THE BURNING ONE — the creature Jehovah sends against Israel at Numbers 21:6, and the being Isaiah sees standing above the throne. It is the ordinary root for burning used as a noun. ⚠ In the PLURAL it stands in exactly three verses of the Hebrew Bible: Numbers 21:6, where it is a snake, and Isaiah 6:2 and 6:6, where six-winged seraphim attend God and one of them carries a live coal to the prophet’s mouth. Almost every version transliterates it in Isaiah and translates it in Numbers, so an English reader has no way to know they are the same word. Whether the burning is the bite (a viper’s venom inflames) or the creature (a bright or fiery-looking snake; winged uraeus-serpents guard thrones throughout Egyptian royal art, and Isaiah’s seraphim fly) is genuinely unsettled, and both readings are old. The singular also turns up as a modifier of nachash at Deuteronomy 8:15 and alone at Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6, where it flies. ⚠ Do not confuse it with the passive participle saruf, ‘burned’, which is spelled with the same consonants: Numbers 17:4 calls Korah’s two hundred and fifty incinerated men ha-serufim, and a letter-search will return that verse alongside the real ones. → first discussed at Num 21:6