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From: Numbers 21:4-9

The Bronze Serpent

[4] From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the
land of Edom; and the people became impatient on the way. [5] And the people
spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of
Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe
this worthless food.” [6] Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and
they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. [7] And the people came
to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and
against you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Mo-
ses prayed for the people. [8] And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent,
and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” [9]
So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any
man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

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Commentary:

21:4-9. The people continue to complain against Moses, this time because
they have to go right around Edom. But their protest is also directed against God.
When they are punished, Moses once again intercedes on their behalf. The events
covered in this account may have taken place in the region of Araba, where copper
mines existed from the 13th century BC onwards. In the town now called Timna,
an Egyptian shrine has been unearthed which contained a copper serpent, indica-
ting that some sort of magical power was attributed to these serpents.

This passage in Numbers is interpreted in Wisdom 16:5-12, where the point is em-
phasized that it was not the bronze serpent that cured them but the mercy of God;
the serpent was a sign of the salvation which God offers all men. The bronze ser-
pent is mentioned later, in the Gospel, as typifying Christ raised up on the cross,
the cause of salvation for those who look at him with faith: “As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever
believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15) When Christ is raised above all
human things, he draws them towards himself; so his glorification is the means
whereby all mankind obtain healing for ever more.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

From: John 8:21-30

Jesus Warns the Unbelieving Jews

[21] Again He (Jesus) said to them, “I go away, and you will seek Me and die in
your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” [22] Then said the Jews, “Will He
kill Himself, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come?’” [23] He said
to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of
this world. [24] I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your
sins unless you believe that I am He.” [25] They said to Him, “Who are You?”
Jesus said to them, “Even what I have told you from the beginning. [26] I have
much to say about you and much to judge; but He who sent Me is true, and I de-
clare to the world what I have heard from Him.” [27] They did not understand that
He spoke to them of the Father. [28] So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up
the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on My
own authority but speak thus as the Father taught Me. [29] And He who sent Me
is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to Him.”
[30] As He spoke thus, many believed in Him.

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Commentary:

21-24. At the outset of His public ministry, Jesus could be seen to have all the
features of the promised Messiah; some people recognized Him as such and
became His followers (cf. John 1:12-13; 4:42; 6:69; 7:41); but the Jewish autho-
rities, although they were expecting the Messiah (cf. John 1:19ff), persisted in
their rejection of Jesus. Hence the warning to them: He is going where they
cannot follow, that is, He is going to Heaven, which is where He has come from
(cf. John 6:41ff), and they will keep looking out for the Messiah foretold by the
prophets; but they will not find Him because they look for Him outside of Jesus,
nor can they follow Him, for they do not believe in Him. You are of the world, our
Lord is saying to them, not because you are on earth but because you are living
under the influence of the prince of this world (cf. John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11); you
are his vassals and you do his deeds (cf. 8:44); therefore, you will die in your
sin. “We are all born with sin”, St. Augustine comments, “all by our living have
added to what we were by nature, and have become more of this world than we
then were, when we were born of our parents. Where would we be if He had not
come, who had no sin at all, to loose all sin? The Jews, because they did not
believe in Him, deserved to have it said to them, ‘You will die in your sin’” (”In
Ioann. Evang.”, 38, 6).

The salvation which Christ brings will be applied to those who believe in His
divinity. Jesus declares His divinity when He says “I am He”, for this expres-
sion, which He repeats on other occasions (cf. John 8:28; 13:19), is reserved to
Yahweh in the Old Testament (cf. Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 43:10-11), where
God, in revealing His name and therefore His essence, says to Moses “I AM
WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). In this profound way God says that He is the Su-
preme Being in a full, absolute sense, that He is dependent on no other being,
that all other things depend on Him for their being and existence. Thus, when
Jesus says of Himself, “I am He”, He is revealing that He is God.

25. A little before this Jesus had spoken about His Heavenly origin and His
divine nature (cf. verses 23-24); but the Jews do not want to accept this revela-
tion; which is why they ask Him for an even more explicit statement: “Who are
You?” Our Lord’s reply can be understood in different ways, because the Greek
text has two meanings: 1) our Lord is confirming what He has just asserted (cf.
verses 23-24) and what He has been teaching throughout this visit to Jerusalem
—in which case it may be translated “precisely what I am telling you” or else “in
the first place what I am telling you”. This is the interpretation given in the New
Vulgate. 2) Jesus is indicating that He is the “Beginning”, which is the word St.
John also uses in the Apocalypse to designate the Word, the cause of all crea-
tion (Revelation 3:14; cf. Revelation 1:8). In this way Jesus states His divine
origin. This is the interpretation given in the Vulgate. Either way, Christ is once
more revealing His divinity; He is reaffirming what He said earlier, but without
saying it all over again.

“Many people in our own days ask the same question: ‘Who are You?’ [...] Who,
then, was Jesus? Our faith exults and cries out: it is He, it is He, the Son of God
made man. He is the Messiah we were expecting: He is the Savior of the world,
the Master of our lives: He is the Shepherd that guides men to their pastures in
time, to their destinies beyond time. He is the joy of the world; He is the image
of the invisible God: He is the way, the truth and the life; He is the interior friend;
He is the One who knows us even from afar; He knows our thoughts; He is the
One who can forgive us, console, cure, even raise from the dead; and He is the
One who will return, the judge of one and all, in the fullness of His glory and our
eternal happiness” (Paul VI, “General Audience”, 11 December 1974).

26-27. “He who sent Me”: an expression very often found in St. John’s Gospel,
referring to God the Father (cf. 5:37; 6:44; 7:28; 8:16).

The Jews who were listening to Jesus did not understand whom He was referring
to; but St. John, in recounting this episode, explains that He meant His Father,
from Whom He came.

“He spoke to them of the Father”: this is the reading in most of the Greek co-
dexes, including the more important ones. Other Greek codices and some
translations, including the Vulgate, read, “He was calling God His Father.”

“What I have heard from Him”: Jesus had connatural knowledge of His Father,
and it is from this knowledge that He speaks to men; He knows God not through
revelation or inspiration as the prophets and sacred writers did, but in an infinitely
higher way: which is why He can say that no one knows the Father but the Son
and He to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him (cf. Mt 11:27).

On the type of knowledge Jesus had during His life on earth, see the note on
Luke 2:52.

28. Our Lord is referring to His passion and death: “’And I, when I am lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men to Myself’. He said this to show by what death
He was to die” (John 12:32-33). Rounding out the Synoptics and the Letters of
St. Paul, the Fourth Gospel presents the Cross, above all, as a royal throne on
which Christ is “lifted up” and from which He offers all men the fruits of salvation
(cf. John 3:14-15; cf. also Numbers 21:9ff; Wisdom 16:6).

Jesus says that when that time comes, the Jews will know who He is and His
intimate union with the Father, because many of them will discover, thanks to
His death and resurrection, that He is the Messiah, the Son of God (cf. Matthew
15:39; Lk 33:48). After the coming of the Holy Spirit many thousands will believe
in Him (cf. Acts 2:41; 4:4).

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.