40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 181 (Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12)

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Chad and Daniel wrap up Deuteronomy and in doing so finish the Torah. There are blessings spoken to each tribe of Israel. Moses dies, and God buries him. And Joshua is full of the Spirit and wisdom as he begins to lead. Moses is unique in the scriptures but it's time to say goodbye to him. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network  HWSS Conference Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network Podcast. You can go over to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the things that we got going on over there. Also, you can go over to the Here We Still Stand link that's on that page. It's under the events. I think there's about 15 or so tickets left. You can be one of the final 15.

Use the promo code PNET19 if you want to come hang out with Chad and me and a whole bunch of other people. We'd love to see you there. If you're local in California, now's the time. grab one of the final 15 tickets, and we will see you there. Chad, are you ready to wrap up not just Deuteronomy, but the Torah? I am ready. I am primed and ready.

We got two chapters, 33 and 34. And at that point, we are like, we're done. All right, I got some numbers for you about how long it's taken us. You ready for that? I'm ready. Give it to me. Okay, so for our most loyal listeners, for those who have been following us from the beginning, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, all the way now to Deuteronomy chapter 34. So if you've listened to every episode, first of all, you have been with us for about four and a half years. so the first episode dropped on january 20th 2015 and here we are you know september of 2019

so about a little over four and a half years it's taken us to to work the torah which doesn't which does not seem like it's been that long at least it doesn't to me uh so january 20th is when we started 2015 181 episodes that's that's where you are right now 181st today so if if you've actually been listening all along you have been with us for a total of 7,240 minutes that's that is that's a long time you might need to reevaluate your life yeah which means that which means that like if you started listening at like 12 01 a.m on monday and you didn't stop you didn't sleep you didn't you didn't turn it off you just kept listening to it all week long it would take you five straight 24 hour days to listen to us cover the entirety

of the Torah. But if you have been here all along, or if you haven't, well, we're glad that you're here. And we're glad that wherever you're at on the journey, I know some of you I hear from are, you know, you're still in Exodus, or you're in Leviticus, or maybe you've just started Genesis, or maybe you've been with us all the way through Deuteronomy. But wherever you're at, we're glad that you're there. And stay with us. This is the Torah, but there's a lot more to the bible than the torah so we're going to be next episode we will we will make the shift we will leave the torah and we will jump into the book of joshua which is the first of well in the hebrew designation the first of the prophets the the nevi'im is the second major classification of

what we call the old testament so it begins with what we usually think of as historical books but it's it's joshua uh the first one that we'll we'll get to but anyway the books of the torah five books of the torah we're wrapping up today after 7200 minutes you know it's interesting when when you run into people uh i know i know this happens to you as well chad you know that listen to the podcast there there is this kind of cool thing that happens where they come and talk to you like they know you you don't know them necessarily but uh they're very comfortable with you and they're familiar with you and they're used to the sound of your voice and this sort of thing and that makes sense if you've been you know if you've listened to that voice for 7 000 minutes

you know so that's that's sort of a cool thing that happens it is pretty cool one of the funny things i ever heard from a listener was that he'd been listening to the podcast for quite a while but he always listened to it when he was on the treadmill so he'd go to the gym yeah put his put his earbuds in and start listening to the podcast when he was on the treadmill and uh so i came to speak at his church and he said that as soon as i started talking he started sweating because that's what that's what his body is used to when he hears my voice he's on the treadmill so he's sweating that's hilarious yeah i thought that was that's pretty funny i know people listen uh with it sped up as well like people listen at one or two times

the speed on their podcasting app and i had a guy tell me that he's like i'm not used to your voice at regular speed. I say, in my mind, you talk really fast. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, however you listen to it, wherever you listen to it,

however long you've been listening to it, we're super glad that you're part of the family, that you've been with us for a few days or a few years. And we are going to journey together here to the closing chapter of the Torah. We've got some interesting material coming up here in 33 and 34 of Deuteronomy. So I guess we'll—

Let's do it, man. Also, I'm glad you gave me the statistics because I wouldn't have thought that we were creeping up on our fifth year. And it seems like maybe January 20th, whatever episode that falls around there, since that's a birthday, that's the five-year-old birthday, 40 minutes to be five years old. We'll have to do something special. I don't know what, but figure something out. yeah that's a great idea we should we got to celebrate our podcast birthday that's right just find a reason to celebrate whatever the reason might be it's always it's always a good chance to celebrate that's right all right let's get into let's get into deuteronomy we don't want

to talk so much and then not finish it yeah that would not be cool all right so yeah deuteronomy 33 is uh it's actually it's it's kind of interesting the placement of this chapter this didn't really strike me maybe it did some of the listeners but it didn't strike me until this morning how there's there's a real there's a parallel that goes on here so within the bible we have all kinds of parallelisms and the the the structure of certain chapters or books or like the book of Psalms divided into five different books to reflect, to mirror the Torah. So you got all sorts of things going on in the Bible where structure is important. It wasn't just kind of slapped together willy-nilly,

but there was a certain overarching structure to the totality of it that itself is meaningful. And we have a case of that here because the very first book of the Torah, Genesis, of course, the next to last chapter, chapter 49 of Genesis, is when Jacob the patriarch is on his deathbed and he blesses each of his sons, the ones who will be the ones that the 12 tribes will come from. so the next to last chapter of the first book of the Torah has a blessing by Jacob of his 12 sons 12 patriarchs of the 12 different tribes well now we go from that first book to the final book of the Torah to Deuteronomy and we're now in the next to last chapter and as it turns out this next to last chapter mirrors the next to last chapter in the book of Genesis so just like Genesis 49 was Jacob blessing the 12 tribes of Israel. So now Deuteronomy 33 is Moses blessing the 12 tribes of Israel. So we have the beginning and the end of the Torah mirroring each other in that respect.

So that's what the chapter as a total is about. Now there is a structure within Deuteronomy 33 as well, as you would expect, especially since it's kind of a very stylized kind of portrayal of what's going to happen to each of the tribes. It's poetry. Most of Deuteronomy is prose, but there is some poetry here. So anytime you have poetry, structure is important. So the way this is set up is you have an introduction and you have a conclusion, which are both in prose, and then everything in between is in poetry. And of course, it's divided up between each of the 12 tribes of Israel with a short introduction that kind of covers all of the tribes together. So this is the way it starts out. It says, now this is the blessing

with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the sons of Israel before his death. So just like Jacob blessed his 12 sons before his death, so Moses, because he is right on the brink of his own death, is going to bless the 12 tribes of Israel. He's referred to here, interestingly, as, not as a prophet, but as the man of God, which is another designation for a prophet. So if you come across that phrase in the Old Testament, which in Hebrew would be Isha Elohim, the man of God, it's not just kind of a generic designation for someone who's a follower of God. The Isha Elohim, the man of God, is a prophetic designation. So it's another name for what in the Old Testament is sometimes called a seer, or sometimes called an avi, a prophet. So Moses is portrayed here

as a prophet, and in his prophetic office, he is inspired by God to look ahead and to pronounce this blessing that's going to be for all of Israel, as well as for each of the tribes. So it starts out here with some very poetic, sort of militaristic kind of language to describe how God is coming to Israel. I'll read these first couple of verses. The Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from Seir. He shone forth from Mount Paran, and he came from the midst of 10,000 holy ones. at his right hand there was flashing lightning the kind of god coming from the south which is where all these geographical places are located sinai and seir and paran they're all south of

israel in the kind of the the peninsula area there so this this description of god coming up or dawning from the south is the kind of language that we encounter elsewhere in the scriptures Now, the language of him coming surrounded by his holy ones or his angels, his ministers, and him having in his hand this lightning flashing, this is also pretty typical kind of poetic language in the Old Testament. We encounter very often in the Psalms where, what was it the other day? I think I was praying Psalm, I believe it was Psalm 89. I'm not positive about that. But anyway, one of the Psalms described how David was in dire straits. He was surrounded by his enemies and there was no hope for him.

And so he called out to God. And there's this very colorful graphic description of how God is riding upon the clouds and he's surrounded by his angels and he's got lightning in his hand and he's pounding the earth with this thunder. So it's kind of taking this imagery from a storm and it's applying it to this divine manifestation of rescue that God is about to accomplish. And that's kind of what we have here, at least a little taste of that here with God described as having lightning flashes and surrounded by his glorious angels. So it's a it's a very poetic description of God's visitation to Israel. Then he goes on to say he loves his people and all his holy ones are in his hand. They follow it in his steps. Everyone who receives your words. so after this description of god's manifestation we have this affirmation of his love for his people

that he's got his is his holy ones in his hands those who are going to follow his steps and receive his word now verse four is interesting for a couple different reasons it says moses charged us with the torah it's translated my my bible is law but again anytime you see a law in Old Testament, just do that immediate translation into Torah, which means teaching. So Moses charged us with a Torah, a possession or an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob. I just was reading today, I wish I had that commentary in front of me, I must have put it back on my shelf, but I was just reading today that verse four is one of the first things that's taught to a Jewish child, because it kind of sums up one of the fundamental teachings of the Old

Testament in the mind of the Jews, is that you've got Moses, you've got the Torah, and it's an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob. So this, as well as the Shema in Deuteronomy chapter 6, so Deuteronomy 33 verse 4 is one of the first verses that are taught to Jewish children, because it really is, it's a good kind of summary of not only Deuteronomy, but the whole of the torah that that moses and moses is god's chosen agent to give us god's teaching and this is going to be an inheritance or a possession for for the assembly of jacob and this is really what of course the message of deuteronomy is all about god has given to his people this inheritance and this inheritance yes it includes land a lot of other blessings but the inheritance particularly is

giving to them. That which is most important is his word. His word, which is full of promises and full of admonition and full of his disclosure of his will, of his will for Israel. Verse five continues this. He says, he, that is God, was king and Jeshurun when the heads of the people were gathered, the tribes of Israel together. I don't think that we talked about this in the last episode, but the name Jeshurun, that's J-E-S-H-U-R-U-N, which in Hebrew would be pronounced like Yeshurun, but Jeshurun is a name for Israel that doesn't come up very often. I think it's used like three times in Deuteronomy and then maybe once elsewhere in the Old Testament, but it's from the Hebrew word that means to be upright, yashar. So Jeshurun is like the upright one, the one who

is standing before God, as it were. So this is one of those very unusual, infrequently used names for Israel, but it's used here in this poem. So he was the king in Jeshurun, which is another name for Israel, when the heads of the people were gathered, the tribes of Israel together. So anyway, that's kind of the introduction to all of this. God comes from the south in this storm-like way. He gathers his people around him that he has now given the Torah to as an inheritance, and he stands before them as their king. So that's kind of setting the stage for everything that's going to follow here. So after that point, beginning with verse 6, through most of the rest of the chapter, he begins to pronounce either a very brief or a more extensive blessing. I use that word blessing in a sort of a generic, general sort of way, a blessing upon each of the tribes.

Because some of these, well, some of these are like more of a blessing. some of these are more like a prophecy some of these are more like just kind of a a divine wish if you will for for the tribe something like that some of them seem like statements yeah it's like i'm just like matter of fact it's like have you ever got like a fortune cookie that like and sometimes a fortune cookie is like tells you something that's going to happen and then sometimes it's just like a statement yeah you know right right you know it's just a statement like you know a friend you can trust is a friend worth having and you're like okay that's not a fortune but yeah it's kind of a proverb right yeah yeah yeah i mean some of them are kind of

like that it's a and some of them are going to reference uh events from the past like we'll see in the case of levi beginning of verse eight and then some of them are just i don't know they're a little bit vague uh it's exactly what they're trying to communicate i mean some of these just like one verse so these are are like the one on joseph is very long the one on levi is pretty long surprisingly the one on judah is relatively short i mean considering the importance of judah later in israel's history you would think that judah's blessing would be a lot longer than it is but it too is is pretty short so it starts out here with reuben who is the who's the firstborn and it doesn't say hardly anything about him it says uh may reuben live and not die nor his men be few

i mean if i was from the tribe of reuben i'd be a little disappointed that's about it that's all it says right so basically i hope and pray that reuben lives and that there's quite a few people in his tribe and that's that's that's about it i mean maybe there's some like real deep insight into these words that i'm missing but uh i mean i i guess to live is better than to die so yeah there you go yeah so if you remember reuben's history uh even though he was he was the first born he uh did not receive the blessing of the firstborn because he had intercourse with his dad's concubine so i don't know what she would have been like a stepmom sort of i guess uh but anyway so he was excluded from the blessing because of that but uh that's all that's said

about him and we don't really ruben's one of those one of those kind of fascinating tribes because if you look through the rest of israel's history he just kind of fades into the distance nothing really is there's no great accomplishments by the tribe of ruben and he just kind of fades from fades from history over time uh as as perhaps is indicated here by the brevity of words that are used to describe to describe this blessing over him which is true of multiple several of the tribes yeah yeah especially well especially after in 722 so 8th century is when the assyrians conquered the northern kingdom which consisted of 10 tribes and those 10 tribes never returned So they were taken into captivity, and presumably they just assimilated with whatever foreign peoples that they were sent to, unlike the two southern tribes, Benjamin and Judah, who were exiled by the Babylonians in 586 and then returned 70 years later to reconstitute the land, to repopulate the land, to rebuild the temple.

Those 10, that's why they're called sometimes the 10 lost tribes. Probably better to say the 10 assimilated tribes, because they just kind of merge with the peoples to which they were sent. So most of the tribes of Israel, after the 8th century BC, they just kind of faded from memory. Okay, so verse 7 takes us to Judah. And this regarding Judah, it says, Hear, O Israel, the voice of Judah, and bring him to his people,

with his hands he contended for them so this this blessing has the uh the theme of kind of a military conquest which actually does fit with the later history of judah because of course it's from the tribe of judah that david and from david and then his sons of course would come as well so they would have been the military leaders the king being the just like we call our president the commander-in-chief so the the king of israel would have been the commander-in-chief except he would have actually gone out and fought in these battles. So the king, in fact, that's one of the reasons that the Israelites wanted a king. That's one of the reasons they said to Samuel that they wanted a king, because he would be the one who would go out and wage war for them. So unlike in

today's world, where the leaders of the nations just command from a distance, in the ancient world, the king would have been at the head of his assembly. He would have been leading his actual army into battle. And so this fits with Judah, this blessing of success against his adversaries. And of course, when you read verse 7, this blessing of Judah in light of its overarching biblical context, it really fits because it kind of fits with the image of the conquering Messiah. Messiah is, of course, portrayed in many different ways throughout the scriptures. There's not like one particular metaphor that's used to describe him. Yes, he's a priest, and yes, he's a lamb, and yes, he's a prophet, but he's also a conqueror. He's the one who goes forth to

tread down his enemies to win victory for his people. Of course, he does this in a very backwards sort of way, not the way that we would expect, because he actually conquers by being crucified and then being resurrected. But still, that is the victory of victories. That is the conquest that the Messiah ultimately brings about. And so this blessing upon Judah, who is the tribe from which the Messiah will come, and this prayer for victory over enemies actually fits in the broader perspective of the scriptures as well. Okay, verse 8 through 11 is the tribe of Levi, this is one of the longer of the blessings. And it's kind of interesting in a number of ways, some of which I don't fully understand, to be honest. So here's how it reads. It says,

Let thy Thummim and thy Urim belong to your godly man, whom you proved at Massah and with whom you contended at the waters of Meribah. So we have a reference to the Thummim and the Urim, which were the sacred lots or the holy dice, if you will, that were kept in the breastplate of the high priest and that were used to determine divine will by pulling out one or the other to decide which way God wanted you to go. So those belong to the tribe of Levi, specifically to the high priest. Then we have a reference to what happened way back in the book of Exodus, chapter 17, about Massah and Meribah, which we remember was a place where the Israelites complained about their lack of water. And it says that God tested them there and contended with them there. So we have this

reference to that. But then it goes on to say about Levi, Levi said of his father and his mother, I did not consider them. And he did not acknowledge his brothers, nor did he regard his own sons. For they, that is the Levites, observed your word and kept your covenant. Now, the reason this is confusing is because the situation in which the levites proved their fidelity to god by not considering their own family was not at masa meriva but it was at the episode of golden calf because you remember it was a tribe of levi that unsheathed their swords and began to kill the idolaters not even taking into account if the idolaters might have been members of their own family so it wasn't at masa meriva where this happened it was at the incident with the golden calf so

I'm not sure exactly how Massah and Meribah are connected with what follows there in that blessing. Maybe it's just kind of, maybe these became emblematic of a season of rebellion in Israel's history. So just like at Massah and Meribah, so also at the foot of Mount Sinai with the golden calf, there was this rebellion in the case of the Israelites, But the tribe of Levi proved faithful, and they executed the Lord's judgment against the idolaters. Anyway, it goes on to say that Levi, as a blessing upon Levi, that they shall teach the ordinance of God to Jacob and the Torah to Israel. They're to burn incense before God and to put the whole burnt offerings on his altar. so this is uh of course the the priestly vocation to which the levites were called they are the ones

who are set aside in order to offer incense to offer sacrifices to teach the torah to to israel so they're in charge both of worship as well as divine divine instruction we'll just keep moving along here uh benjamin is next uh doesn't say a whole lot about him it says may the beloved of lord dwell in security by god and god is going to be his shield he's going to have this has this interesting image that he's going to dwell between his shoulders and it's unclear in the hebrew whether benjamin's going to dwell between the divine shoulders or whether god is going to dwell between benjamin's shoulders either way it's this idea this picture of an intimate connection between Benjamin and the Lord. Next is Joseph, and Joseph's blessing incorporates a whole lot of

images from creation. It talks about how the dew of heaven will come down, the sun will shine, there's going to be choice produce, and all the chief choice things of the earth are going to come to Joseph and crown his head. So Joseph is pictured as this one who receives this abundant blessing from the Lord. And then we have this image from the animal world about how Joseph is like the firstborn of an ox, and he has these horns of the wild ox by which he's going to be able to conquer his enemies. So it's actually pretty similar in language and in description to what we have way back in Genesis 49, the description of Joseph's blessings there. next is is zebulon and issachar and it talks about how they will draw out of the sea the abundance

the blessings of those waters moves on to gad next and it says that gad is going to be here we have more animal imagery he's going to be like a lion who is going to tear his foes of dan again same imagery that dan is a lion's welt who's going to leap forth against his enemies that's my favorite tribe of course right sure your uh your mascot should be uh should be a lion right that's right my house sigil yeah that's right baby lion baby lion yeah lion 12 right still very dangerous next is naphtali uh it's gonna be full of the blessings of the lord and it's gonna take possession of the sea asher is next and it says has this uh this kind of unique image, it says that Asher is going to dip his foot in oil. The meaning is that there's going

to be so much olive oil blessing this tribe that he can just stick his feet down and it's going to dip his feet in it. It's kind of like back in Genesis 49, the blessing given to Joseph about him washing his robes in the blood of grapes. There's just so much wine, so much juice flowing from the grapes that it's going to just saturate everything anyway and that's so that's that's a at least a very quick run through through each of the blessings of the of the 12 tribes and then this wraps up this blessing wraps up with 26 through 29 kind of returning to a more general general blessing upon israel as a whole there is none like the god of jeshuan who rides the heavens to your help and through the skies in his majesty the eternal god is a dwelling place

and underneath are the everlasting arms and he drove out the enemy before you and he said destroy so israel dwells in securely fountain of jacob secluded in a land of grain and new wine and then it goes on from there to say that the heavens are going to drop due and that israel is unique because they're the ones saved by the Lord and who will tread down their enemies. So this is actually, in many ways, a beautiful way to wrap up the last words of Moses to Israel because as we've journeyed through Deuteronomy

as well as the preceding books, there are many times when Moses had very harsh words to say to Israel. well what's different here is that almost almost everything that moses says to israel now as his parting words are words which are positive which are actually looking forward to a blessed future for israel and he's he's praying the lord's richest blessings upon them now as we'll see in the preceding books this happens sometimes and very often it doesn't happen but this is this is the way that Moses leaves Israel. So he doesn't leave them without even warning, but he leaves them with a note of a blessing. You know, it's interesting that when I was reading this before

we started, it occurred to me for the first time that this is the text. It's weird. The songs that we sing, or just that are church songs that we all know because they're famous, how weird some of the language is. And we're just used to it, so we don't think anything of it. And I realized when I was reading this chapter that this is where the song Leaning on the Everlasting Arms comes from. It's funny because I thought of the same thing this morning. Yeah, that's what that is. And it is this like, what have I to dread or fear?

Leaning on the everlasting arms. I have blessed peace with my Lord so near. Leaning on the everlasting arms. This is what that is pulled from. Yeah, yeah. As soon as I came across that verse, that was the hymn that jumped out of my mind. uh being raised as a as a as a baptist but that was like one of the like core songs we sang that

all the time dude and you sing that you have no idea what you're talking about oh no what a weird thing to say when you're like if you don't know the context right right that's what's gonna say i mean yeah there's some there's so much imagery in our songs it's taken from the bible that when you when you kind of step back from it and you look at it maybe try and look at it as an outsider you're like the heck is that that's just strange you know it's like a lot of the the language of the psalms it's just what does that even mean leaning on the everlasting arms but well when you look at it in its original context and you kind of understand the biblical metaphor well it makes makes a lot more sense yeah and it is supposed to be a very comforting thing which of

course the song is supposed to be that way as well i noticed they didn't go with the the god who rides the sky which i think is kind of more awesome we need a lot more hymns and songs about god riding the clouds yeah yeah that's that's pretty cool actually if if we did we'd be a lot more reflective of the book of psalms because in the book of psalms god quite frequently frequently is riding on the riding on the clouds of heaven but i guess we we have we have some hymn writing we have to do until then we'll just lean on those arms it's fine there you go all right um well let's uh let's wrap this up chapter 34 is uh the concluding chapter and we're going to hear about finally we've been like we've been on the the verge of the death of moses it feels like forever

well we sort of have been for the last 34 chapters because all of this has been taking place in the last i don't know a few weeks or months of moses life and more than once we've heard that he's about to die. Well, finally, he does. We finally get to, well, we don't get to bury Moses. God's going to do that, but we do see his death. So I'm going to read you the first four verses. 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 all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, and all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh and all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea and the Negev and the plain, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as they are. And the Lord said to

him, this is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your descendants. I've let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there. So once more, we hear what we've heard many times before, that at least Moses is going to get to see with his eyes the land that he really never has been able to step into. He was born in Egypt, and he spent most of his life either in the wilderness as a shepherd or shepherding Israel through the wilderness. And his whole goal was to bring Israel finally into the promised land, and he does take them there right to the edge. So he at least is able to see it with his eyes, and he does get there. He gets there after this life, actually stands with the Lord himself on a mountaintop

in Israel at the transfiguration. So he does get there, but he's going to have to wait. It's not going to happen in this lifetime, but he sees it with his eyes. God lets him look at the goal toward which he's been striving for the last, as we're hearing, as we'll hear in a minute, the last 120 years. So verse five, so Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he, that is God, buried him in the valley of the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor. But no man knows his burial place to this day. Although Moses was 120 years old when he died, his eye was not dim, nor his vigor abated. So the sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab for 30 days. And then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses

came to an end. So Moses reaches a very, very ripe old age. There are some Eastern accounts of 120 years being like the maximum blessed life that one can live. In fact, there's still a Jewish blessing that says something like may you live to 120 it's just kind of a way of expressing that may you may you reach that uh that ultimate age of divine blessedness and this is reflected in the life of moses anyway we see that we see that with noah uh where where god says uh i'm not letting man live so long anymore and from now on his days will be 120 years and that's sort of the the max number that he puts on it uh and at that from that point on that's sort of how how it goes and if you look if you think about that then if you say well god says that because uh the man's

wicked and him living long super long is a bad idea uh in the maximum amount of years he's going to give him as 120 he in fact gives moses the maximum amount of years that he said he would give uh it's also interesting that at 120 it says that his eyes were undimmed and that scene it seems as though God preserves him, even his vision, so that he can see what he can't enter. That's a great point. I never had thought about that. Yeah, yeah. He didn't have to just kind of see something fuzzy in the distance. Yeah, that's a great point. Never had thought about that. God preserves his vision so that with that vision, he can actually see the land that he's been working his way toward. So anyway, the sons of Israel, they mourn for him for the same length

the time they mourned for Aaron for 30 days. And then it says that period came to an end. And we are now in 9 through 12, kind of in a bridge between the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of the next book, because now we are reintroduced to the man who's going to be the focal point of the story for the next few chapters, Joshua. It says, verse 9, Now Joshua, the son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. And the sons of Israel listened to him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses. And then it concludes, verses 10 through 12, with these words. Since then, no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. For all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to

perform in the land of egypt against pharaoh all his servants and all his land and for all the mighty power and for all the great terror which moses performed in the sight of all israel and that is the end of the torah yeah it does end with this sort of uh compliment of uh of how unique moses was uh which of course is true uh there won't be someone like moses uh again no i mean he has held up as the greatest of the prophets uh we we are told more than once that he spoke to god face to face or in one one section it says he spoke with him mouth to mouth and so even though there were many other prophets and there were many other great men in israel there was never another moses uh he was he was unique and he would hold that uniqueness until

as we heard prophesied back in chapter 18 until one would come who was a prophet like Moses but actually would be greater than Moses because he would not only speak God's word as Moses did but he would actually be God's word he would be the word made flesh who dwelt among us so as we go from the Torah onward yeah we're going to have a lot of mosaic like characters but we won't have another one who's truly like Moses, and actually superior to Moses until we get to the Messiah himself, whose way Moses was preparing, right? He was the one who gave the law that is to lead us to Christ, because it shows us our inability to achieve our own righteousness, our inability to ever keep God's law, and instead our need for the one who would keep God's law for us, and who by

His keeping of the law would actually credit his righteousness to us. Yeah, Moses is unique in the prophets also because of the law. The exodus is so integral to the identity of Israel because Moses is that guy. And the law, of course, is so integral to the identity of Israel, and he's also that guy. You sort of can't top this guy. I mean, he's the exodus guy and the guy the law is given to. I mean, there's no topping this. At the end of the day, Moses is the one who ultimately becomes a representation of the Torah, of the law,

and Elijah sort of takes over as the sort of premier prophet. I think that's mostly because Elijah doesn't die. I mean, that'll also set you apart. You get taken up into heaven in a whirlwind. You're going to probably reach a certain status in the prophet hierarchy. Right, right, yeah. yeah so moses has it as a kind of an unusual death and that god buries him and of course elijah doesn't even die and so both of these are unique it's the lawgiver and the prophet

and of course that's why i suppose they both are the ones who appeared to christ on the mount of mount of transfiguration yeah and it's also why uh there's a total aside as we wrap up but it's also why everyone's wondering if you know john the baptist is elijah or if jesus is elijah when a guy doesn't die you think he might just be coming back yeah that's yeah that's that's the reason why he might he went up to heaven maybe he'll come down from heaven again exactly well chad that's that's uh that's it man that's the torah that's it you know if we were uh if we were if we were modern jews we would have what's called a simchat torah they that's their rejoicing when they finish the torah reading every year they like dance around the synagogue carrying the

carrying the scrolls because they've completed the Torah in this, uh, this festival, which I guess we can't do in a podcast. No, I guess I'll have a beer later. We'll have a beer later. Yeah. Well, like we'll hold our Bible up and we'll, we'll kind of dance where we're at because I mean, it is, it is a cause for rejoicing, uh, because it's been, uh, it's been a great journey learned a lot and, uh, look forward to what's to come. Absolutely. All right, guys,

we will see you next week as we, uh, we kick off Joshua. See you then. We'll be right back.