Seraphim

The 21st chapter of Numbers records this episode:

[6] And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 

[7] Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 

[8] And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 

[9] 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.

In the King James Version, the phrase "fiery serpent" translates the Hebrew word saraph (plural seraphim), while the unmodified word "serpent" translates nahash -- this latter word being the usual Hebrew word for "serpent," as used, for example, in the Garden of Eden story. The two words are pretty clearly being used interchangeably here, as when "the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, . . . And Moses made a serpent." Going from this passage alone, we would assume that a saraph is simply a snake, or perhaps a particular kind of snake. Etymologically, saraph means "burning one," which is where the translation "fiery" comes from. Most commentators see this as a reference to the burning sensation caused by the snake's venom, which seems reasonable enough to me; the fire-breathing dragon of Western folklore may have originated as a similar symbolic representation of a snake's "fiery" bite.

(Incidentally, the emphasis on brass as the material of Moses' serpent is perhaps a bit of wordplay, since the Hebrew word for copper, brass, or bronze is nehosheth -- or, elsewhere in the Bible, nehushah or nahush -- calling to mind the word nahash, "serpent," and apparently deriving from the same primitive root, meaning "to practice divination." In 2 Kings 18:4, we are told that the serpent of Moses was called by the name Nehushtan, which many translations gloss as "thing of bronze," though "old serpent" has also been proposed.)

The next time the seraphim turn up in the Bible is in Deuteronomy 8:15, where it is said that the Lord "brought thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought." Again the usage is consistent with a saraph being a kind of venomous snake.

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Isaiah is the only other book of the Bible to mention seraphim, and it is Isaiah 6, where the Hebrew word is left untranslated, that is responsible for the popular image of a seraph as a kind of angel. Certainly Isaiah seems to be describing something very different from a poisonous snake.

[1] In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. [2] Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. [3] And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. [. . .] [6] Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: [7] And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

These seraphim have hands, feet, and six wings; they are able to speak and use tongs; and one is scarcely able to imagine them biting anyone. In other words, nothing in the description suggests they have anything in common with a poisonous snake.

Based on the passages we have looked at thus far, the most natural conclusion is that the word saraph simply has two different meanings, that the epithet "burning ones" is applied to two classes of beings -- snakes with fiery venom, and angels blazing with glory -- which have nothing else in common. However, references to seraphim elsewhere in Isaiah do suggest a possible connection between the serpents of the Torah and the winged creatures of Isaiah 6.

out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent (Isaiah 14:29) 

the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent (Isaiah 30:6)

Both verses refer to a "flying saraph" -- but in a context that clearly connects seraphim with dangerous serpents and vipers, not angels. Obviously, the idea of literal flying serpents in the Negev is a bit hard to swallow, though some young-earth creationists do cite the seraphim as evidence for the survival of (apparently venomous) pterodactyls into historic times. More likely, "flying" is a figurative reference to the snake's great speed. John Pratt makes a pretty good case (qv) for the Israeli saw-scale viper as the original "flying saraph," citing its fiery color, the burning sensation caused by its venom, its lightning-fast strike, and its ability to leap off the ground for a "flying" attack.

Even if we're not talking about actual winged dragons here, a snake known as a "flying saraph" might naturally have been portrayed in art as winged, which later generations might have misinterpreted as a straightforward representation of the saraph's anatomy. At any rate, the idea of the saraph as a "flying" snake -- regardless of how metaphorical that designation may or may not have been -- makes a connection between the reptilian and angelic seraphim more likely. Just as the cherubim of the Bible appear to have been basically ox-like creatures rather than humanoid "angels," the seraphim of Isaiah may have been -- for all their wings and hands and so on -- basically celestial serpents.