Moses, 2nd ed.

Gerhard von Rad, K. C. Hanson, Hanson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781606087718, 9781498213639
• eBook ISBN: 9781621890300
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In this new edition of Gerhard von Rad's classic work on the Moses traditions, the reader is provided with a more polished text, cross-references to von Rad's other works, an updated bibliography, Scripture index, and a new foreword by Walter Brueggemann.

1

Moses the Man

Several times the one with whom we are here concerned is referred to just as “the man Moses” (Exod 32:1, 23; Num 12:3). Α strangely simple way of speaking of one who, according to the tradition of later times, combined in his own person almost all imaginable honors of religion and state alike. Was he not at the same time priest and leader and prophet and lawgiver and military commander of his people?1 Yet, alongside all those titles of honor that a grateful posterity bestowed upon him, this simple description also has its importance and its special significance. Moses was a man, a human being. He was not a saint, an ascetic, one who had stripped himself of all ordinary human feelings. Neither was he a hero in the sense in which that word was ordinarily understood in ancient times. Certainly he was in no way a demi-god. He is indeed presented as a figure of incomparable greatness. But the neat and exact precision with which the dividing line between him and God is always made clear is one of the most admirable features of these narratives. There was nothing divine about Moses. Therefore neither the men of his own time nor the men of later times ever offered to him such worship as is offered to God alone. He was “the man Moses.”

Moses’s Anger

It sometimes almost looks as though the tradition deliberately goes out of its way to emphasize the human features in the picture of this great man. One trait is especially characteristic of him. From time to time a wild, fierce anger blazes up in him. Under such an impulse he slays the Egyptian who was beating one of his fellow countrymen. This uncontrolled outbreak of passion does not serve as the spark that sets in motion the freeing of Israel from Egypt; it is just the violent action of a man who has not yet heard the call of God. The only result of it is that Moses has to become an exile. But even later, even when he is the man whom God has invested with authority, this furious anger still bursts forth from time to time. When Moses comes down from the mountain and sees the abomination of the worship of the golden calf, in his anger he casts down the tables written with the finger of God and shatters them. He is unwilling to bring to a people so deeply mired in idolatry the revelation of the commandments of God.

On one occasion, the way in which Moses speaks to God does not stop short of downright irreverence. He is at the end of his tether. The giant has broken down under the weight of his commission; he argues with God, he wishes to fling back in his face the task that he has laid upon him:

Why have you treated your servant so badly . . . that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child,” to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors? . . . I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once . . . and do not let me see my misery. (Num 11:10–15)

And God has mercy on his servant in his despair. Seventy elders are to be brought out to the tent of meeting in order that they may help Moses in his task of governing the people. But for this they need the gift of the Spirit of God; so God takes a part of the Spirit that rests upon Moses and distributes it among these seventy men. Then the unexpected happens: no sooner has the spirit of Moses come upon these men than they fall into a strange state of excitement and ecstasy, which seems as though it is going to have no end (Num 11:24–30). So immense was the power of the Spirit as it rested upon Moses that even a small fragment of it was enough to drive other people completely out of the ordinary balance of their minds. Even the crumbs from Moses’s inspiration were a weight too heavy for their mind and spirit to carry. Think then how wonderful Moses must have been! He was able calmly to bear the tremendous weight of the possession of the Spirit, and still to continue to live as a normal human being.

Moses as the Servant of the Lord

In the mirror of this story we can see clearly the reflection of what Moses really was. He was “the man Moses”—nothing more than that. But God had called him, revealed himself to him, and in no ordinary measure had given to him the endowment of the Spirit. Thus he has become “the man of God.” “Man of God”—this is his epithet (Deut 33:1; Josh 14:6), or even more clearly “Servant of Yahweh” (Josh 1:1). Servant of Yahweh—the one who no longer belongs to himself. One who bears this label cannot act in independence, cannot speak his own words or walk in his own ways; it is another who has girded him This was the way in which his people thought of him. Of course they knew that Moses was of their own flesh and blood; yet they never boasted of the fact, that their people had produced so great a man as this. He was indeed of their own kindred; but it was God who had given him the gift of his holy Spirit, had enlightened him. It was as a result of this enlightenment, this giving of the Spirit, that Moses had once for all been drawn over to the side of God, caught away from the sphere in which the rest of the people lived.

Should it surprise us that such a man as this could not be popular? With quite horrifying obstinacy, the people countered the work and the service of Moses with murmurings, with hostility, even with open rejection.2 At one moment, in their faint-heartedness, they completely lose confidence in him and desire to return to Egypt: “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exod 14:11; see Num 14:3). At times, as in the story of Korah, they contest the unique character of the calling and office of Moses; they lay claim to equal rights with him, and to such immediate access to the presence of God as he enjoys (Numbers 16). It is important to notice that, when his right to exercise this office is called in question, Moses does not speak on his own behalf; he leaves his vindication entirely to God (Num 16:5). He is not concerned to maintain his own preeminence; he does not cling to the gift of the Spirit as though it were his own peculiar possession. When the seventy elders fell into that state of enthusiastic excitement, and Joshua urged Moses to forbid such behavior, Moses simply said, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all Yahweh’s people were prophets, and that Yahweh would put his spirit upon them!” (Num 11:29).

On the day of Pentecost the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to all the faithful [Acts 2]. But in the time of Moses that was still a distant event, and so it was his fate to stand in unimaginable loneliness between God and the people. He was alone in his moments of success; he was alone, too, in those times in which people showed him all too plainly that he wearied them. In this respect Moses was truly a forerunner of the Christ.

So in the story of Sinai, in an unforgettable picture, we see him climbing the mountain, disappearing from human eyes, entering into the clouds, drawing ever nearer to the presence of God:

Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of Yahweh settled on Mount Sinai . . . Now the appearance of the glory of Yahweh was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (Exod 24:15–18)

And when he came down again to join the throng of men below, he had was a changed man, even in his outward appearance. During those long days and nights he had been exposed to the splendor of God—and now something of that brightness remained upon his face. That refraction, that reflection, of the light of God was so piercing that the Israelites could not endure it; they shrank back before him and fled. Only then did Moses realize that his face was bright with a supernatural splendor. He himself had been unaware of it; so deeply had he entered into God’s world of light, so completely had he been withdrawn from the sinful world of humans. Only when he had placed a veil before his face could ordinary people draw near to him (Exod 34:29–35).

We may cite one other story as evidence of the loneliness of Moses. The tent of meeting was regularly erected outside the camp. This was the place where God was pleased to reveal himself in speech; thus it was the holy and dangerous place in which the encounter between God and people took place. But this was not an encounter for which any and everyone was qualified. Moses, and Moses alone, was chosen to endure it, and then to pass on the message of God to the people. And so, when Moses prepared himself to enter again on that hard way and went out through the camp to the tent of meeting, everyone came out and stood at the door of his tent. No one could accompany him, but everyone followed him with their eyes. And when he had gone out and reached the tent, and the cloud had descended upon it, all those in the camp fell down upon their faces and worshipped. And there God spoke with Moses—and the narrator records this as something entirely out of the ordinary—“as one speaks to a friend” (Exod 33:7–11).3

As the people of the old covenant continued to think deeply of Moses and his career, they became ever more aware of the hidden burden of suffering that was laid upon this man of God. How much, they thought, must such a man have suffered, standing as he did alone between God and the people, and bearing such a weight of responsibility! In the book of Deuteronomy we see Moses as it were standing between the people and the fiery wrath of God. Forty days and forty nights he lay in the presence of God, praying and fasting for the sin of the people. When he learned of the sin that they had committed in the matter of the golden calf, once again he prayed before God for forty days, and ate no bread nor drank water. Here Moses is seen in the clearest light as the great intercessor. Even more even than that—he suffers on behalf of the people and for their sake.4

Moses’s Death

This aspect of the service of Moses comes out most clearly in the interpretation that is given in Deuteronomy of his death. Naturally, Moses would have wished to go over Jordan with his people, and to enter into the land of promise; he goes so far as to plead with God to grant him this grace:

O Lord Yahweh, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might . . . Let me cross over to see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and the Lebanon. (Deut 3:24–25)

But God sternly cuts him short. Here he must die, a death of expiation for the sins of the people: “But Yahweh was angry with me on your account and would not heed me. Yahweh said to me, ‘Enough from you! Never speak to me of this matter again’” (Deut 3:26). And so Moses died, as lonely in his death as he had always been in his life (Deuteronomy 34). His death is shrouded in mystery: “his sight was unimpaired, and his vigor had not abated” (Deut 34:7). He, the shepherd and the leader of the people, is not allowed to set foot within the promised land; it is difficult to imagine a harder fate than this.5

And yet the story of the death of Moses does not end in lamentation or complaint. For God was with Moses in his death. He is given something far better than hope, for hope always has in it an element of uncertainty. With unveiled eyes and with undimmed spirit Moses sees the fulfillment of the promise. God showed him the whole land of Palestine. Towards the west, his glance swept over the whole land as far as the Great Sea; to the north he beheld the mountains of Galilee; before him lay Jericho, the city of Palm Trees, and to the left were the wide expanses of Judah and the Negev, where the patriarchs had lived in their tents. The narrative tells us nothing of the thoughts and feelings of Moses in the closing moments of his life; everything that is merely personal falls into the background in comparison with the fact that the whole fulfillment of the purposes of God is spread out before the eyes of the one who is about to die.

And then God himself buried his servant. No one else was there, and therefore no one could give any information as to the place in which Moses was buried. Thus his people were spared a grievous temptation. It was impossible for them to pay any kind of divine honors to Moses at his grave. For, according to ancient ideas of the veneration to be paid to heroes, the two necessary conditions were the solemn consecration of the grave and the mysterious and continued presence of the spirit of the departed at it.

Let us look back once again on the picture that the people of Israel drew of Moses. This picture tends to throw ever more clearly into relief the features of the mediator, of the servant of God who suffers and dies for his people; and this is a very remarkable characteristic of it.6 The people of the old covenant, in setting forth this picture of Moses who suffered and offered expiation for the sins of his people, were thereby giving expression to a secret and inward hope. When we read these passages of Deuteronomy, is it not as though we hear the people of Israel say, “It was fitting” (even more strongly, “it was necessary”) “that we should have such a high priest” (Heb 7:26), and that thus the story of Moses becomes a prophecy of that which could be fulfill...

Table of contents

• Moses
• Editor’s Note
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Moses the Man
• Chapter 2: The Call of Moses
• Chapter 3: The First and Second Commandments
• Chapter 4: God’s Will as Made Manifest in Law
• Chapter 5: From Promise to Fulfillment
• Bibliography
• Further Reading
• Scripture Index