ABSTRACT In early modern Scotland, both ministers and the laity used typology as a key way of interpreting the Bible, discerning a variety of powerful ways that biblical types resonated in their own context. This article focuses on one of the most frequently expounded types in this period: the brazen serpent. It begins by exploring how its appearances in Numbers, 2 Kings, and John’s Gospel were expounded in Scotland, showing that while types were principally figures of Christ they also had a variety of edifying and rhetorical applications. This article then takes William Guild’s use of the brazen serpent in his typological handbook, commentaries, and sermons as a case study, to illustrate how typology functioned in practice, contending that biblical types played an important role in allowing early modern exegetes to shift or reinforce their expositions, without resorting to more figurative methods of interpretation that were frequently rejected by Reformed theologians.