Deuteronomy 34 - the Death of Moses
Deuteronomy 34
The Death of Moses
“There has never arisen another prophet in Israel like Moses - one whom the LORD knew face to face.” (Deuteronomy 34:10)
So read the concluding verses of the book of Deuteronomy, bringing to a close the saga of one of the Bible’s greatest heroes.
I know that all of us wish to be more like Jesus, but I can acquaint you that, as a younger man abnormally, getting more like Moses would have done me just fine.
Moses is an awesome figure. No doubt my acumen has been influenced by Charlton Heston’s immortal assuming in the Hollywood classic, “The Ten Commandments”. Even so, however you look at Moses, he was a giant of a man.
Moses beggared the red sea. He brought the plagues upon Egypt. He challenged kings and he batten with God ‘as a man speaks to his friend’. He is an alarming figure.
And, we’re told here, that not only was he was an awesome figure in his youth, but he remained an astonishing specimen of altruism in his old age! Indeed, the writer says that at age 120, Moses’ eyes had not dimmed (ie. he didn’t need glasses) and that his ‘vigour had not abated’.
That’s my adaptation. The original Hebrew word for vigour, ‘lahor’, in means that, at 120, Moses was … well … still quite able of fathering accouchement!
Oh, to be like Moses - to have that sort of vitality and health! I’m only bisected his age and, as much as I hate to accept it, my eyes are deteriorating rapidly!
Moses is an awesome figure. He was aswell a very human figure. He gets angry - so angry in fact that he beats one Egyptian slave-driver to death. He gets depressed too, and his aplomb fails him to the point where he has to plead with God to let Aaron allege on his account,
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And he sins! Indeed, we’re told that he commits a actual grievous sin (recorded in Numbers 20) when he makes out as if it is he and Aaron who are responsible for magically producing baptize from a bedrock to satisfy the appetite of the people.
That sad event is absolutely the backdrop to this afterlife arena here in Deuteronomy 34, as Moses’ afterlife at this point in the Biblical drama is a part of God’s judgement on him, as he is dying afore realising his dream, to reach the Promised Land!
In Deuteronomy affiliate 34, the people of Israel are on the bend of seeing all their dreams accomplished . They are on the bound of the Promised Land, and they are lined up and ready to move in. But Moses has not been invited to join them. Why not? Apparently because of that grievous event that happened years beforehand!
It’s an odd point for Moses’ story to end. Moreover it’s an odd atom for the book of Deuteronomy to end. For the end of the book of Deuteronomy is sort of like the end of the first part of the great Biblical trilogy, and it ends with everything unresolved!
I’d like to suggest to you that the Bible as a whole is like a sort of trilogy.
Part 3 of the trilogy is the one we are most familiar with - the story of Jesus and the Apostles, as presented in the New Testament.
Parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy are found in our Old Testament, with part one accoutrement the first five books of the Bible - Genesis to Deuteronomy - and Part 2, the blow.
The technical name for these first five books of the Bible is the ‘Pentateuch’ (from the Greek word for ‘five’) though Jews refer to this collection as ‘the law’ or ‘Torah’.
Whatever we call them, it has continued been recognised that these five books form a array of unified whole, and it is likely that these five books were originally published together as the first edition of the Bible!
In the additional book of Kings, chapter 22, there is recorded a adventure of how Hilkiah the top priest ‘found the book of the law’ in the temple, and apparently the book he finds is this collection - that which we now call ‘the Torah’ or ‘the Pentateuch’. It is this collection of the first five books - the Bible in its first chapter.
Now, once we accept this though, does it not seem all the more odd, that the book of Deuteronomy should achieve here, one step short of the Promised Land?
The river has not been crossed. The promised acreage has not been entered, and Moses is dead. What an odd abode to end a Biblical book, let alone the Bible as a accomplished, though if it is only in its first edition! Why didn’t the biographer cover the happy catastrophe to this saga?
Imagine a detective atypical that assured with, “so inspector as you can see, the only man who could have done this is sitting appropriate over there. So with that, inspector Clueso acicular his finger at … THE END”
You can’t do that, can you? You can’t write a story that finishes with aggregate larboard in the air!
Now I can’t bethink how Cecil B. De Mille concluded “the Ten Commandments”. I approved to do some research on the NET, but I didn’t actually go as far as hiring out the cine to watch it afresh just to analysis on the ending.
Even so, I am pretty assertive that there is no way that Hollywood could make a movie about the movement of a people out of bullwork and into the promised land which ended with the people still blind about in the desert and Moses dead! And yet this is exactly what the writers of the Biblical drama have done.
Why didn’t the author of Deuteronomy add one added chapter, outlining the crossing of the river into the Promised Land. Or why didn’t the compilers of the Pentateuch make it a Hexateuch, abacus a sixth book - the book of Joshua, which have have been circulating at the time - cogent the story of Israel’s occupation of Canaan?
No. The first part of the great Biblical trilogy ends right here, where everything is still left unresolved. The Promised Land is just advanced, but no one has entered!
I presume that this is not accidental. Indeed, I presume that it was crafted deliberately this way, and I believe it is crafted this way because it is true to our experience.
It is true enough that our forefathers in faith did walk in to that promised land, and they did establish a applicable community there, but it is equally bright, I think, that their life in Canaan never quite lived up to the vision that Moses had for them.
Life in the Promised Land never quite lived up to what was promised.
If you are accustomed with the original vision, not just that accustomed to Moses, but that accustomed to Abraham, where the borders of the Promised Land are mapped out absolutely accurately abounding generations earlier, you may apperceive already that the people of Israel never quite made it to those borders. Not at any point in their history did they ever ability the dimensions of the Promised Land that was originally promised to them!
And it’s not just an affair of abundance of course, but of superior. The abstraction that the people would found a truly just community, where they would reside in genuine accord with their architect and with one another,
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And so the writer of Deuteronomy, and the compilers of the first edition of the Bible, end their story not with the absoluteness of circadian life in Canaan, but with the vision of Moses, looking out from the mountain-top, envisaging what the Promised Land should be and still could be, rather than what it was!
For that was where the readers of this first edition of the Bible found themselves - in the Promised Land, but still a long way short of the promises. And so rather than accord up, the cessation of this first edition of the Bible encourages them to continue to attending advanced to what still can be and should be and will be!
I said that the Pentateuch is like allotment 1 of the Biblical trilogy. I assumption if you look at it this way, you might not apprehend everything to be resolved in part 1,
nfl jerseys pink, but the analytical thing about the Biblical leash is that Part 2 ends on abundant the aforementioned unresolved agenda as part 1, and even at the end of Part 3, things still haven’t really appear together!
If Part 1 ends with Moses on the mountain-top, looking forward, Part 2 ends with the prophets searching for some God-appointed representative who will bring it all together. In Part 3, He comes,
New Orleans Saints jerseys, and is killed, and rises, and the New Testament ends with the book of Revelation, where there are still wars and affliction everywhere, and where we are still looking forward to the new world coming, just about the corner!
In a sense, you could end anniversary of the above chapters of the Bible with that great question that you get from your children every time you yield them on a long trip:
“Are we there yet?” “No”
“Are we there yet?” “No”
“Are we there yet?” “No”
“Are we there yet?” No, not yet, but we can see the destination ahead!
What does the writer of the letter to the Hebrews say? “No, we do not yet see all of conception in able chains to God, but we see Jesus!” (Hebrews 2:10).
We are not there yet, but we have been to the mountain-top and we have seen it.
We are not there yet, but we know what it will be like. We have a sure sense of where we are going. We know abundant about our destination to know that it is traveling to be account the wait. We have been to the mountain-top. We have seen the promised land! But we are not there yet.
We glimpse the Promised Land every time we enter into that sense of harmony with God and with one another that we find in prayer, in song, in the Eucharist.
We get a taste of it here, in our acquaintance - a sense of what it is like to be part of a community where it doesn’t amount if you’re atramentous or white, educated or uneducated, beeline or gay, macho or female. As we body the Christian community, we glimpse with accretion clarity the new world coming.
In every phenomenon that takes place, in every act of love and sacrifice that is shown to those in need … I see it in our Youth Centre. I hear it in our choir. I can even aftertaste it in the coffee we allotment together afterwards worship. It’s a glimpse, a note, a ahead of that true community - the new world coming. No, we are not there yet, but we have been to the mountain-top. We have seen the promised land.
Moses was a abundant guy - a baton of a nation, a artisan of miracles, a acquaintance of Kings and of God. We ability not be like him fact a lot of respects, but we can join him on the mountain-top, because we accept inherited his vision - for a community of people truly at peace with their God, with their apple and with one addition.
I’ve heard that at the aperture of Disneyland, many years ago now, one of the Disney admiral expressed his disappointment that the man abaft it all - Walt Disney - had not lived to see the opening. One of Disney’s old friends turned to him and said, “Oh, he saw it alright! That’s why it’s here!”
Help us to see it, Lord!
When politicians and biologic barons and media moguls assume to rule this world, lift us up to the mountain-top, so that we might see the new world coming.
When our friends and family disappoint us, when we’ve disappointed ourselves and when our dreams have been burst, set us up there alongside Moses, with a vision of that new day dawning.
When we’re out of work, out of bloom and out of luck, when we feel betrayed, beaten and abandoned, lift us up, Lord! Lift us up to the mountain-top so that we might see the promised land!
No, we’re not there yet, but with Moses and the prophets and with all those who have gone before us in the faith, we have been to the mountain-top. We have seen the promised land! And so we pray with assurance, "Thy Kingdom Come,
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