Commentary on Deuteronomy 34:1-12

The book of Deuteronomy is a collection of the longest orations in the Bible: almost entirely quotations of Moses’s and the Lord’s speech (1–31) and Moses’s poems to Israel (32–33). Our passage (34:1–12) concludes the book with narrative, corresponding to the opening five verses of narrative (1:1–5), a pair of bookends to the oral and rhetorical content of the book. Were one to stage a performance of the book, the narrator would have very brief and sporadic parts compared to the long soliloquies of the divine and human speakers.

To preach on this narrative, then, is to focus on the light frame tracing the edges of a large and complex oral portrait concerning the relationship of God and people as mediated by Moses. How does this frame impact our understanding of the covenantal drama?

Deuteronomy refers to itself as torah (1:5; 4:8; 17:18, 19; 27:3, et cetera), which is often translated “law” but is better rendered as “instruction” or even “polity.”¹ The fact that Jesus quoted and alluded frequently to Deuteronomy hints at its vital importance for understanding what he proclaims about God’s kingdom (or polity). For example, when Jesus teaches the supreme importance of the love of God, he alludes to the confession in Deuteronomy 6:4–5. Love, both in Deuteronomy and in Jesus’s appropriation of it, is defined as loyalty and fidelity to one’s covenant partner or neighbor (7:9, 13; 10:12, 15, 19; 11:1; 13:3; 30:6).

When Moses begins speaking in Deuteronomy, he is on a plateau in the land of Moab (1:5). At the other end of the book, chapter 34 picks up the narrative thread with “Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land …” The Lord gives Moses a raptor’s-eye view of regions north and west and then south (verses 1b–3). The way Moses is shown this panorama resonates with the first words the Lord spoke to the Israelites at Sinai: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4). Being shown a greater vision can support the trust necessary in a relationship.

The omniscient narrator then provides a brief death notice in verse 5: “Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD’s command.” The phrase “LORD’s command” translates the Hebrew phrase “the mouth of the LORD,” which is also found earlier in the book, near the end of Deuteronomy 8:3: “[The LORD your God] humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” The divine word governs human life from beginning to end, both sustaining and releasing it.

The obituary is filled out by details that eulogize Moses as an incomparable leader:

• The Lord buries Moses “in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day” (verse 6);
• Moses dies, physically undiminished, at 120 years (verse 7; compare Joshua’s death at 110 years in Joshua 24:29);
• there had never again been “a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (verse 10; see also Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:8); and
• Moses “was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt” (verse 11).

Now consider how Jesus appears as a new Moses to a new people of God:

• delivering them from sin (Matthew 9:10–13);
• performing signs and wonders (Acts 2:22);
• preaching the reign of God (Mark 1:15); and
• mediating a new covenant (Luke 22:20; Hebrews 9:15).

As Moses is a human figure without peer in the Old Testament, so also is the Lord without divine peer, claiming through an exilic poet: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 45:5). The hymn found in Philippians 2 confesses by way of equation that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (verse 11b). Christ’s identity with and as the God of Israel is thus a confession of Christ’s incomparability.

Connecting Moses and Jesus, John summarizes the gifts of God: “The law [Greek nomos for Hebrew torah] indeed was given through Moses; grace [Greek charis for Hebrew hesed] and truth [Greek alētheia for Hebrew ’emet] came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). About the value of Mosaic torah, Paul concludes, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). These statements give us additional perspective on the enduring importance of Moses’s legacy through Deuteronomy.

Considering this closing encomium for Moses, we may reflect on how the quality of incomparability or uniqueness inspires our devotion and discipleship to the Lord, who appeared in flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. We may contemplate in grief the deaths of such peerless figures and wonder at the enduring life that results from their words and actions. And perhaps the death and burial of Moses by the Lord and his entrance into rest (see also Exodus 33:14) prefigures the sacrament of baptism. For baptism is death and burial through symbolic drowning (Romans 6:4) by which we enter the body of the Lord, “all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:12; see also Romans 11:26). In the new life of resurrection, Paul assures us that we, too, will see “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12b).

Notes

1. After the Jewish historian Josephus, who claimed torah as the politeia of ancient Israel for a Greco-Roman audience in, for example, Antiquities 3.213.