Comentário sobre Números 21:6

את הנחשים השרפים BURNING SERPENTS — so termed because they burn (cause fever in) a person through the poison of their fangs.

את הנחשים השרפים, the fiery snakes. It appears that as a result of the continued complaints by the Israelites against G'd and Moses, He sent the very beasts against them which their לשון הרע had given birth to. We have explained on numerous occasions that the מזיקים, destructive forces in our world, are nothing but the creatures we cause to come into being through our sins. The incident of the serpents in this paragraph proves how true the words of our sages in Taanit 8 are when they said that in the messianic future the other wild beasts will ask the serpent why it kills with a poisonous bite seeing it does not even get a physical satisfaction out of the damage it causes; the serpent replies with the verse (Kohelet 10,11)אין יתרון לבעל הלשון, "the slanderer does not get anything out of his slander." It asks: "why not ask the same question of the slanderer? What does he get out of spreading lies against people?" את הנחשים השרפים, the fiery serpents, etc. It seems quite appropriate that seeing the Israelites continued to slander G'd and Moses, that G'd sent the serpents created by these slanderous remarks against those who had caused their existence, against the slanderers themselves as per the Talmud in Taanit. In this instance the complaints of the Israelites gave birth to two kinds of serpents. The one called נחש has a poisonous bite which destroys the body, whereas the bite of the one called שרף burns the soul. The meaning of the word וישלח here is that G'd allowed the evil creations of the people's slanderous remarks to be turned against them. We find a similar use of that word in Job 8,4 וישלחם ביד פשעם, "He expelled them by means of their sin." In this instance the נחשים were the result of their slander against Moses, whereas the שרפים were the result of the Israelites having misrepresented what G'd had done. The Midrash too mentions that the שרפים were the punishment for what they said against G'd, as these serpents burn the soul.

That consume. Meaning that השרפים ["the consuming"] is a description of the snakes that are mentioned in the verse, meaning “the snakes that consume.” Not that this was a species of snake such as שרף מעופף ["a flying seraph" (Yeshayahu 14:29)] or נחש שרף ועקרב ["snake, saraph and scorpion" (Devarim 8:15)]. For if this were so the verse should have said והשרפים ["and the seraphim"]. [One might ask:] It is written, (v. 8) “Make yourself a שרף ["consuming snake"]” which implies that it was a species of snake called the saraph. The answer is that it means “make for yourself a consuming snake” for we find something similar [that an adjective implies a subject that is not stated explicitly in the verse] where מאכלו בריא ["his food is healthy"] (Chabakuk 1:16), refers to a healthy sheep.

V. 6. שלח .וישלח ד׳ בעם im קל heißt: schicken, etwas mit Absicht zu einem Ziele hin in Bewegung setzen. שַלֵחַ im פיעל jedoch überwiegend: loslassen, etwas seinem natürlichen Zug, seiner eigenen Bewegung überlassen, es nicht zurückhalten. So וישלח ישלח את היונה ,את העורב (Bereschit 8, 7 u. 8) ושלח את היונה ,וישלח את הערב (daselbst 43, 14), וישלח את אחיכם (Schmot 13, 17) ויהי בשלח פרעה (daselbst 22, 4) und sonst sehr häufig. Auch hier, nicht: Gott schickte Schlangen, sondern: ließ die Schlangen los, hielt sie nicht zurück. Daher auch nicht נחשים שרפים, sondern הנחשים השרפים, sie waren immer in der Wüste vorhanden, allein bis dahin hielt sie Gottes fürsorgende Macht zurück. Jetzt zog Gott diese sie zurückhaltende Macht zurück, und die Schlangen der Wüste folgten ihrem natürlichen Zug, dem das Volk erlag. So schildert Mosche (Dewarim 3, 15) die Wüste, die sie durch Gottes Wundermacht ungefährdet durch wandert hatten: נחשים שרפים .המוליכך במדבר הגדול והנורא נחש שרף ועקרב וצמאון וגו׳ sind daher ein ebenso natürlicher Zubehör der Wüste wie .צמאון ,וינשכו"נשך" lautverwandt mit "נזק" schaden, נשק brennen, נשק Rüstzeug (siehe Bereschit 41, 40).

את הנחשים, “the snakes.” According to Rabbi Yudan, the Torah, by not writing: נחשים, but הנחשים instead, claims that the cloud over the Jewish camp as long as Aaron had been alive, used to burn the snakes, and thus make them harmless, as far as the Jewish people were concerned. Now that Aaron had died there was no remedy against being bitten by snakes. They became frequent sources of harm.

וינשכו את העם AND THEY BIT THE PEOPLE — God said, as it were: Let the serpent which was punished for slanderous statements come and exact punishment from those who utter slander. — Let the serpent to which all kinds of food have one taste (that of earth; cf. Genesis 3:14 and Yoma 75a) come and exact punishment from these ingrates to whom one thing (the manna) had the taste of many different dainties (see Rashi 11:8) (Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 19).