“Take away the serpents from us,” they pled. But apparently the Lord did not, even when Moses prayed about it, because the serpents were not the problem. The real problem was lack of faith and an attitude that caused the Israelites to complain constantly, and to blame God and Moses for every difficulty. If the Israelites had gone to Moses and said, “Pray unto the Lord, that He might take away our rotten attitudes from us,” this story might have a different ending. But to them, bad attitude was not the problem. Snakes were the problem. The Lord’s response was to have Moses make a brass snake and place it on a pole where people could find it and look at it. With the sculpted serpent came the promise: “Everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” (Numbers 21:8.) The number of fiery serpents did not diminish at all. They remained in all their poisonous plenty to remind Israel about the genuine issue. As we would expect, the Lord’s response dealt with the real problem, and attempted to teach trust, faith, and gratitude, in much the same way as His response to the question of the brother of Jared about light in the barges.