Moses Argued With God and Refused to Die

Most people imagine Moses dying quietly on Mount Nebo, gazing at the Promised Land he would never enter, resigned to God's decree. The actual rabbinic tradition tells a very different story.

He fought it. He argued, debated, wept, petitioned the heavens and the earth, appealed to angels and mountains and the sea, and refused to accept the verdict until the very end. The account preserved in Midrash Tanchuma, Vaetchanan 6, written down by the school of Rabbi Tanchuma bar Abba in the fifth century CE, is one of the most remarkable legal arguments in all of rabbinic literature. It is also a portrait of a man who loved being alive.

The trouble began with a word. Moses had once praised God with the Hebrew word hen, meaning "behold": "Behold (hen), the heavens and the heavens of heavens belong to the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 10:14). Now God turned that same word back on Moses as a sentence: "Behold (hen), the days are drawing near for you to die" (Deuteronomy 31:14). Rabbi Abbahu compared this to a nobleman who found the finest sword in the world and presented it to a king as a gift. The king admired it, then said: cut off his head with it. Moses had handed God the instrument of his own death.

He did not accept this gracefully.

"I ascended to the heavens," he told God. "I walked into the Araphel, the dark cloud where You dwell. I spoke with You face to face. I received the Torah from Your own hand. Was all of that just to end as food for worms?" God replied that he had already decreed death over the first Adam. Moses pushed back: Adam deserved it. He broke the one easy commandment he was given. Moses had kept all six hundred and thirteen. God mentioned Abraham, who had died. Moses replied that Abraham fathered Ishmael, whose descendants had done wicked things. God mentioned Isaac, who had stretched his neck over the altar and then died anyway. Moses replied that Isaac fathered Esau, who would destroy the Temple. God mentioned Jacob, whose twelve sons had all served God faithfully. Moses replied that Jacob had never walked in the Araphel, never received Torah from God's hand, never spoken with God face to face.

God closed the argument: "Do not speak to Me on this matter again" (Deuteronomy 3:26).

Moses turned to the world. He went to the heaven and the earth and asked them to seek mercy on his behalf. They told him they could barely seek mercy for themselves; the prophet had already written that the heavens would vanish like smoke and the earth wear out like a garment (Isaiah 51:6). He went to the stars and planets. They pointed to Isaiah 34:4, where all the host of heaven would rot away. He went to the mountains and the hills. They quoted Isaiah 54:10: for the mountains shall move and the hills shall be shaken. He went to the Great Sea, which had known him best of all. The sea said: Son of Amram, are you not the one who smote me with your rod and divided me into twelve parts? What has happened to you today? Moses wept and quoted Job: "O that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me" (Job 29:2). When I passed through you, he said, I was a world king. Now nobody pays attention to me.

He went finally to Metatron, the great archangel who stands closest to the divine throne. Metatron had heard the decree from behind the divine curtain. "Your prayer is not heard on this matter," he said. Moses put his hands on his head and sobbed.

Then God presented him with an impossible choice: Moses could live, but Israel would be destroyed. Moses answered without hesitation. Let Moses and a thousand like him be destroyed. Not one person in Israel should perish on his account. It was not a heroic speech. It was Moses unable to imagine himself without the people he had spent forty years carrying.

After that, Moses asked to become Joshua's student. If he was dying because his time of leadership had passed, he would try to extend his life by deferring to the one who came after him. He rose early, walked to Joshua's door, and stood outside while Joshua sat and taught Torah. The community found Moses standing and Joshua seated. Joshua, his eyes hidden so he would not see Moses, did not move. Then he turned and saw him and tore his clothes and wept: "My master, my master! My father, my father and lord!" Moses no longer knew what Joshua was teaching. The traditions had shifted. The time had passed. He said to God: up to now I requested life. Now here is my soul, given over to You.

God told Moses that no angel would take him. He died on the seventh of Adar, exactly one hundred and twenty years from the day he was born. The sages counted backward from the crossing of the Jordan on the tenth of Nisan (Joshua 4:19), minus thirty days of mourning, to arrive at the exact date. "I will fulfill the number of your days," God had promised (Exodus 23:26). Not one day more. Not one day less. God himself buried Moses in the valley of the land of Moab, so that the graves of those who die outside the Promised Land might benefit from proximity to him.

His soul departed with a kiss.

The tradition does not record this as a failure of faith. Moses argued because he knew what he was losing. He had run before the people of Israel like a horse for forty years. He had stood in the breach between them and divine destruction more times than any text can count. He had held a Torah in his hands that had been written in fire before the world began. Of course he did not want to put it down.

God did not punish him for arguing. He heard every word, answered every point, and when it was over, came for Moses himself. That, the Tanchuma suggests, is what it means to love the people you are leaving behind.