nĕḥōšet, “copper, bronze,” suggestive perhaps of something luminous (“an angel of light”)? Indeed, in the wilderness Moses made a bronze serpent (Num. 21:9), only to have it demolished centuries later by Hezekiah when the image became a fetish and an object of worship (2 Kings 18:4). Or is the word for “serpent” to be related to the Hebrew verb nāḥāš, “to practice divination”? We should note that information in the Old Testament about Satan, and indeed for the whole world of demonology, is at
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