Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Devarim Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22
By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - There are two important issues which must be studied when approaching this week’s torah portion, the first theological and the second textual. The theological question strikes out at you from the first moment that you open this fifth Book of Deuteronomy: Moses is speaking with his voice to the people of Israel. Each of the other four Biblical books are written in the third person, in G-d’s voice, as it were, recording the history, narrating the drama and commanding the laws. This fifth book is written in the first person.

Does this mean that the first four books are G-d’s Bible and the fifth Moses’ Bible? The fifteenth Century Spanish Biblical interpreter and faithful disciple of Maimonides, Don Isaac Abarbanel queries “whether Deuteronomy was given by G-d from heaven, containing words from the mouth of the Divine as the rest of the Torah, or whether Moses spoke this book by himself,... what he himself understood to be the intent of the Divine in his elucidation of the commandments, as the Biblical text states, ‘And Moses began to elucidate this Torah’ (Deuteronomy 1;5).” The Abarbanel concludes that whereas the first four Books of the Bible are G-d’s words which G-d commanded to be written down by Moses, this fifth Book of the Bible is Moses’ words, which G-d commanded to be written down by Moses.In this manner, Deuteronomy has equal sanctity with the rest of the five Books, (Abarbanel, Introduction to Deuteronomy). Perhaps the Abarbanel is agreeing with a provocative interpretation to the verse, “Moses will speak, and the Lord will answer him with a voice” (Exodus 19:19), which I once heard in the name of the Kotzker Rebbe: What is the difference whether G-d speaks and Moses answers Amen, or Moses speaks and G-d answers Amen”?! But what is really the significance of writing as opposed to speaking?

The second issue is textual in nature. The Book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell speech, perhaps the longest speech in rhetorical history. This is not only because Moses does not wish to retire and leave center stage of Jewish history; Moses feels compelled to provide personal reflections on the significance of the commandments as well as his personal spin on many of the most tragic desert events.

Hence from the very beginning of Moses’ monologue, the great prophet cites G-d’s invitation to the Israelites to take over the land of Israel (“Behold, I have given this land before you; come and inherit the land which the Lord swore to your father’s, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give to them and to their seed after them” Deuteronomy 1:8). This would be the perfect introduction to a re-telling of the sin of the scouts, the ten tribal princes whose evil report dissuaded the Israelites from attempting the conquest. And indeed, he does begin to recount, “But you all drew near to me and said, ‘Let us send out men before us, and let them scout out the land and report to us on the matter…” (Deuteronomy 1:22). But this retelling comes fourteen verses after G-d’s initial invitation’ and these intervening fourteen verses are filled with what appears to be recriminations against a nation which Moses “is not able to carry (bear) alone;” a numerous people fraught with battles, burden and internal strife” who required a competent, committed and fair-minded judicial system at the helm (Deuteronomy 1:9-21). Only after this seemingly out-of-place and inappropriate excursus from the topic at hand, does Moses begin the request for a reconnaissance mission which ultimately turned courage into cowardice and desert dream into desert death. Why the excursus? How does it explain the failed mission?

From the very beginning of G-d’s approach to Moses at the burning bush, Moses was a reluctant leader, attempting to demur from accepting the mantle of G-d’s mission. The reason was clear: Moses called himself a Kvad peh, heavy of speech. I have previously explained this to mean, on the basis of an interpretation of the Ralbag, that Moses was not given to “light banter;” Moses was so immersed in the “heavy” issues of his “active intellect” as it made contact with the Active Intellect of the Divine in order to produce the Torah, that he had neither the patience nor the interest to convince an ungrateful and stiff-necked people to trust in G-d and conquer the Promised Land. He was not cut out for arbitrating the petty disputes of a nation caught up with the blandishments and jealousies of a materialistic world. Moses spent so much time in the companionship of the Divine that he lost the will - and ability - to consort with regular humanity.

Moses knew himself. The verses leading up to the sin of the scouts are hardly an excuse. They explain his failure to give proper direction to the delegation of tribal princes, his inability to censure their report, his unwillingness to convince them of the critical significance of the conquest of the land. For him, to know that it was the Divine will was more than enough. He could not bear the burden, the rumblings and the grumblings, of a nation who was too removed from G-d to be able to follow Him blindly.

Back to theology. Maimonides explains that even at Mount Sinai, the entire nation only heard a sound emanating from the Divine, a Kol; each individual understood that sound in accordance with his specific and individual spiritual standing, with Moses having been the only one enough to “divine” the precise will of G-d within that sound, the words of the 10 commandments (Guide to the Perplexed, Part II, Chapter 32). So did Moses internalize the will of G-d and thereby produce the words of the four Books of the Bible. G-d’s words internalized and written by Moses, the greatest prophet of all. Moses communicated with G-d. He did not speak much to people; he was, after all, a K’vad peh. And in general, one speaks for his/her generation, but one writes for the generations, for eternity. Moses did not speak successfully to his generation; but Moses did write, for us and for Jewish eternity.

However, the Book of Deuteronomy was an exception. Moses had a legacy to leave and an interpretation to give - and so this time he spoke to his people, telling them not G-d’s words but his own words. When G-d commanded Moses to write down the words of this Book as well for all the generations, for all eternity, G-d was granting the Divine imprimature of Torah to Moses’ Book of Deuteronomy - and making it His (G-d’s) Book as well. Moses spoke and G-d answered Amen.

Shabbat Shalom.