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Brass
“And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood … And thou shalt overlay it with brass … All the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass … And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon the net shalt thou make four brasen rings in the four corners thereof” (Exodus 27:1-4).
“And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived” (Numbers 21:9).
Brass in Scripture is a picture of divine judgment. It symbolizes the Lord’s ability to bear the judgment against sin because of who He was, the eternal Son of God. So the brazen altar is a picture of the cross, and the brazen serpent a picture of the Lord Jesus as the sin bearer. It is summed up in the words of Peter, “Christ also suffered for us … who did no sin … who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:21-22,24). We will never know just how deep and intense that suffering was. That’s why it says, “The weight of the brass could not be found out” (2 Chronicles 4:18).
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