Original Meaning
FOLLOWING A NARRATIVE INTRODUCTION, this paragraph is cast entirely as divine speech. The opening phrase, “on that same day,” ties the Song with Moses’ preparations for his demise, which he had anticipated in his first address (3:23–28) and more recently in 31:2. Yahweh himself had announced Moses’ death in 31:14–15, but to this point he has focused on its implications for the people. Given Moses’ role in the divine agenda, it is fitting that the last words we hear from Yahweh’s mouth in Moses’ lifetime are directed to his agent.
By modern Western standards, this speech is strange. The tone of the first part seems matter-of-fact, if not calloused. Instead of expressing gratitude for the work Moses has done for Yahweh’s people during the past forty years, Yahweh’s tone is accusatory, reminding him of his infidelity at Meribah Kadesh and reiterating that he will not enter the land. The negative nature of this speech becomes even more apparent when it is compared with Numbers 27:12–14, which the narrator seems to have adapted here. This address is twice as long as the earlier version, and the additions here affect the tone dramatically. The skeleton of the speech is represented by the quartette of commands: “go up,” “view,” “die,” “be gathered” (vv. 49–51). It concludes with a climactic indicative statement (v. 52), which must have been the most painful of all.
(1) The first of Yahweh’s commands is to climb Mount Nebo (v. 49a). The mountain is identified here by two names (cf. “Mount Pisgah” in 3:27). The article and the plural form (“Abarim”) suggest the name refers not to a single point but to the range of mountains east of the Dead Sea between the Arnon Gorge and Wadi Hesban. Mount Nebo (modern Jebel en-Nebu) itself rises 2,739 feet above sea level, providing an excellent location from which to view the whole land. In 34:1 the note that Moses ascends from the Plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of “[the] Pisgah,” across from Jericho, clarifies the relationship between Nebo and Pisgah. As noted on 3:27, since pisgâ always occurs with the article, this is likely a common noun, meaning something like “the ridge,” perhaps the ridge of which Nebo is the peak.
(2) Yahweh invites Moses to view the Promised Land (v. 49b). Technically, the verb “view” is an imperative, though here it also functions as an invitation to Moses to receive his consolation prize, namely, to see the Promised Land (cf. 3:27). This is obviously small consolation, for while it would concretize for him the completion of his mission, it would also concretize his loss, as he gazes on what might have been. This is the only reference to “the land of Canaan” in the book (i.e., “Canaan” used as a geographic name). Whereas elsewhere in the land grant formula, Moses had always spoken of national territories as their “grant of land” (or “inheritance”) or their “possession” (yeruššâ), referring to it as a “holding” (ʾaḥuzzâ; NIV “possession”) links this passage with Leviticus 25:45 and Numbers 32:5, 22, 29.
(3) Yahweh instructs Moses to die on the mountain (v. 50a). This extraordinary command is matched elsewhere only by Job’s wife’s order for her husband (Job 2:9). Moses’ forty-year investment in Yahweh’s mission did not exempt him from the fate that inevitably strikes all. He too must submit to the one and only God, who kills and gives life (v. 39).1
(4) Yahweh commands Moses to be gathered to his people (v. 50b). The passive form “be gathered to your people” is odd.2 But the idiom derives from the practice of burying bodies of the deceased in family tombs, together with the remains of those predeceased. Obviously Moses will not be buried in a family tomb, but as was the case with his brother Aaron (cf. Num. 27:13), in death his spirit will join the spirits of kinsfolk in Sheol.
In verse 51 Yahweh reiterates why Moses may not enter the Promised Land (cf. Num. 20:12; 27:14).3 While our text does not describe Moses’ act of rebellion at Meribah Kadesh, Yahweh interprets it as breaking faith and a failure to recognize his sanctity. The verb for “break faith” (mâʿal) in the Old Testament usually refers to Israelite infidelity to Yahweh.4 In striking the rock Moses had misrepresented Yahweh publicly, violated his own representative role, and failed to respect Yahweh’s unique and sacred status. To Yahweh, striking the rock reflected a cavalier disposition toward him, as though Moses could adapt Yahweh’s commands as he wanted. Moreover, in relating directly to the rock rather than the Rock, he had committed an idolatrous act.
Yahweh’s present indictment highlights the communal implications of Moses’ actions; he had publicly failed to uphold Yahweh’s holiness. As leader of the people and representative of Yahweh, he had struck the rock when Yahweh had commanded him to speak to it. While his act may have been a gesture of frustration, to God it involved publicly usurping what is otherwise a divine agenda. Remarkably, it worked—water issued from the rock. Moses may have looked like a magician—but it cost him his life and his mission.
The twofold reference in verse 51 to Moses’ committing his offense “in the midst of the descendants of Israel” (pers. trans.) reinforces its magnitude in Yahweh’s eyes. Specifying that Moses’ failure occurred at “Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin”5 links the act geographically with the people’s rebellion (1:19–46; Num. 20:3, 13). While modern interpreters take offense at the harshness of Yahweh’s treatment of Moses, the punishment was fair and fitting.6 If the people were sentenced to die in the desert because they had rebelled against (Deut. 1:26) and refused to trust Yahweh (1:32; Num. 14:11, 23), this should also apply to their leader.
Verse 52 summarizes Yahweh’s earlier response to Moses’ demand to be permitted to enter the land (3:27). Yahweh’s tone is stern. Moses may indeed “see” the land visually, but he may not “experience” it.7 He is barred entry to the land promised to the ancestors and identified as the goal of this adventure in Yahweh’s first encounter with him (Ex. 3:8). The sting of the final clause must have been particularly acute; those who stood before Moses throughout his farewell addresses will enter, but he must remain behind.
Bridging Contexts
TWO SIDES OF MOSES. Who would have thought that Israel’s faithlessness in refusing to enter the land would have such dire consequences for Moses? In the end, the man who had twice rejected the status of patriarch and eponymous ancestor and through his intercession secured Israel’s survival—at Sinai (Ex. 32:10–14) and Kadesh Barnea (Num. 14:11–24)—was denied the pleasure of seeing Yahweh’s grand mission completed. In his first address Moses had blamed the people repeatedly for his own exclusion from the Promised Land (1:37; 3:23–29; 4:15–24). Their lack of confidence in Yahweh (1:32) had led to rebellion (1:26, 43) and had dragged him down with them. However, Yahweh would have none of this blame game. Responsibility for Moses’ exclusion from the land rested squarely on his own shoulders.
The contradictions in attribution of blame for Moses not being able to enter the land between Numbers 20:12–13 and Deuteronomy 32:48–52 on the one hand, and Moses’ first address in Deuteronomy on the other, are more apparent than real. The first two involve narratives that recount the event from Yahweh’s point of view, whereas Moses’ earlier statements reflected his own negative disposition toward his people. Both are true. Given the sequence of events as outlined in Numbers, the people could be blamed for Moses’ failure to enter the land. Had they trusted Yahweh and moved in from Kadesh Barnea, this event at Meribah Kadesh would never have happened and Moses would not have provoked Yahweh’s ire. Indeed, Moses would have enjoyed thirty-eight years of life in the Promised Land.
Later psalmists associated Meribah primarily with the people’s rebellion, particularly their refusal to listen to the voice of Yahweh (Pss. 81:7[8]; 95:8; 106:32), but pay little attention to Moses’ fate. Psalm 106:32–33 recognizes both sides, though it refers to Moses’ sin and to his end only in the vaguest of terms:
By the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD,
and trouble came to Moses because of them;
for they rebelled against the Spirit of God,
and rash words came from Moses’ lips.
Apart from this reference, neither the Old nor the New Testament ever alludes to Moses’ rebellion. Rather, the image of this “servant of the LORD” becomes increasingly idealized. By itself Deuteronomy 32:48–52 paints a rather tarnished picture of Moses, but in the arrangement of the book we observe the narrator’s efforts to protect the image of this man. Had chapter 34, which portrays Moses in glowing colors, been placed immediately after this episode—the book would have closed with a conflicted portrait of the man. On the one hand, he was a failure as a leader, who showed contempt for the holiness of Yahweh and proved unable to complete the mission on which he had embarked forty years earlier. On the other hand, he departs as a 120-year-old man whose vigor had not diminished (34:7) and whose image would tower over all the prophets who succeed him (34:9–12). He knew Yahweh and performed signs and wonders “in the sight of all Israel” (34:12) more intimately than any prophet in history.8
By inserting the benedictions of chapter 33 in an otherwise coherent narrative, the narrator has ensured that readers close the book with a positive image of the man in their minds. Insofar as Moses is refused entry into the Promised Land, he shares the fate of his people. However, as we will see in 34:6, his ultimate demise is quite different. He does not die in the desert with the generation who refuses to enter the land. He dies alone on Mount Nebo, but in his burial he is honored more than any human in history: he is “gathered to the fathers” by Yahweh himself.
Contemporary Significance
THE BURDEN AND DANGERS of ministry. In this paragraph we observe that the privilege of leadership over God’s people comes with a heavy burden. From those who have been given much, much is required (Luke 12:48). Those who are called to lead must lead according to the will of the one who has called them. In this respect, Moses failed at Meribah Kadesh by disregarding the voice of God and giving vent to his own frustration. Concerning his failure, Aaron Wildavsky comments eloquently:
At Meribah Moses substitutes force for faith. In his hand the rod reduces a divinely ordered act to a trickster’s shenanigans. But the import runs deeper. If Moses’ strongest leadership quality has been his ability to identify with the people, then the lack of faith at Meribah is a double one. Moses not only distances himself from God by doubting the adequacy of his work but also distances himself from the people by assuming power that was God’s. Tired of the incessant murmurings, Moses taunts the people just before he strikes the rock: “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water from this rock?” (Num 20:10).
Instead of exhorting a stiffnecked people to greater faith, Moses condescends to their plea with an arrogant jeer. His words imply acceptance of the people’s evil (separating himself from it) rather than hope of overcoming it. “Ye rebels” assumes very much what Aaron had presumed in trying to rationalize fashioning the Golden Calf. At that point, Aaron had lamely pleaded for Moses’ sympathy: “thou knowest thy people, that they are set on mischief” (Exod. 32:22). Like Aaron’s defense then, Moses’ “Hear now, ye rebels” now becomes its own accusation. Similarly Moses taunts the people with rebelliousness, yet is himself rebelling when he smites the rock without authority—the authority God alone can provide. Perhaps, after all, Moses does have more authority than he, or any man, can handle.9
Wildavsky adds that in usurping divine authority, Moses has become guilty of the worst form of idolatry—self-worship.
The language the Scriptures associate with Moses’ actions with respect to the rock is telling: not trusting in Yahweh (Num. 20:12), treachery or breaking faith (Deut. 32:51), speaking rash words (Ps. 106:33), but particularly a refusal to defend the holiness of Yahweh before the people (Num. 20:12; Deut. 32:51). When the people accused Moses of engaging in a diabolical plot to destroy them in the desert (Num. 20:3–5), in his self-absorption and his absorption with his own staff (vv. 8–9), he shirked his pastoral duty. Instead of defending the sanctity of Yahweh and demonstrating the power of the divine word (cf. v. 8), he taunted the people (v. 10) and presumptuously flaunted his own power by striking the rock.
In so doing Moses illustrates the dangers of pastoral ministry. Instead of being concerned about the reputation of God and the health of his people, we are often tempted to respond to criticism with idolatrous acts of independence. This always shames the name of the Lord and jeopardizes the success of our efforts within the mission of God. Within the history of that mission those who are called to carry the burden often prove the biggest hindrances. However, we can take heart knowing that ultimately no one is indispensable; God’s cosmic mission will be fulfilled by a Leader who is flawless: Jesus Christ, the perfectly righteous one.