One by One the Angels Refused to Carry Off the Soul of Moses

The order came down from the highest heaven, plain as a summons. Michael and Gabriel were to go out, find the old man on the mountain in Moab, and bring back his soul. Gabriel heard it and did not move. "He who is equal to six hundred thousand," he said, "how can I take his soul and be insolent before his face?" The mightiest of the messengers stood where he was and would not go.

The Relay of Refusals on the Mountain

So the word went to Michael instead. Michael wept. He had no answer, only tears, and the tears were his refusal. Then the order passed to Zagzagel, who had been the teacher and watched the man on the mountain grow into a prophet. "Master of the universe," he said, "I was his teacher and he was my student. How can I take his soul?" Three angels, each greater than the last, and each one set down the task like a thing too heavy to lift. The hour of death had a name and an address, and not one of heaven's executioners would walk to it.

Samael Sharpens His Sword and Goes Out Gladly

Then the order found Samael, into whose hand every soul had been given since the world began, and Samael went out from before the Throne with great joy. He girded on his sword. He wrapped himself in cruelty the way another being might wrap itself in a cloak, and he came down on the mountain in fury, certain the work would be quick. But the man he found was writing. Moses was setting down the Ineffable Name with his own hand, and sparks of fire were leaving his mouth as he wrote, and the light off his face fell like the light of the sun. He looked like an angel of the Lord of hosts, and Samael, who feared nothing, trembled.

The radiance darkened Samael's eyes. He fell on his face. A shaking took him like a woman in labor, and he could not force a word past his lips until Moses spoke first. "Samael, Samael," the prophet said. "There is no peace for the wicked. Why do you stand against me?" Samael answered that the hour had come, that he should hand over his soul. Moses asked who had sent him. "He who created the world and the souls," Samael said, "and into my hand all the souls have been given."

The Tally of a Life Held Against a Drawn Blade

Then Moses began to count, and the counting was a weapon. He had come out of his mother circumcised. He had taken the crown from Pharaoh's own head, brought six hundred thousand out of Egypt, split twelve paths in the sea, turned the bitter water of Marah sweet. He had hewn the tablets and climbed into the firmament, had spoken face to face with the Master of the world, had made the sun and the moon stand still in the height of the sky. "Is there in the world a mighty one like me?" he said. "Wicked one, flee from before me." Samael looked once at the soul of Moses and was undone. He fled up to the Throne empty-handed.

God sent him back. "From the fire of Gehinnom you were made," the voice told him, "and to the fire of Gehinnom you return. Go and bring his soul." Samael drew his sword a second time and came down again, and this time Moses took up the staff of God, the one with the Name engraved along its length. He struck Samael and rebuked him until the angel broke and ran, then chased him across the slope with the Name in his mouth, caught him, and struck him until the rays of his splendor blinded the angel's eyes. Half a moment of life remained.

The Bargain With the Soul That Would Not Leave

A voice fell from heaven a final time. "Moses, why do you grieve yourself? The end of the hour has come." Moses stood and prayed. He named the bush that had burned for him and the forty days he had gone without bread or water in the firmament, and he asked one thing only, that he not be handed into the grip of Samael. "I have accepted your prayer," God said. "I Myself will attend to you, and I will bury you." And the Holy One came down from the highest heavens, and when Moses saw Him he fell on his face and asked for mercy, the same mercy by which the world had been made.

But the soul of Moses would not go. God called to her, "My daughter, one hundred and twenty years I fixed your time in the body of this righteous one. Go out, and do not delay." She answered from inside him. There was no cleaner body in the world, she said, none on which a fly had ever landed. "It is good for me to dwell here." God promised her a seat beside the Throne, among the seraphim and the ophanim, and still she pleaded to stay, for here was a man who had separated from his own wife from the day God spoke to him in the bush. So God did not pull her out. He bent down and took the soul of Moses with a kiss of His mouth.

The Golden Bed Beneath the Wings of the Shekhinah

Then the burial became a thing of heaven. God revealed Himself in His Word, and the companies of the ministering angels came down with Him. Gabriel arranged the couch. Michael spread a woolen cloth beneath the prophet's head and stood at his right; Zagzagel laid a garment at his feet. They laid Moses on a golden bed fastened with gems and beryls, hung about with purple silk and white linen, and they carried him the last miles and set him down opposite Beth Peor, in sight of the place where Israel had sinned, so the people would never look at their worst hour without also seeing the grave of the man who had prayed them out of it. The manna kept falling for thirty-seven days after, for the sake of his righteousness. And the heavens said the pious one had perished from the earth, and the stars and the sun and the moon said together that no prophet would arise in Israel like Moses again.