Torah Posting: וזאת הברכה
The Torah concludes with Mosheh’s farewell blessing upon the children of Yisra’el before he dies and they go on without him.
It begins by describing God’s tendency to appear on various mountaintops and in flashes of thunder and lightning. It is out of love for humanity that God deigns to do this, taking some sort of perceptible form, though it is always in the forms most awesome and overwhelming to human beings, not as some comprehensible idol.
But God becomes a proper King over a Land and its People when Mosheh translates God’s Teaching (Torah) into Laws. Under that banner, the tribes of the sons of Yisra’el assembled. Mosheh has a blessing for each of them according to its tribal character. They are likened to animals and seas and the Sun and Moon. They are blessed with prosperity and security. Then as a whole they are blessed, and God is proclaimed as their refuge. Mosheh’s concluding blessing over the tribes resonates loudly with the conclusion of the book of Bereishit, in which Yisra’el blesses his sons, the namesakes of these same tribes.
With his blessing concluded, Mosheh ascends Mount Nevo, opposite the city of Yeriho, from which he can see the whole of the promised land. God says to him, “This is the land I swore to Avraham, to Yitzhaq, and to Ya’akov, saying, ‘To your offspring I will assign it.’ I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not go over there.”
And there died Mosheh, servant of God, in the land of Mo’av, by the word of God. God Godself buried Mosheh there, and no one knows the burial place to this day. He was 120 years old, but he was still vital and alive to his last moment.
For thirty days, the children of Yisra’el stay there to mourn Mosheh. Then, as learned and practiced carefully throughout this teaching, the prescribed ritual period of mourning comes to its end. Yehoshu’a, son of Nun, arises as Mosheh had ordained to lead the people into the land God had promised them. But — the Torah concludes, speaking with certainty from the end of history — never again would there arise in Yisra’el a prophet the likes of Mosheh.
That’s the end. Now we go back to the beginning. As for what happens when the people enter the land, and the history that unfolds from there and the lessons to be learned… that’s another story.
