What Does Numbers 21:6 Mean?
And the LORD sent burning serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and many of Israel died.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.THE KEY
The Hebrew word rendered “fiery” is seraphim, the same word used for the burning beings in Isaiah 6.
THE MEANING
Here, deadly danger enters among the people by the LORD’s sending: the serpents bite, and many die. The verse holds the sender and the lethal outcome in the same unsoftened sentence. Its “fiery” serpents are named with a word that carries the force of burning beings.
THE ROOT
וַיְשַׁלַּח
vayeshallaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send forth, release, let go.
The verb places the serpents among the people as something sent forth. This root can also mean release or let go; here, what is sent into the people’s midst brings death.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send or dispatch.
שָׁלַח
The serpents enter the camp as the object of the LORD’s sending.
shalach: Release or let go.
שָׁלַח
The same root can name letting people go; here it names sending something lethal among them.
הַשְּׂרָפִים
ha-seraphim
GROWS FROM
שרף
Burn, consume.
English makes seraphim an adjective, “fiery,” while the Hebrew retains the word used for the burning beings in Isaiah 6. The serpents are named through burning, not merely described as hot.
ALSO GROWS
saraph: Burn or consume.
שָׂרַף
The root makes the serpents’ fiery quality an active force of burning.
seraphim: Burning ones; the seraphim.
שְׂרָפִים
Isaiah 6 uses this same word for the beings near the throne, exposing a shared name beneath “fiery serpents” and “seraphim.”
THE PATTERN
Sending puts a force or agent into another’s midst, and what is sent carries the effect.
For at this time I will send all my blows upon your heart, and upon your servants, and upon your people, so that you may perceive that there is none like me in all the earth.He sent darkness, and made it dark; and they did not turn bitter against his words.Then Jesus said to them again, Wholeness be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.THE THREAD
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.The Hebrew word behind “fiery” here is the same word rendered “seraphims” in Isaiah. In Numbers, the burning ones are serpents whose bites kill; in Isaiah, one carries a live coal.
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