What is the significance of the asp in the Bible?

The poison of serpents and of asps is used in scripture symbolically for the judgement of God and for the malignity inherent in the wicked. Deut. 32:24, 33; Job 6:4; Job 20:16; Ps. 58:4; Ps. 140:3; Rom. 3:13. The tongue is "an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." James 3:8. Job 6:4 apparently alludes to arrows being poisoned.

The word is pethen: it has been identified with the naja haje, a snake that has the power of expelling its deadly poison to some distance, which has caused the Dutch colonists at the Cape to call them the spitting snake. Its 'cruel venom' is used symbolically to describe the wine of the wicked (Deut. 32:33: cf. Rom. 3:13), and the inward misery of those who are secretly wicked, Job 20:14, 16. In the millennium a child will play harmlessly at its hole. Isa. 11:8.

akshub. Ps. 140:3. This word occurs but once, and simply compares the wicked to adders who have 'poison under their lips.' It cannot be identified.

pethen. Ps. 58:4; Ps. 91:13, reading in the margin of both 'asp.' The wicked are compared to the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears. There is an old tradition that the adder sometimes laid one ear in the dust and covered the other with its tail; but they have no external ears: that all known adders can hear is well attested by those called serpent charmers, though some species are more easily attracted than others. The above name is held to point to the deadly Cobra. The same Hebrew word is translated 'asp' in Deut. 32:33; Job 20:14, 16; Isa. 11:8, simply pointing to it as poisonous or dangerous.

tsiphoni. This is only once translated 'adder' in the text, Prov. 23:32, but is four times translated 'cockatrice,' in Isa. 11:8; Isa. 14:29; Isa. 59:5, referring to its poison, and Jer. 8:17 to the fact that it will not be charmed, but will bite. This is supposed to be the 'yellow viper' of Palestine, which lurks in dens, and whose poison is deadly. It is said to resist the arts of the serpent charmers. The cockatrice was a fabulous creature, and was perhaps adopted by the translators to designate some unknown deadly snake.

epheh, ἔχιδνα. All we learn from the passages that speak of the viper is that its bite was poisonous: "the viper's tongue shall slay him." When one fixed on Paul's hand they expected that he would drop down dead. What species of serpent is alluded to is unknown. It is only otherwise referred to in the N.T. as symbolical of evil ones. John the Baptist called the multitude who came to be baptised 'a brood of vipers,' and the Lord applies the same term to the scribes and Pharisees, showing the deadly character of their opposition. Job 20:16; Isa. 30:6; Isa. 59:5; Matt. 3:7; Matt. 12:34; Matt. 23:33; Luke 3:7; Acts 28:3.

shephiphon. Gen. 49:17. This is identified with the Cerastes, or horned viper, so called because of having two short horns on its head. It is a small destructive snake, rarely more than two feet long. It is called in the margin 'an arrow-snake.' It lies in holes or ruts and darts upon an animal passing: and this well agrees with the above text, where Dan is compared to "an adder in the path that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward:" typical of apostasy and the power of Satan.

The Hebrew word most commonly translated serpent is nachash, agreeing with ὄφις in the N.T., so called because of its 'hissing.' These words are used for the serpent that beguiled Eve, Gen. 3:1-14; 2 Cor. 11:3, and in other passages where Satan is alluded to. Isa. 27:1; Rev. 12:9-15; Rev. 20:2.

Satan has succeeded in causing the serpent to be worshipped all over the world. Nachash is also the word for the serpents that bit the Israelites in Num. 21:6-9. In Num. 21:8, for the serpent that Moses was told to make, the word is saraph, 'FIERY SERPENT,' signifying that the poison burnt like fire, as we say 'a burning pain,' though the serpents may also have been of a red colour. From the bite of these serpents much people died.

We are told in Rev. 12:9 and Rev. 20:2 very definitely that the serpent represents our great adversary the devil. The figure is apt in these points, deceit and death. The two most characteristic features of all sin I believe to be craft and cruelty. "Instruments of cruelty are in their habitations; O my soul, come not thou into their secret." (Gen. 49:5-6.) All the attributes of the father of sin are comprehended in these two terms, "A liar and a murderer." (John 8:44.) In the serpent this is graphically expressed: it is "more subtle than any beast of the field;" and under the hooded glory of the cobra lurks the malignant virus of death. If we could forget this, we should see that it is not without semblance of outward innocence and beauty, which, however, only makes it the more to be dreaded. As Montague the statesman said of Wharton two centuries since, "He is like a fire-ship: dangerous at best, most so as a consort, least so when showing hostile colours."

The Egyptians, for life and death, for time and eternity, appear ever as in especial relation to that creature which stands in the word of God as emblematic of "that old serpent the Devil," man's enemy, man's seducer, the rebel against God.

The rod and its significance, as we have already observed, were familiar to everyone in Egypt, and the same may be said of the serpent. Everywhere, that emblem was apparent. The serpent was common in some form or other to the gods. Its form appears in the pictures of feasts and of religion, and of the soul in its course after death. Under the protection of the serpent-headed Rannu, Pharaoh had, when an infant, been placed. As a monarch, he was specially under the wings of the deity, who, crowned with the crown of Lower Egypt, heads this chapter.* The serpent itself composed part of what we might describe as the royal arms of Egypt, which adorned the entrances to the temples. In this life, and in the hereafter of the Egyptian, the serpent appears. On the crowns of the gods of heaven, of earth, of hell, still there is the serpent. All the goddesses seem to possess it. And now Egypt's own peculiar sign, its embodied idea of life and majesty, its emblems on the crowns of its kings, and its own proud boast, was grasped in the firm hand of the man, and wielded by him, who in the name of Jehovah his God, stood before Pharaoh and demanded the release of Israel.

There is no doubt that there is a special reference to Egypt here, which Moses and the Israelites would readily understand. "The asp played a conspicuous part in Egyptian mythology. It was the emblem of the goddess Ranno, the snake of Neph, the hieroglyphic of 'goddess,' and the sign of royalty. From this last use it was called 'Uraeus,' from ouro, king, and basiliskos, royal. Egypt was, therefore, not obscurely pointed out as the adversary of God and His people at this time." — (Murphy's Exodus.)