Moses Calls War That Hastens His Own Death

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The Word That Could Have Bought Him Years

"Avenge the vengeance of the children of Israel against the Midianites," the Holy One told Moses, "and afterward you shall be gathered unto your people." Every man in the camp heard which word carried the weight, because it was the only one that set a date. Afterward. So long as Midian stood unpunished the muster could not close, and so long as the muster stayed open Moses went on breathing. His death was knotted to a war that had not started yet, and the loose end of the knot lay in his own hand.

Rabbi Judah put the temptation plainly. If Moses had wanted more years he had only to be slow. He could have sent for a fuller count of the fighting men, or waited on the barley, or found some fault in the order of the camps that needed a month to correct, and heaven would have waited with him, since the decree ran on his work and not on the calendar. Nobody would have called that cowardice. An old man taking his time over a campaign looks like prudence from any distance.

He stood there long enough for the arithmetic to finish. One more spring. Then another after it, if he was careful about the preparations. The smell of the camp at first light, which he had complained about for forty years and would not smell at all once the thing was done. Then he asked the question that ended the argument inside his own chest: shall I hold back the vengeance owed to Israel for the sake of my own life?

The verse leaves him no room to reconsider. Immediately Moses spoke to the people, "Arm men from among you." He had called his own death out loud, in front of witnesses, before fear could invent a reason to wait until the fall.

The Trumpets Went Out in Phinehas's Hand

Into Phinehas's hand went the trumpets for the alarm, and the men marching behind him already knew that sound, because it was not a war sound. It was the sound that ended the week. Every Friday the hazzan of the congregation carried the trumpets up to the highest roof in the city and blew once, and whoever was far out in the fields put down his tools. He blew a second time, and the people close in hurried through the gates. He blew a third, and the hot food went into store while the lamps were kindled or set to rest. When the last blast died a woman still holding a lamp lowered it, a pot still on the stove came down onto the ground, and the Sabbath was in.

The same trumpets moved the camps when Israel traveled and gathered the assembly when Israel met, so nothing new had to be made for Midian. Israel went out to take a vengeance to the note their mothers had used to stop work by. The same silver did both.

The Angel Took His Stand Overhead

Afterward came, because he had made it come. "Ascend this mountain and die there," the Holy One said, and the Angel of Death overheard it and drew the wrong conclusion. He took the words for a handover. So he came down and stood directly above the prophet and waited there the way a bird waits over a field, certain that the soul underneath him had already been signed away.

Moses looked up at the shape hanging over him and was not afraid, since he was holding a promise older than the angel's assumption. "The Holy One has already told me that He will not deliver me into your hand." Then he turned his back on it and called Israel forward, tribe by tribe, and began to bless them while it hovered there with nothing to take. He blessed Israel before his death, with death in the room.

A Blessing With No Wound In It

The tribes had reason to brace. Noah blessed and cursed Canaan in the same breath. When Isaac blessed Jacob, Esau walked out of the tent hating his brother, and Jacob himself, blessing these same tribes on his deathbed, stopped to rebuke Reuben and Simeon and Levi to their faces. Their fathers had never once been handed a blessing that came alone.

Balaam was fit to bless seven times over seven altars and managed three, because his eye was grudging and would not open any wider. Let Moses come, whose eye is generous. He added the seventh, and it arrived without the barb, no name singled out for shame, nothing held back for a later reckoning. The angel stayed where it was through all of it and took nothing.

He Went Up

The knot untied in the order he had chosen. The war moved, the trumpets cried, Midian's debt was paid, and so the last thing holding him in the world came loose. He had bought nothing for himself out of the whole arrangement. Another year was available at the price of a slow muster, and he spent it instead on other men's justice and on the names of twelve tribes said out loud under a waiting angel.

The last name went up into air the angel could not touch. Then Moses turned toward the mountain, and it was where it had been all along.