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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 brazen 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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