Moses in prayer, sustained by Aaron and Hur / Christian Daniel Rauch, Friedenskirche Potsdam, 1857. Wikimedia Commons

Jehovah Nissi, an Old Testament name for God, points to God’s miracle working power. And above all, to the cross. The Old Testament foreshadows the cross in many ways and demonstrates that nothing else can accomplish the same purpose.

In the first battle Israel fought after leaving Egypt, Moses tried and failed to serve as banner, or battle standard.

In Exodus 17:8-16, the Amalekites attacked Israel. As Moses later described the incident in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, they attacked from the rear and killed stragglers. The Amalekites descended from Esau. They had always been bitter enemies of Israel. On this occasion, they attacked like cowards.

So Moses commissioned Joshua to select some men to do what Amalek never expected: fight back. As they fought, Moses promised to stand on the top of a hill with the rod of God in his hands. That rod had been the power of God ever since the two met at the burning bush.

In other words, Moses chose to serve as the battle standard, the banner or flag to rally the troops. Holding up that rod was an act of prayer. As too often happens, Joshua did not grow weary in fighting, but Moses grew weary in prayer. As long as he held the rod up, Israel prevailed in the fight. Whenever he could no longer hold it up, Amalek prevailed.

Fortunately, two men had climbed the hill with him. They made Moses sit on a rock and held his hands up. Joshua finally drove off the Amalekites, but Moses had made himself a very inadequate banner. He built an altar and, in the King James Version, named it Jehovah Nissi—the Lord is our banner. It also amounts to “the Lord is our miracle.”

Lifting up a bronze serpent

On Mount Nebo, in front of the church of Saint Moses, looking over the valley below is a monument of the bronze serpent which Moses erected in the Neghev desert according to biblical tradition. Wikimedia Commons

As a name of God, it never occurs again in Scripture, but the idea of God lifting up or being a banner occurs more than a dozen times.

The ever-grumbling Israelites asked Moses for the umpteenth time why he had led them to die in the wilderness, where there was no food or water. The manna God provided every morning didn’t count as food in their eyes. In response, God sent poisonous serpents. Many Israelites died of snakebite.

And they noticed the connection with their complaints. They confessed to Moses that they had sinned and asked him to pray to God to remove the serpents. God had a different plan. He told Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. A banner, in other words.

The serpents still bit people, but all they had to do was get to where they could see the bronze serpent. Whoever looked at it would live.

As a familiar praise chorus puts it,

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full on his wonderful face,

And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace.

Sin will still bite us, but if we look to Jesus, it can’t kill us.

Lifting up Jesus

Close up of 2011 Art Prize Winner ‘Crucifixion’ mosaic by Mia Tavonatti. Photo by Michigan Municipal League via Flickr

Both Jehovah Nissi on the hilltop and the bronze serpent foreshadow the cross. And so does much other Old Testament imagery of banners.

Jesus himself proclaimed, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

In a remarkable messianic passage, Isaiah speaks of the reign of the righteous Branch in Isaiah 11. And he refers to this Branch as a banner twice:

“On that day the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples. The nations will seek Him, and His resting place will be glorious” (verse 10 HCSB).

“He will lift up a banner for the nations and gather the dispersed of Israel; He will collect the scattered of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (verse 12).

The Messiah, in other words, would be a banner not only for Israel but all the nations of the earth.

Zechariah pointed to the cross even more explicitly: “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at Me whom they pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for Him as one weeps for a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10).

Salvation comes to anyone who will look at Jesus, fully recognizing the price of their sin.

Moses tried to be a banner and failed. Anyone else who tries to accomplish what only Jesus can do will likewise fail. Jesus was lifted up on a cross that held his hands open wide. He did not fail. He remains Jehovah Nissi, the banner that will draw all nations to believe in him and be saved.