Deuteronomy 34 Footnotes

PLUS

34:5-12 The common critical view that Moses could not have written Deuteronomy because it records his own death carries no weight, except in the case of the last eight verses of the book. Someone else (Joshua, according to the Talmud) could have appended the account of Moses’s death without undermining the tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. If one accepts the biblical role of the prophet as including the gift to discern events to come, Moses could even have composed his own obituary.

34:7 The great age of Moses at his death has been a problem for critics who think in uniformitarian terms; that is that phenomena we observe today are as they have always been. How is it that his lifespan should exceed that of others of his generation (if that is the case), and how likely is it that it was divided into three segments of forty years each (see 31:2; Ac 7:23,30)? Were life and history governed solely by chance or by human machination, such things would be incredible. But if God’s activity is brought into the equation, nothing remains beyond belief.

34:10 Like the phrase “to this day” in v. 6, the statement that “no prophet has arisen again in Israel like Moses” suggests to some a post-Mosaic source—indeed, one from a considerably later time. Incidental glosses (editorial adjustments and insertions), such as this might be, do not overthrow the ancient tradition of Moses as the inspired composer of the Torah. The phrase in question, in fact, is a biblical idiom for something of great significance; to say that a person or event is unlike anything before or after it is a way of stressing their gravity (see Ex 10:14; Ezk 16:16; Mt 24:21). Use of the expression here need not be an indication of a later perspective. But Moses, indeed, has no equal in later biblical history except for Jesus Christ, who was more than a prophet. Of all figures in Scripture, it is Moses who is mentioned together with Christ in the worship of the Revelation to John, “the song of God’s servant Moses and the song of the Lamb” (Rv 15:3).

To know God “face to face” is not in conflict with the idea that no one can look on the Lord’s face and live (Ex 33:20). This is an idiomatic expression of intimate relationship, having nothing to do with the physical face (see Nm 12:8).