Numbers 21:8
Numbers 21:88Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.”
Jehovah's Witnesses recognise that God commanded Moses to make the bronze serpent in and that Jesus referenced it in as a type of his own death. However, they pair this passage with , where Hezekiah destroyed the same serpent because the Israelites had begun burning incense to it. The Watchtower uses the Hezekiah episode to argue that religious images inevitably become idolatrous and should therefore never be made or displayed. Reasoning From the Scriptures (pp. 183-187) extends this to crosses, nativity scenes, and any religious art, citing as a blanket prohibition on representational images.
is the decisive Old Testament text against a blanket ban on religious images. God himself commanded Moses to make a metal replica of a cursed creature and mount it on a pole for a salvific purpose — the people who looked at it lived. The same God who gave the second commandment in ordered this image four books later, which demonstrates that prohibits images made for cultic worship, not representational art as such. This reading is confirmed by the tabernacle and temple, where God commanded cherubim on the ark (), cherubim woven into the curtains (), and carved lions, oxen, and palm trees throughout Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6-7). The bronze serpent stood as a memorial for seven hundred years without condemnation; Hezekiah destroyed it only when the people began worshipping it (). The Watchtower's own Insight on the Scriptures "Copper Serpent" entry concedes this point. Most significantly, Jesus in adopted the bronze serpent as the prophetic type of his own crucifixion, investing this God-commanded image with christological meaning.