Demonic · Deliverance tradition · c. 400 BCE
Nehushtan
Also called Nohestan, Brazen Serpent, Bronze Serpente, N’chushtan, Nechushtan, Brasen Serpent (per Wikidata)
The bronze serpent of the Hebrew Bible: Moses was told to make it, Israel kept it for centuries and burned incense to it, and Hezekiah finally broke it up with the dismissive name 'bronze thing'.
Narrow source base
In Numbers, God instructs Moses to make a serpent of brass and set it on a pole so that those bitten may look at it and live. In 2 Kings, Hezekiah breaks it in pieces, because the children of Israel had been burning incense to it, and calls it Nehushtan — a piece of bronze.
It is the clearest case in the Bible of a legitimate, divinely commanded object becoming an idol by being kept too long and treated too well. The text is unusually candid about it, and the name Hezekiah gives it is contemptuous.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
What the name means
A pun in the Hebrew on *nehoshet* (bronze) and *nahash* (serpent) — roughly 'the bronze thing'.
Where it was actually worshipped
None. A category in modern deliverance teaching rather than a figure anyone has ever worshipped — these are diagnoses of a condition, and a diagnosis has no address.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon · c. 900–100 BCE
- Rank
- Cult Object
- Order
- Deliverance tradition
- Base of operations
- None. A category in modern deliverance teaching rather than a figure anyone has ever worshipped — these are diagnoses of a condition, and a diagnosis has no address.
- Era
- c. 400 BCE
- Traditions
- Christian, Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare
Traits
- Domain
- The bronze serpent; an object of legitimate origin become an idol
- How firm the basis is
- Strong — and unusually self-aware
- Textual basis
- Numbers 21:9, 2 Kings 18:4
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to Nehushtan, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic1
- material1
2 marks
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
1 texts
Which texts say so?
Made at divine command so that the bitten might look and live; kept until Hezekiah broke it, because Israel burned incense to it.
“He brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it.”
Connections
What is it connected to?
Afterwards
What did later readers make of it?
Invoked in every subsequent argument about religious images, by both sides. Those defending images note it was commanded; those opposing them note it was destroyed.
Kept in its own section on purpose. Everything above is what the cited texts say; this is what was built on top of them afterwards, and blending the two is how most popular demonology goes wrong.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Nehushtan?
Is Nehushtan the same as Apep?
What rank is Nehushtan?
How else is Nehushtan spelled?
What is Nehushtan said to do?
How old is Nehushtan?
Nearest in the corpus
If Nehushtan is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Asmoday
King · Goetic Spirit
Commands seventy-two legions, one for every spirit in the book. He is the Asmodeus of Tobit, who killed Sarah's seven husbands and was driven into Upper Egypt by Raphael, and behind that the Avestan Aeshma-daeva, the demon of wrath — one of very few Goetic spirits with an ancestry that can be traced.
Astaroth
Duke · Goetic Spirit
The Canaanite goddess Astarte, three thousand years on, made a male duke of hell with her name intact. The Goetia has him discourse willingly on the fall of the spirits, and warns the operator to hold a ring to his face against the stench of his breath.
Beelzebub
Prince · Infernal Court
'Lord of the Flies' — a Philistine god of Ekron whose name was almost certainly deformed as a Hebrew insult, then inherited by Christian demonology as the second power of hell.
Belial
King · Goetic Spirit
In the Hebrew Bible beliya'al is not a name but a word meaning worthlessness; by 2 Corinthians it is a person, and by the Goetia a king in a chariot of fire handing out senatorships. The text says he was created next after Lucifer and fell among the first, and will not answer truly without gifts.
The Spirits of Affliction
Group of Named Spirits · Deliverance tradition
The remaining 'spirit of X' phrases, grouped because the tradition's whole method stands or falls on how they are read.
Bael
King · Goetic Spirit
First of the seventy-two and, by the Goetia's own account, chief among them — a three-headed thing on spider's legs, ruling in the east and granting invisibility. The name is the Canaanite storm god Baal, three thousand years and one demotion later.
The book behind Nehushtan
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. It is public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.