Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1
“I May Not Get There With You”
The Death of Moses and the Meaning of Covenantal Living
Rabbi Shai HeldIt is difficult to overstate the centrality of Moses to the book of Deuteronomy. As Bible scholar Patrick Miller notes, “Within the book of Deuteronomy Moses is not only the central figure but is virtually the only figure.” The only characters who speak in the entire book are God and Moses—and since the narrator so often quotes Moses quoting God, their respective voices begin to blend over the course of the book. On Deuteronomy’s account, Moses is God’s spokesman (Deuteronomy 1:3) and Israel’s great teacher (1:5); the people insist, with God’s approval, that he be the only person to hear the word of God directly (5:22-25). prophet, a model for all Israelite prophets (18:15,18) and the greatest among them (34:10-12).
Rabbi Shai Held
And yet God insists that this incomparably great prophet must die before he reaches the Promised Land. The Torah struggles to explain why. In recounting the story of the people quarreling with Moses at the Waters of Meribah, Numbers tells us that God punishes Moses and Aaron for their failure “to affirm [God’s] sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people” (Numbers 20:12).2 Parashat Ha’azinu reiterates this interpretation, charging Moses and (Deuteronomy 32:51). But the dominant
Moses is the paradigmatic prophet, a model for all Israelite prophets and the greatest among them.
1 Patrick D. Miller, “‘Moses My Servant’: The Deuteronomic Portrait of Moses,” Interpretation 41 (July 1987), pp. 245-255. Passage cited is on p. 246.
2 I have explored Numbers’ account of why Moses is excluded from the land in “When Everything Starts to Look the Same: Moses’ Failure,” CJLI Parashat Hukkat 5774, available here
approach in Deuteronomy is different. Moses shares the fate of the Exodus generation in that he, too, will die outside the land, but Deuteronomy insists that he is being judged not for his own sin but for theirs: “Because of you the Lord was incensed with me too, and [the Lord] said. ‘You shall not enter [the land] either” (1:37).3 On this interpretation, Moses appears irreproachable to the end.
Whatever the explanation for God’s decision, Moses tries—unsuccessfully—to persuade God to reverse it. In the beginning of Deuteronomy, Moses implores God, “Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan” (3:25), but as the end of the book makes clear, God only accedes to part of his request: “This is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘I will assign it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there” (34:4). Moses can look, but he cannot go.
Although Moses beseeches God to allow him to enter the land, he does not ultimately criticize God’s judgment or profess his own innocence. When he is told to ascend Mount Nebo to die there, for example, he does not utter a single word in response (32:48-52).
But where the Torah is silent, Rabbinic tradition is outspoken. As the Sages imagine him, Moses is more than willing to stand up for himself, insisting that he deserves better from God. When God tells Moses that his death is imminent, a midrash imagines Moses responding indignantly: “Master of the World, after I have worn myself out [in serving You], You tell me, ‘The time is drawing near for you to die (Deut. 31:14)?!’ ‘I shall not die but live and proclaim the works of the Lord’ (Psalm 118:17).”4 But God is adamant: “You cannot,
3 Cf. also Deuteronomy 3:26 and 4:21-22.
4 Another midrash imagines Moses protesting: “Master of the World, the labor I expended and the pains I took to make Israel believe in Your name are manifest and known to You, and so also are the pains I took to establish Torah and mitzvot for them. I was sure that just as I witnessed their woe so, too, would I behold their weal; but now that their weal has come [that is, now that they are about to enter the land], You declare ‘You shall not go across the Jordan?!’ (Deuteronomy 31:2). (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:10).
Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52)
because this is [the fate] of all human beings” (cf. Ecclesiastes 12:13)” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:8).5
Note what has happened. The center of gravity has shifted—the central question for this midrash is not whether or not Moses will get to see the land, but rather whether or not he will go on living. And God’s answer is very different from what we might have expected. There is no language of punishment here, no sense that Moses’ death is the consequence of wrongdoing on his part. Being kept out of the land is a punishment, but dying is simply human nature. Moses has to die, God tells him, because this is part of what it means to be human. For all of Moses’ exalted status, he is only human. Even the greatest of saints remains, always, human. And to be human is, inevitably, to die.
But why does Moses have to die now?
For all of Moses’ exalted status, he is only human. And to be human is, inevitably, to die.
Why can’t he lead the people into the land before dying? As a midrash poignantly imagines Moses asking, “If it be Your will, might I enter the land, live there two or three years, and then die?” (Tanhuma, Va-Ethanan 6). Physical capacity is not an issue; after all, Deuteronomy reports that when Moses died, “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (34:7).6 The explicit reason Moses has to die now is well-known: Moses has angered God and has thereby forfeited his right to enter the land. But Patrick Miller insists that there is an implicit reason as well: “Moses’ work is truly done. The people have now the word of [God] which Moses taught,
5 Midrash scholar Judah Goldin observes that in a variety of Rabbinic midrashim about the death of Moses, “complaint and efforts at clarification rise to the surface. Moses’ complaint articulating what obviously human readers or auditors of the Moses story in midrashic-talmudic times feel, God’s retort articulating what human readers of the story imagine to be God’s self-justification. The dialogues are at the same time protest and theodicy.” Judah Goldin, “The Death of Moses: An Exercise in Midrashic Transposition,” in John Marks and Robert Good, eds., Love and Death in the Ancient Near East: Studies Presented to Marvin H. Pope (1987), pp. 219-225; passage cited is on p. 221.
6 But cf. Deuteronomy 31:2.
and that will be their guide in the land that [God] has promised. Israel is to live now by the Torah that Moses has taught and in a very real sense does not need Moses.” To put this differently—and more starkly, Moses has to die so that Judaism as we know it can be born. Moses dies so that Judaism can become a text-centered religion. Judaism as an interpretive project, as a never-ending process of reading and rereading the word of God, can only really get off the ground once the founding prophet exits the stage. Moses “now moves off the scene, and Israel henceforth will not be led by a great authority figure but by the living word of the Torah that Moses taught.”7 In a very deep sense, then, Moses is replaced not (only) by a person but by a text (or a set of texts).8
Moses has to die so that Judaism as we know it can be born.
The lesson of Moses’ death is both tragic and redemptive. When we dedicate our lives to causes greater than ourselves, we may accomplish a great deal, but we very rarely live to see our projects completed. Imagine someone who strives to build a society in which no child ever goes hungry; directly or indirectly, she feeds many needy children, but makes only a very small dent in the problem of childhood poverty. Or someone who gives his life to help those beset by cancer, or AIDS, or some other devastating illness; he treats many patients, but he dies before anything like a meaningful cure is found. Or again someone who strives to create communities animated by a vision of Torah that is compelling but not yet widely shared; she helps create small pockets in which her understanding of tradition is played out, but she dies before her vision has really taken hold. These people may well achieve a lot, but they nevertheless die before arriving in the Promised Land.
7 Miller, “Moses My Servant,” pp. 254-255.
8 Cf. the words of Dennis Olson, who writes: “Moses is a unique leader and prophet. He will be replaced not just by another human leader but by a combination of a human leader (Joshua in addition to all the elders, Levites, and parents responsible for catechizing the young), a written normative text (‘the book of the Torah’), and a song (the song of Moses).” Dennis T. Olson, Deuteronomy and the Death of Moses: A Theological Reading (1994), p. 21.
There is something genuinely tragic about all this, but Judaism insists that there is something potentially redemptive, too. How so? We do not have to like the fact that we die before we see the full fruits of our labor; Moses surely doesn’t. But Moses is able to willingly appoint Joshua as his successor (31:7-8)9 because he knows that the cause to which he has given his life is greater than he and that it will ultimately come to fruition, even without him. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood Moses well when he told his followers, a mere week before his death, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” In the final analysis, both leaders faced the impending tragedy of their death with the confidence that what they had started would someday be completed—and both knew that the destiny of their dream was far more significant than their own individual fate.
We do not need to be world-historical leaders to take this lesson to heart. For all of us, to live with God is to plant seeds in the hopes that they will flourish—whether in our lifetime or (long) after. The Talmud relates a story about Honi, a miracle-worker who is journeying on the road when he comes upon a man planting a carob tree. He asks the man how long it takes for such trees to bear fruit. The man replies, “Seventy years.” Perplexed, Honi asks, “Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?” The man replies: “I found readygrown carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted for me, so I now plant for my children” (BT, Ta’anit 23a).
We do not live in community only with those who are alive with us in the
To live with God is to plant seeds in the hopes that they will flourish whether in our lifetime or (long) after.
9 Cf. Numbers 27:16-23 and Rashi to Numbers 27:23. And cf. what I have written in “It’s Not about You, Or: What Moses Knew,” CJLI Parashat Beha’alotkha 5774, available here.
present; we also live in deep relationship with those who came before us, and with those who will come after. I have written elsewhere that a crucial dimension of authentic gratitude is an urge to repay or pay forward the kindness we have been shown. We do not seek to hoard the gifts we have received but to share them.10 Critically, that desire to give is not just horizontal but also vertical through time. In other words, we pass along our gifts not just to our contemporaries but to their (and our) great, great grandchildren. Moreover, much of what we work towards will come to fruition—if at all—only after we die. To live covenantally is to embrace that fact and to hope that others will come along and pick up where left off—and that if need be, they will correct us where we went wrong.
Christian theologian Dorothee Soelle presents a stunning image shared with her by a friend and fellow activist: “The people who worked to build the cathedrals in the Middle Ages never saw them completed. It took two hundred years and more to build them. Some stonecutter somewhere sculpted a beautiful rose; it was his life’s work, and it was all he ever saw. But he never entered into the completed cathedral. But one day, the cathedral was really there.”11 Now, in the edifice of Judaism, Moses obviously did much more than sculpt a rose; he laid the foundation for the entirety of Jewish tradition. And yet even he did not live to see the “completed cathedral”—neither Torah as it unfolds over time nor the redeemed world (the “Promised Land”) of which Judaism dreams. In his death, as in his life, Moses is the model of covenantal living—a tireless servant of God and Israel who dies before reaching the place of which he dreams each day.
Moses’ life teaches us that to live covenantally is to live in the present, toward the future.
Moses’ life teaches us that to live covenantally is to live in the present, toward the future.
10 Cf. “No Leftovers: The Meaning of the Thanksgiving Offering,” CJLI Parshat Tzav 5774, available here
11 Dorothee Soelle, Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian (1999), pp. 120-121.
Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52) – Elul 5774
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