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Nehushtan was a staff of copper and brass.
The staff was a serpent on a pole which Moses made in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4–9) in obedience to God's directions. At the time, the Israelites were being attacked by poisonous snakes and were dying. After Moses made the staff, any who were bitten and looked at it, survived the snakebite.
Generations later, Hezekiah destroyed it because the children of Israel began to regard it as an idol and "burn incense to it". The lapse of nearly one thousand years had invested the "brazen serpent" with a mysterious sanctity; and in order to deliver the people from their infatuation, and impress them with the idea of its worthlessness, Hezekiah called it, in contempt, "Nehushtan", a brazen thing, a mere piece of brass (2 Kings 18:4).
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