The brazen serpent”: Hezekiah broke the Nehushtan into pieces i.e., the bronze snake made by Moses in the wilderness (see notes on Numbers 21;4-9). Because Judah had come to worship it as an idol, perhaps influenced by Canaanite religion, which regarded snakes as fertility symbols. It had remained a symbol of deliverance. However, it had become a source of spiritual confusion and idolatrous worship, possibly associated with the worship of Asherah. Therefore, it had to be destroyed.
The “bronze serpent” was a statue Moses erected to save the Israelites from deadly biting snakes (Num. 21:5-9). According to Jesus, it pictured how he would be lifted up on the cross (John 3:14-15). Over time, however, it had become an object of worship called the “Nehushtan (a word that sounds like the Hebrew words for both bronze and snake).
