For the one who turned toward it
[the brazen serpent] was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you,
the Savior of all. (Wisdom of Solomon 16:7 NRSV)
7. was saved not by the sight beheld. The author seeks to replace the
principle of homeopathic magic which appears to be operative in Num 21:8–9 with
a spiritual conception. (See B. A. Levine, In
the Presence of the Lord [Leiden, 1974]:85–86.) We find a similar
interpretation in M. Rosh Hashanah
3.8: “But could the serpent kill or could the serpent keep alive? But rather,
whenever Israel looked on high and subjected their heart to their Father in
heaven were they healed, but if not, they perished.” It may be noted that the
rabbis explained the punishment of the Israelites by means of serpents on the
talion principle, a conceit to which, as we have already seen, both they and
the author of Wisd were equally attached. See Tanḥ. Ḥukat 45: “Let the
serpent who began with slander come and exact punishment from those who utter
slander.… Let the serpent who eats all kinds of food and yet enjoys only one
taste (cf. BT Yoma 75a), come and exact punishment from those who eat only one
kind of food and yet enjoy the taste of many kinds.” Cf. Targ.Yerush. and Ps-Jonathan on Num 21:6: “And the bath-kol fell from the high heaven and
thus spoke: I made manna come down for them from heaven, yet now they turn and
murmur against me. Yet, behold, the serpent whom, in the days of the beginning
of the world, I doomed to have dust for his food, hath not murmured against me.
Now shall the serpents who have not complained of their food come and bite the
people who complain.” (David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary, [AYB 43; New York: Doubleday, 1979], 295)
