Moses Asked Every Creature in Creation to Save Him

The last day of Moses's life was measured in hours. God announced them one at a time.

Five hours. Four. Three. Two. One.

The Drash on Petirat Moshe, preserved in the Otzar Midrashim, an anthology assembled in the early twelfth century by Judah David Eisenstein from earlier rabbinic collections, is one of the strangest death scenes in all of rabbinic literature. Moses had already dressed Joshua in royal garments and sat at his feet like a student while Joshua expounded Torah before all Israel. He had already wept for his own feet that would never walk the land, his own hands that would never pick its fruit, his own throat that would never taste its produce. He had already kissed Joshua and embraced him and wept with his face against his neck.

And then Moses went looking for someone, anyone, who could intervene on his behalf.

What Everything in Creation Said

He turned to the earth first. He begged it to seek mercy on his behalf before God. The earth answered: before I seek mercy for you, I must seek it for myself. It was written that the earth was without form and void at the beginning, and in the end it would wear out like a garment (Isaiah 51:6). Your decree and mine are the same. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Go plead elsewhere.

Moses turned to the heavens. They pointed to their own ending, when they would be rolled up like a scroll. He turned to the stars. They cited the prophecy that they would withdraw their shining. He turned to the sun and moon. They pointed to the verse where the moon would be confounded and the sun ashamed. He turned to Mount Sinai, which had once been entirely in smoke at God's presence, and which would one day be made low. He turned to the mountains and hills, which would one day depart and be removed. He turned to the seas and rivers. To the Red Sea that had split for him with his staff. To the deserts. To the entire order of creation, all of which had been made beautiful in its time and all of which would return to one place.

Everything he approached said the same thing: we are also waiting for our own ending. We cannot save you because we cannot save ourselves.

When Samael Blocked the Prayers

Then Moses went to his successor. He fell at Joshua's feet, weeping, and begged him to pray for divine mercy. Joshua was shaking with grief, fell on his face, and began to open his mouth. At that moment Samael, the angel who serves as the prosecuting force in the heavenly court, descended and seized Joshua's mouth shut. The prayer could not come out. Both men wept with bitter soul.

Moses tried Eleazar, Aaron's son. He reminded him that forty years earlier he had stood in prayer and saved Aaron's life after the golden calf incident (Deuteronomy 9:20). Would Eleazar return the favor? Samael seized Eleazar's throat too. Moses tried Caleb. He tried the officers of thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. He turned to the seventy elders and to all of Israel gathered before the Tent of Meeting, reminding them of every time he had stood in the breach and blocked divine wrath on their behalf.

One hundred and eighty-four myriads of angels descended and stationed themselves beside every single Israelite, snatching every prayer before it could rise. There were two named angels at the center of this blockade. Tsaokn, who snatched the words. Lachash, who came to restore them. Samael bound Lachash in chains of fire and dragged him behind the divine curtain. Isaiah (26:16) had seen this moment from centuries ahead: Lord, in trouble they have visited You, they poured out Tsaokn Lachash. The midrash was reading Isaiah as a prophecy of Moses's last day.

What God Said When Moses Finally Stopped

When Moses finally understood that no creature in all of creation could save him, he turned back to God and said simply: let me live and not die. God answered with a question: if I do not let you die, how will I make you alive in the world to come? You would make My Torah into a compromise. I kill, and I make alive (Deuteronomy 32:39). The same verse that spoke of death also held resurrection within it. The ending was not separate from the beginning.

Moses accepted it. He blessed the tribes one by one, then gathered them all into one final blessing when he saw the time was short. He asked their forgiveness for every time he had rebuked them harshly. They asked his forgiveness for every time they had made his life impossible. Both forgave. And then Moses said: when you enter the land, remember me and say, Woe for the son of Amram, who ran before us like a horse, whose bones fell in the wilderness.

The Weeping That Reached Heaven

The tradition understood Moses's death not as defeat but as the final expression of his nature. He had argued with God at the burning bush. He had argued at the sea. He had argued after the golden calf and again at the border of the land he would never cross. He argued until the last quarter-hour, with the full force of everything creation had to offer. And when all of it was exhausted, he blessed his people, told them he would see them at the resurrection of the dead, and walked out from among them.

What Moses did in his last hours was not panic. It was a man who believed with his whole body that the world should want him to live, trying everything that existed to make that case, failing completely, and then turning back to the one who had said no. The search itself was his final sermon. He was showing Israel that even the earth, the heavens, the sea, the mountain where the Torah was given, none of them could override what God had decreed. And that the God who decreed his death was the same one who promised to make him alive again.

The weeping that rose from Israel that day, the midrash says, reached the highest heavens.