The people … said, “We sinned by speaking against G-d and against you.” … Then G-d said to Moses, “Make a seraph figure and mount it on a neis. And anyone who was bitten who then looks at it shall live.” Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a neis; …anyone who looked at the copper serpent would recover.
Isn’t neis a strange word for a post or pedestal or elevation? Why use this specific word?
Maybe the idea might be that neis represents some kind of a refuge, recognizing that G-d is the source of our salvation?
That would certainly fit, would it not, with another use of neis in the text: After Moshe and Joshua, with divine intervention, defeat Amalek, Moshe builds an altar. What does he name it? Amonai-nissi – “G-d is my neis!”
Doesn’t it seem that Moshe keeps that mindset? When Moshe dies, over 40 years later, the text tells us that:
Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor did not neis.
Moshe’s retains the potency of amonai nissi from the battle of Amalek to the end of his life!
Lot’s Neis
Neis is most commonly used in the Torah to refer to flight. The first use of neis in the Torah is when Lot leaves Sodom, and he pleads with G-d:
Look, that town there is near enough to neis to; it is such a little place! Let me flee there—it is such a little place—and let my life be saved.”
Lot is not fleeing to G-d – he is fleeing to a town. Unlike Moshe, Lot does not build an altar to honor G-d from his miraculous escape.
And after G-d acquiesces for Lot to go to Zoar, Lot then decides to run from Zoar, and abandons any connection that G-d had offered!
Lot lets go of the lifeline, and he keeps drowning.
As it happens, Lot’s request is the last time he is quoted in the Torah. After this, Lot is a diminished and crushed man. He has lost all his possessions; he lost his city and his wife and his wits. He descends in every way – going to live underground, in a cave. There Lot allows his daughters to make him drunk and then he commits the most debased acts.
What a contrast between Lot and Moshe – both go through neis, but only one of them is strengthened. All because, when the moment came, Lot did not cleave to G-d, but Moshe did?!
Egyptian neis
Moses held out his arm over the sea, … the sea returned to its normal state, and the Egyptians neis at its approach. But G-d hurled the Egyptians into the sea.
The Egyptians did not have a connection to G-d. So when neis occurred to them, they had nothing to cling to. They panicked outright, and there was no divine lifeline, no snake or altar to make their flight positive in any way. Neis without G-d is the end.
Cities of Refuge
The word neis is most commonly found, in 8 separate verses, to refer to fleeing to the cities of refuge. (N. 35:6,11,15,25,32; D. 4:41-42, 19:3,11). A person who killed accidentally had to lose everything – just like Lot did: they fled their home, their family, their community, the works.
And how does someone kill another by accident? By not internalizing that their actions really make a difference to those around them!
Is this not also Lot himself? A man who made many choices without recognizing the impact of their selfish choices? This is how Lot first left Avraham (in pursuit of more wealth), chose Sodom, and then failed to reform Sodom such that there were even 10 tzadikim in the city.
Might we suggest that Lot was responsible for the destruction of Sodom because he was generally not thoughtful about how his actions might affect others?
Might this contrast as well with Moshe, the man whose neis did not flag! Moshe, in contrast to Lot, was deeply sensitive to how his words and deeds affected others.
But perhaps Moshe learned this when he killed a man and then fled? Isn’t that when Moshe really internalized that there are consequences for our actions?
Are the Cities of Refuge in part an echo of Moshe’s own life?
Is there also a connection to Joseph? He flees (neis) from Potiphar’s wife – also because Joseph had not been aware of the consequences of his presence, as an attractive person.
Korach
The only other use of neis in the Torah:
Whereupon the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with Korah—when that band died, when the fire consumed the two hundred and fifty men—and they became a neis.
Might the meaning come full circle? That a neis, like with the serpents, is to be a reminder to the people on the importance of fleeing – if we must – to G-d?
Was Korach and the 250 a neis because they become an object lesson, a reminder of the fact that we live by G-d’s grace alone?
Doesn’t this connect to the other uses in the text? Lot, the victory over Amalek, Moshe’s life, the drowned Egyptians, and those who flee to the Cities of Refuge?
Is the neis lesson of Korach that we must seek our refuge in G-d, and nothing else?
Neis as a Miracle?
Isn’t it interesting that none of the Torah uses of the word neis are the same as the more-modern understanding of a neis as a “miracle?”
Or maybe they really are linked? After all, might a neis be what can happen after we put our full faith in G-d, just as Moses did with Amalek, and thereafter?