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Bible Dictionaries
Nehushtan
Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary
or (2 Kings 18:4) It should seem very plain, from what is said in this Scripture, that what Moses in his days had lifted up at the command of God, and for the most blessed purposes, the Israelites in after-ages had perverted into an idol. We find, by what is said of Hezekiah's destroying it, that the Israelites had preserved it, and brought it with them into Canaan. But what a sad delusion must they have fallen into in setting it up for an object of worship, and burning incense to it! (See Numbers 21:6 compared with John 3:14) The name Nehushtan is from Nachash, serpent; so that by Hezekiah calling it not Nachash, but Nehushtan, he meant to shew by the alteration his contempt of it as an idol. It is a sort of play upon the word, somewhat like that we meet with Isaiah 61:3 where the prophet, speaking of the exchange to be made of beauty for ashes, useth two words in sound much alike, but very different in their meaning—Pheer, beauty, for Epher, ashes. In our English language we have numberless instances of the kind.
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Hawker, Robert D.D. Entry for 'Nehushtan'. Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance and Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/pmd/n/nehushtan.html. London. 1828.
