Nehushtan

Nehushtan (meaning a thing of brass; the brazen thing) was the name given to the bronze serpent that Moses had made in the wilderness when the Israelites were plagued by fiery serpents (Num. 21:8–9). Anyone bitten who looked at the bronze serpent lived. This object was preserved and eventually set up as an object of worship in Israel, where the people burned incense to it, calling it Nehushtan — perhaps contemptuously, as though dismissing it as "mere brass." Hezekiah broke it in pieces as part of his religious reform (2 Kgs. 18:4). Jesus used the incident as a type of his own crucifixion: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:14–15).