{"id":52566,"date":"2019-03-31T11:38:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T08:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=52566"},"modified":"2022-10-23T18:05:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T15:05:26","slug":"mosess-death-tragic-and-redemptive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/mosess-death-tragic-and-redemptive\/","title":{"rendered":"Moses\u2019s Death: Tragic And Redemptive"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[395,383,397],"acf":{"old_id":"52566","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":37918,"related_cahpter":"187","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"To live covenantally is to live in the present, toward the future","content":"

As Bible scholar Patrick Miller notes, \u201cWithin the book of Deuteronomy Moses is not only the central figure but is virtually the only figure.\u201d And yet God insists that this incomparably great prophet must die before he reaches the Promised Land. The Torah struggles to explain why. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the explanation for God\u2019s decision, Moses tries\u2014unsuccessfully\u2014to persuade God to reverse it. In the beginning of Deuteronomy, Moses implores God, \u201cLet me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan\u201d (3:25), but as the end of the book makes clear, God only accedes to part of his request: \u201cThis is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, \u2018I will assign it to your offspring.\u2019 I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there\u201d (34:4). Moses can look, but he cannot go.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lesson of Moses\u2019 death is both tragic and redemptive. When we dedicate our lives to causes greater than ourselves, we may accomplish a great deal, but we very rarely live to see our projects completed. Much of what we work towards will come to fruition\u2014if at all\u2014only after we die. To live covenantally is to embrace that fact and to hope that others will come along and pick up where left off\u2014and that if need be, they will correct us where we went wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christian theologian Dorothee Soelle presents a stunning image shared with her by a friend and fellow activist: \u201cThe people who worked to build the cathedrals in the Middle Ages never saw them completed. It took two hundred years and more to build them. Some stone- cutter somewhere sculpted a beautiful rose; it was his life\u2019s work, and it was all he ever saw. But he never entered into the completed cathedral. But one day, the cathedral was really there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, in the edifice of Judaism, Moses obviously did much more than sculpt a rose; he laid the foundation for the entirety of Jewish tradition. And yet even he did not live to see the \u201ccompleted cathedral\u201d\u2014neither Torah as it unfolds over time nor the redeemed world (the \u201cPromised Land\u201d) of which Judaism dreams. In his death, as in his life, Moses is the model of covenantal living\u2014a tireless servant of God and Israel who dies before reaching the<\/span> place of which he dreams each day. Moses\u2019 life teaches us that to live covenantally is to live <\/span>in <\/span><\/i>the present,<\/span>toward <\/span><\/i>the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Alexandre Cabanel, \u201cDeath of Moses\u201d, 1850 \/ wikimedia<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":52567,"id":52567,"title":"dt34-Alexandre_Cabanel_-_Death_of_Moses","filename":"dt34-Alexandre_Cabanel_-_Death_of_Moses.jpeg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/dt34-Alexandre_Cabanel_-_Death_of_Moses.jpeg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/mosess-death-tragic-and-redemptive\/dt34-alexandre_cabanel_-_death_of_moses\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"dt34-alexandre_cabanel_-_death_of_moses","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":52566,"date":"2019-03-31 08:37:53","modified":"2019-03-31 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