Psalms 91:11-13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

He shall give his angels charge, &c.— These verses point out still more plainly the occasion of this psalm. For as the people were not only exposed to diseases in the wilderness, but also to the incursions of wild beasts, and particularly the venomous bite of serpents, he tells them, that God would protect them from all these dangers, by giving his angels charge over them, to keep them in all their ways; and Psalms 91:13. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, &c. There is something so particular in this, that it will suit no other part of history beside that to which we suppose it to refer. For the wilderness in which they were condemned to wander abounded with those noxious creatures, as we learn from Deuteronomy 8:15 and yet we do not read that the Israelites were infested by them, till towards the end of their forty years' wandering, when God was pleased, for the renewed murmurings of that people, to let them loose upon them to chastise them; and even then, immediately upon their humiliation, a miraculous remedy was provided, which deserves our notice. It was a serpent of brass, by the express order of God fixed upon a pole or standard: and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when be beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. See Numbers 21:5-9. This brazen serpent was doubtless designed to call to their remembrance the great object of their faith and hope from the fall; the promised victory over the old serpent, through that Seed of the woman who was destined to bruise his head: nor can we have a better comment on the Mosaic symbol, than the words of our Lord himself, John 3:14 compared with John 12:32. See also Hebrews 2:14.; Revelation 12:9., and Isaiah 11:10. By comparing these texts together you will observe the harmony of Scripture, and how naturally the words of our Blessed Lord and his apostles point us through the prophesy of Isaiah, and the brazen serpent of Moses, back to the first notice of a Redeemer given to mankind, in that well-known sentence, Genesis 3:15 or the first link of that chain of prophesy which runs throughout the Old Testament, and has its completion in the New. I shall not lay any stress upon that assertion of Justin Martyr, that the נס nes, or standard, upon which this brazen serpent hung, bore the figure of a cross: it is sufficient to our purpose, if this serpent, erected as a trophy, was considered by them as an emblem of the victory to be obtained over the old serpent by the promised Seed; whether they had any explicit knowledge of the means whereby this victory was to be obtained, or not: for in this view it presented to the minds of the faithful the hopes of a deliverance from death, in a higher sense than a present cure of the bite of these venomous creatures imported; and it is no improbable supposition, that a belief of the one was made the condition of the other. Whether they who looked at the brazen serpent were directed at the same time to repeat the psalm before us, I know, not; but this I am sure of, that it affords a meditation highly suitable to the occasion. A religious trust in God is what we see inculcated throughout; and that remarkable sentence, Psalms 91:13. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, they young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet, (especially if, as Bochart seems to have proved, these are only names of serpents of different sorts, and should be rendered, the viper and the asp—the serpent and the dragon,) is only saying in other words, Thou shalt bruise the serpent's head: and if an act of faith in that great Person who was to do this for them be here supposed and implied, then it would be easy and natural to interpret the following verses of this psalm in a sense of faith likewise, and as pointing out to them in no obscure terms,—I might say, perhaps, in very magnificent terms,—the gospel life and salvation. Peters. We shall enlarge further on this subject, when we come to Matthew 4:6.