The Brass Serpent’s Ignoble End – How the Israelites should have taken better care of their things

That’s right, snakes are still awesome.

After King David died the Israelites went through a pretty rapid succession of kings. Some of them were Jehovah lovers and some of them preferred other gods. One good thing about the Israelites though is they never threw away religious relics. Therefore, they still had the super awesome brass serpent Moses made to keep Jehovah’s flying fire snake poison from killing the entire Hebrew population.

Many of the Israelites figured the best way to get through this troubled time was to put their faith in the Brass Serpent’s ability to protect them. The serpent had already shown it was stronger than Jehovah, and it looked like their best bet to ward off crap from other gods as well. For this most part this was working out pretty well. The Israelites weren’t wiped out by either Jehovah or warriors from a surrounding kingdom throughout the entire time they worshiped the brass serpent.

Then this ass-munch Jehovah-lover Hezekiah became the king of Judah (part of the nation of Israel). One of his first acts was to destroy the Brass Serpent. This clearly turned out to be a mistake because six short years later all of Israel was captured by the King of Assyria who made almost all of them leave the “promised land” and took them to Assyria to live.

Lesson: if you have a super awesome brass snake that’s so badass it can keep God from killing you, don’t break it!

Ref: 2 Kings 18