2 Kings 18:4

brake the images[R.V. pillars] and cut down the groves R.V. the Asherah. On the -pillars" see note on 2 Kings 3:2, and on the -Asherah", which was probably the wooden image of a goddess so called, see on 2 Kings 18:6.

the brasen serpent There can be no doubt that, after the cures wrought (Numbers 21:9) by looking at the serpent which Moses made, this object, the sacrament of so great a blessing, would be reverently kept, and though we have no mention of its preservation and bestowal, nor any notice of it till this passage, there is no reason to suppose that it would be allowed to become lost or to be broken in pieces. Some have thought that the object here spoken of was a serpent made after the fashion of that early one set up in the wilderness. But when the statement in the text is so plain, and the material in question so little perishable there can be no reason to suppose from the mere silence of Holy Writ about it, that the original serpent had disappeared.

for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it The record does not tell us when this worship of the brasen serpent began. But in midst of the many objects set up to be adored in the degenerate days of some of the kings, the adoration of the brasen serpent would be counted among the most reputable. Having once commenced there was no chance of its cessation in times like those of the last king, Ahaz.

and he called it Nehushtan It is perhaps better to take an indefinite word as nominative to the verb -called": - onecalled it", i.e. -it was called" as is given in the margin of R.V. The word Nehushtanmeaning -a piece of brass" or -something made of brass" may either be taken as a term of contempt, in which case the people who used the name were those who with Hezekiah caused it to be destroyed; or it may be the name which had in process of time come to be applied by everybody to this brasen figure. The words for -serpent" and for -brass" are in Hebrew very much alike, and a word like -Nehushtan" might very well come in that language to convey in the popular speech the whole idea of -brasen serpent", and win its way to general acceptance.