Ok friends, enough doom and gloom for a moment. Let's talk about something cool this week, like..I dunno...

DRAGONS IN THE BIBLE!
#thread #threadstorytime

This week we read from parshat Eikev, deep in the last speeches from Moses to the Israelites. If you read Eikev all the way through, you’ll find the blessings (and curses) God will bestow upon the Israelites, and you’ll hear the recap of the wilderness sojourn.../2

including what happened to the Israelites as they traveled from place to place throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Within the recap, you’ll hear this: /3

And there, friends, is the buzzword of the day: seraph. I’d define it for you but, according to our scholars, the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain. There are, as there always is in Judaism, some suggestions./4

First, let’s review the scene. When Moses speaks about the seraph serpents from the wilderness, he is referencing an incident that took place in Numbers, Chapter 21, within one of our “complaint” scenes. /5

Like the other complaint scenes, our Israelite ancestors are kvetching to Moses, asking why he made them leave Egypt only to die in the wilderness. In verse 6, it gets interesting. In order to punish the Israelites for this behavior: /6

Now, this scene is problematic for a lot of reasons, most notably because God is basically telling Moses to be a serpent charmer or soothsayer, which, according to Deuteronomy, is an abhorrent practice of neighboring nations. /7

More important to our study tonight is the fact that this passage doesn’t help us understand what a seraph is, only that they bit the people and people died, and that to fix the problem, Moses needed to construct a copper serpent staff for people look at to be healed. /8

After scouring the many commentaries and works of exegesis by noted scholars, the most common explanation I could find was that the word seraph has the same root as the word saraph, which means “it burned.” Most therefore infer that the word seraph means “burning one.” /9

Well, now we’re getting somewhere. Kind of. Dr. Jeffrey Tigay, a biblical scholar who edited the JPS commentary on Deuteronomy, defines seraphim as “fiery serpents,” which are “apparently serpents whose bite causes a burning sensation.” /10

This idea was also held by the commentators of the Jewish Study Bible, and by Gunther Plaut in his commentary on the Torah, stating that the word seraph can be defined as “fiery” which is “a presumed reference to snake bites that caused an inflammation of the skin.” /11

So what we have, then, according to the commentators, is a snake.But, the word Seraph appears elsewhere. Let’s turn to our friend Isaiah, who, in chapter 6, has a vision of God sitting on a throne:/12

Let’s pause for a moment. Isaiah the prophet’s vision of God is that God sits on a high throne, and standing all around God are seraphs. Seraphs, apparently, have six wings and they can fly. It continues: /13

Let’s remove the fact that the seraph can talk, and think about what image you conjure up when you hear this scene. This isn’t like in Numbers or Deuteronomy where the word seraph simply precedes the word “serpent,” and leaves out the rest. /14

No, in this scene, we get a mental image of what a seraph is. A seraph is a creature with wings, big enough to cover God’s face. When you combine that with the root of the word, meaning “burning one,” or “fiery,” we get a fiery creature with wings. /15

And when we combine that image with the idea of a serpent, we get a flying fiery serpent. Or, what many of us might call…a dragon. No wonder Isaiah saw a room full of smoke! When you have dragons, you have breathing fire, and when you have breathing fire, you have smoke.
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If we go back and test our theory in this week’s parsha, we can certainly see why God would use this creature as punishment against the Israelites, and certainly why a bite from a seraph serpent caused Israelites to die. /17

Not because of a burning sensation, but because dragon bites probably hurt. And the threat of a dragon served well for intimidation purposes. Now, I’ve read the scholarship, the etymology of the word seraph, the idea of angelic beings in hierarchies.../18

but the truth is, the answer was right in front of us.

And it’s a simple one: dragons in the Bible! /19