This page needs to be read in partnership with the pages on Tehom/Tiamat, Liv-Yatan, Bohu/Behemot, Rachav and Taninim, as these are all aspects or variants of the same paradigm.
1 Chronicles 4:12 gives a town of that name.
1 Samuel 11:1 gives an Amonite king of that name.
Exodus 6:23 gives Nachshon (נחשון) as a son of Ami-Nadav (אמינדב); Numbers 1:7 and Ruth 4:20 also have a Nachshon ben Ami-Nadav, though a different one on each occasion.
Nechushta (נחשתא) was the mother of King Yeho-Yachin, or possibly Yahu-Yachin (Jehoiachin), in 2 Kings 24:8; the Aleph (א) ending confirms that this is the Aramaic rendering of the name.
The primary meaning of Nachash is "to hiss". A secondary meaning is "to shine", from the Chaldean Nechash = "copper", "brass" and other base metals, whence it is connected to alchemy; whence also Nechoshet (נחושת) for money and anything else made of brass, including fetters in Judges 16:21 and 2 Samuel 3:34, and used colloquially to mean "filth" in Ezekiel 16:36, presumably in the same way that we speak of "filthy lucre" today.
The link word between the two meanings is Nechushtan (נחשתן), the brass serpent which Mosheh carried as his banner and which King Chizki-Yah (Hezekiah) destroyed as idolatrous (2 Kings 18:4).
The root meaning of Nachash (נחש), "to whisper" or "hiss", was used for the whispering of soothsayers; in the Pi'el (intensive) form it means "to practice enchantment" or "use sorcery" and was used also to imply "black magic" (Leviticus 19:26, Deuteronomy 18:10, 2 Kings 17:17 et al). This was often by means of divination by serpents, as in the Mosheh and Aharon stories at the beginning of Exodus. Thus it also came to mean "to augur", "forbode", "devine"; all of which make it the key verb for Shamanism, and require us to reconsider the role and nature of the serpent in the second Creation story (see my notes to Nephilim for more on this).
It also means "an omen", because divination by serpents was a common practice, if not the central one, in many cults; it was connected to the serpent-deity, known as Ophis by the Egyptians; also to the four rivers of Eden, at least two of which (Giychon - גיחון - and Piyshon - פישון) suggest snakes by their very meanings; though of course the meandering of rivers has long been envisaged poetically as a snake.
This sense of Nachash is used in reference to both Yoseph and Mosheh (we like to think of Mosheh as a kind of pseudo-modern living in the ancient world, an advocate for humanistic values: the reality of his serpent-magic before the Exodus, his water-magic in Sinai, and his bronze serpent banner, counters this).
Nachash came to mean a serpent from the hissing, but the term is specifically used for the serpent or dragon constellation in the northern sky (Job 26:13); which may connect it to Liv-Yatan (Leviathan) and Tahamat as a manifestation of the principal serpent-deity, and through the dragon to the Bennu (Phoenix) cult of On (Heliopolis) where Yoseph served as High Priest.
The "heretical" Ophites of the 1st century CE - from Ophion or Ophioneus - believed that the world had been generated by a serpent. The Persians told a similar Creation story, with Marduk the splicer of the primal snake; a metaphor for the original act of bifurcation which is reflected in the processes of division in Genesis 1 and which scientists today would acknowledge (cell-division, gender-division etc) as being fundamental to the physical processes of life in the universe. No coincidence (see the logo at the foot of this page) that the genomic helix should reflect so accurately the creational serpent.
The brass serpent made by Mosheh (Numbers 21:8/9) and later held in the Temple Sanctuary until Chizki-Yah destroyed it (2 Kings 18:4), suggests that YHVH, if not Elohim, was once identified with a serpent-god: as Zeus was in Orpic art, and as we can see in the references to Tohu, Bohu and Tehom in Genesis 1 (see commentaries). Mosheh also worked magic on the Pharaoh by turning his staff into a serpent (Exodus 4:3). And in a curious Midrash to an even more curious passage in Exodus 4:24: "During the journey, while they were encamped for the night, YHVH met Mosheh, meaning to kill him", the Midrash suggests that the Lord (YHVH) assumed the shape of a serpent and swallowed Mosheh as far as the loins; but then relented and spat him out - which is precisely what happened to Yonah in the mouth of the sea-serpent Liv-Yatan, in that whale of a story.
Another of the sea-monsters or dragons associated with Nachash is Rahav (רָהַב - Rahab), originally RACHAV, who appears in the story of Yehoshu'a as "a harlot" – i.e. a hierodule at the Temple. Psalm 89 states that the world was created only after subduing Rahav and scattering YHVH's other enemies; which makes Rahav male, where she is female in the Yehoshu'a version. Also, in Job 9:8-13, when YHVH stretched out the heavens and trod upon the sea-waves, the "helpers of Rahav" stooped beneath him.
Liv-Yatan is often depicted as hydra-headed, as a fleeing serpent (Nachash Baria) or crooked serpent (Nachash Akalaton). This recalls the Ugaritic text: "If you smite Lotan the crooked serpent, the mighty one with seven heads, Ba'al will run you through with his spear, even as he struck Lotan the crooked serpent with seven heads". Liv-Yatan then appears to be a Yisra-Eli version or variation of Lotan. The number seven here connects again to the Menorah, and to the seven deities in One who are the planets and the days of the week.
Tiamat's lover Apsu is referred to in the Yehudit texts as Ephes (אפס), and taken to mean "extremity" or "nothingness". In Deuteronomy 33:17 and Micah 5:3 it is used with Erets (ארץ) to mean the ends of the Earth. In Zechariah 9:10 Apsu's domain is defined as "from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the Earth. In Proverbs 30:4 he is equated with the waters - "Who has bound the waters in his garment? Who has established all the waters of the Earth?" - waters here being rendered as Aphsayim (אפסים), the multiple plural, the language here strongly reminiscent of Job 41, and therefore associating Apsu and Tiamat with Liv-Yatan. Elohim's victory over Aphsayim is noted in Psalm 47:8, 1 Samuel 2:10 and Isaiah 45:22. Cf also Isaiah 40:17 and 34:11/12. The priestly editors attempted to disguise these various names as empty abstractions like chaos and void and nothingness; nonetheless their origins are transparent.
All the above must surely change our view of the Nachash-serpent of Eden, who "tempted" Chavah and was banished.
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