(8 of 8)
And then one day, just before a military victory and just after settling the question of whether daughters could inherit if there were no sons (yes), God matter-of-factly instructs Moses: "Ascend these heights of Abarim...and view the land of Canaan which I am giving the Israelites as their holding." When Moses has seen the Promised Land, God says, he will perish. Moses immediately acquiesces: "Let the Lord, source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone [else] over the community." His later recollection in Deuteronomy, however, is "I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying...'Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country, and the Lebanon.' But the Lord...said to me, 'Enough! Never speak to me of this matter again!'"
Before he dies, Moses is granted a valedictory. Tradition attributes all Deuteronomy to the period before his death, and it contains a recap of Israelite history, an extraordinary catalog of law and ritual, and a near Shakespearean exhortation to the generation that will cross into Canaan. Here is an old man's blind bitterness--"The Lord was wrathful with me on your account"--and here his prophetic dictate: "Justice, justice, shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord is giving you."
And then, "at last," writes Kirsch, "Moses seemed to run out of both laws and memories." The 120-year-old "went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, opposite Jericho," recounts the Bible. And then, "Moses the servant of the Lord died there at the command of the Lord. He [God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day." There follows this spare but eloquent elegy. "Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses--whom the Lord singled out, face to face."
There have been attempts to find Moses' tomb. But from Scripture all we have is a chorus of complaint, a last hurrah and then nothing. The stark ending moves Kirsch to acrid eloquence. "The life of Moses can be understood as an existential tragedy," he writes. "He was cast adrift at birth in a hostile world, he spent a long and lonely life in constant pursuit of a goal that always eluded him, and he died a lonely death."
Archaeology and scholarly speculation can take us only so far. It can be argued that even the holiest of texts cannot do Moses justice. And so, as usual, we must turn to the imagination of the ancient rabbis. They offer a version blatantly ahistoric but able to capture the yearning of the human reader, perhaps pointing the way to a greater truth.
The tale takes place as Moses has gone up Mount Nebo to die. When God invites the prophet's soul out of his body, it demurs. And in the end, the Lord who has spoken through fire and water and thunder and smoke descends yet once more, and draws out the soul of Moses with a kiss.
--With reporting by Emily Mitchell