It takes us just a week to read a story that spans almost forty years. Punished for ingratitude and lack of faith, the Jews were forced to wander in the wilderness. Parashat Chukat describes thirty-eight years of those travels. By its end, the generation that left Egypt has passed away. They would not be the generation that entered Israel. Their children would succeed where they failed.

In the midst of their various travels, the Torah tells us one of its strangest stories:

They journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Sea of Suf, to circumnavigate the land of Edom: and the spirit of the people was disheartened because of the journey. And the people spoke against God, and against Moshe, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, nor is there any water; and our soul loathes this wretched bread.” And God sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people; and many people of Israel died. The people came to Moshe and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against God, and against you; pray to God, that He takes away the snakes from us.” And Moshe prayed for the people. God said to Moshe, “Make for yourself a serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall be, that anyone that is bitten, shall look at it and live.” (And) Moshe made a snake of copper, and put it on the pole, and it was, that if a snake had bitten a person, and he gazed at the copper snake, he lived. (Bamidbar 21:4–9)

This is an unusual story. The punishment symbolically fits........

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