MOSHEH’ TESTAMENT AND DEATH

Mediator between YAHWEH and HIS people

Death of Mosheh on Mount Nebo (about 1225 B.C.)

YAHWEH had revealed to Mosheh that the hour of his death was near. He was to climb the slopes of Mount Nebo, for it was there that he was to die (Devarim 34).

Before carrying out YAHWEH’s order Mosheh gave his blessing, in accordance with the ancient Semitic tradition, on the sons of Yisrael. In the preceding volume dealing with Yacob the scene when he pronounced the ‘oracles’ on his death bed was described. We shall probably be right in thinking that the ‘oracles of Yacob’ is a literary transposition in accordance with the usual practice of the eastern scribes. The same may also be said of the blessings of Mosheh. As with Yacob’s pronouncements the details furnished by the prophecies of Mosheh are of indubitable interest for the historian. There is a whole body of information which will be useful for us when we come to follow the establishment of the various tribes and their place on the map of Palestine.

Then leaving the plains of Moab, Mosheh went up Mount Nebo, the peak of Pisgah, opposite Jericho.

Mount Nebo is a peak (2740 feet) belonging to the Abarim range which runs along the north-east shore of the Dead Sea. On leaving the plains of Moab there is a gradual ascent to this observation point from which a very wide view may be obtained, the view described in Devarim: And YAHWEH showed him the whole land; Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western sea [the Mediterranean], the Negeb, and the stretch of the Valley of Jericho, city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. YAHWEH said to him, ‘This is the land I swore to give to Abraham, Yitschaq (Isaac) and Yacob, saying: I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross into it.’ There in the land of Moab, Mosheh the servant of YAHWEH died as YAHWEH decreed; he [other versions read ‘they’] buried him in the valley, in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but to this day no one has ever found his grave. ...The sons of Yisrael wept for Mosheh in the plains of Moab for thirty days (a late legend repeated in the Epistle of St Jude, verse 9).

Mosheh, a final estimate

He could be called the ‘liberator of Yisrael’ in the first place, if we take his activities in their chronological order. To him belongs the entire responsibility for this Exodus; it was a very dangerous undertaking which, on a final analysis saved the small community from almost certain extinction.

He might be termed the creator of the Chosen People, for in fact Mosheh acted as the catalysing agent of the people of Yisrael. He led out of Egypt a few Aramean tribes who claimed a common ancestor, Abraham, and worshipped, though with declining fervour, a tribal ABBA called by them ‘EI, ‘Elohim or ‘EI-Shaddai, and also YAHWEH.

From these heterogeneous ethnical elements, to which were joined bands of Asiatic slaves who also desired to flee from Egypt and forced labour, Mosheh succeeded in making a people, a living clay which was worked on and moulded by the hands of this leader of genius. Mosheh bound these people together by a common bond in the belief and the Law of YAHWEH, and it was this set apart cohesion and unity in belief which enabled Yisrael to obtain spiritual, political and even military supremacy over the inhabitants of Palestine.

He was also ‘the prophet of YAHWEH’, or rather a ‘super-prophet’, we might say, remembering the dictum of Devarim, Never has there been such a prophet of Yisrael as Mosheh (34:10). He is shown to us as YAHWEH’s intimate; he sees YAHWEH ‘face to face’ (an explanation of this phrase has already been given); hence, at the beginning of some chapters, YAHWEH said to Mosheh, YAHWEH spoke to Mosheh and said to him. YAHWEH gave expression to HIS will through Mosheh, his servant.

What then was the burden of his message, what was Mosheh’ fundamental inspiration? His theological affirmation was made up of a threefold message: YAHWEH is the only ABBA (of the tribe of Yacob); YAHWEH is the only SET APART ABBA; YAHWEH has made of Yisrael his Chosen People, destined to bear his message.

The continual mediator between YAHWEH and HIS people. All agree in recognition of the role of mediator assigned to Mosheh in the history of yeshua. At every moment, it can be said, we see Mosheh’ intervention in the close relationship between YAHWEH and the Chosen People -he transmitted the Law to Yisrael, he explained it, he taught the Yisraelites how it had to be kept. At each of Yisrael’s transgressions he interceded with YAHWEH to obtain the pardon of the guilty people. Sometimes he even went so far as to argue heatedly with YAHWEH WHO, in HIS ‘anger’, declared that HE was about to bring to an end to the Yisraelites which were a ‘hot-headed people’.

Not only did Mosheh suffer with Yisrael, but he desired to share the sufferings of Yisrael; and by sharing in the suffering he desired to give it, it is clear, an expiatory character. From the very beginning of his mission he appeared as a ‘person of suffering’. His is whole existence may be seen as a continual offering and his death forms a worthy conclusion to this life of offering.

The lawgiver of Yisrael. The ‘Ten Words’ inscribed on the stone tablets, which Mosheh brought down from the heights of Sinai, still remain as the moral expression in which humanity in its continual evolution recognizes the evidence of the truth.

By his life, work and death Mosheh appears, on a last analysis, as the key personality at one of the most important moments -and there are not a great number of them -of the spiritual history of humanity.

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