. The fear passes only when a person takes that serpent up again and holds it as strength.
- The rod: the spinal channel held by the will, a plain staff that hides a living force
- The serpent: the coiled energy asleep at the base of the spine, the raw life-force revealed when the rod is cast down
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What serpent means in each story
One line per lens.
- PsychoanalysisThe venomous serpents (biting the people): evil that threatens the soul in the wilderness.Numbers 21:4-9
- PsychoanalysisThe bronze serpent (on the pole): the hidden power in nature that transforms and heals, like Christ.Numbers 21:4-9
- Clinical PsychologyThe fiery serpents (biting the people): chaos and the unknown, deadly but also renewing.Numbers 21:4-9
- Clinical PsychologyThe bronze serpent on the pole: order and chaos held together in one image.Numbers 21:4-9
- Clinical PsychologyLooking at the serpent to live: facing what poisons you heals you and makes you brave.Numbers 21:4-9
- ManifestationBronze serpent (made by Moses): God's creative power, your true self, buried in you.Numbers 21:4-9
Commentaries on serpent
Swedenborg (1887) · serpent
SERPENT s. man when he is corporeally sensual, who turns from the Lord to himself, and from heaven to the world; such was the s. who seduced Eve and Adam. A. R. 550.
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