Once, almost forty years after they made God’s House, the Israelites were
very hungry and thirsty. They said hateful things about Moses and about
God too, which was very wicked. So God sent fiery serpents to bite the
people. The bite was poisonous, and many died. Then they knew this was
because they had done wrong. They came to Moses and asked him to pray God
to take the serpents away. Moses prayed. God told Moses to make a brass
serpent and set it on a pole where all the people could see it. When
Moses had done this he told the people to look. Every one who was bitten
was made well as soon as he saw the brass serpent.
[Illustration: THE BRAZEN SERPENT.]