I. Name

The word nĕḥuštān occurs once in MT, in 2 Kgs. 18.4, where it is the name of the bronze (or copper) serpent (nĕḥaš hannĕḥōšet) that Moses had made in the wilderness (as related in Num. 21.8–9) and that King Hezekiah destroyed. The word is a compound of *nuḥušt (Hebrew nĕḥōšet), ‘bronze, copper’, plus the *-ān affix (preserved as -ā- in Hebrew by dissimilation from the -o- type vowel in the previous syllable). The word nĕḥuštān literally means ‘the (specific) thing of bronze/…