Moses Desired Aaron's Death More Than His Own

The Man Who Did Not Want to Escape Death

When God told Moses he would be gathered to his people as Aaron his brother was gathered, Moses did not argue. He had argued before, five hundred and fifteen times at the border of the land, drawing circles and demanding entry. This time he listened. And the tradition heard desire inside the listening. Not a request to live longer. Not a plea to enter the land one more time. A longing for the specific kind of death his brother had been granted.

Sifrei Bamidbar reads the phrase as Aaron your brother was gathered and derives from it that Moses desired such a death. The word desired, in the Hebrew of the midrash, is the same word used for the deep longing of one who covets. Moses had watched Aaron die, and he wanted that one.

What Aaron's Death Looked Like

The midrash fills in the scene Moses had witnessed on Mount Hor. Moses had brought Aaron and Eleazar up the mountain on God's command. He told Aaron that a deposit he was holding needed to be returned to its Owner. Aaron thought he meant his sons, that Eleazar and Itamar would be claimed. Moses said no. He thought Moses meant his priestly garments, the robes he had worn into the Most Holy Place. Moses said no. He asked again. Moses answered: the One lamp. Your soul. Aaron understood and wept. Then Moses comforted him: your sons will stand in your place.

What followed required a miracle. Moses stripped Aaron of his outer vestment and placed it on Eleazar. Then the inner garment. Each robe transferred from the living body to the son's, layer by layer, without the inner ever being exposed beneath the outer, without any garment displaced from its order. Sifra records that the Holy One gave Aaron more honor in death than in life: Moses dressed and undressed the High Priest himself, the same hands that had first robed Aaron at the dedication of the Mishkan. In life Moses was Aaron's servant at that ceremony. In death he served him one last time.

Lying Down With Closed Eyes

Sifrei Devarim gives the full inventory of what Aaron's death contained: a cave, a bed, stretched arms, stretched legs, closed mouth, closed eyes. Moses told Aaron each thing. Moses watched each thing happen. Aaron lay down on the bed that had been prepared. The Holy One kissed him and his soul departed with the kiss. When Moses turned to descend the mountain, he looked back at the cave and said: happy are you who went in peace.

That happiness was not envy in the bitter sense. It was recognition. Moses had spent forty years carrying Israel the way a nurse carries a nursing child. He had argued with God, with Pharaoh, with the Israelites themselves, again and again throughout the wilderness. Aaron had served as High Priest, mediating between the people and the Presence, making atonement, bearing the names of the twelve tribes on his chest and on his shoulders. Both men were spent. Aaron's exit was witnessed by his son, prepared by his brother, sealed by a divine kiss inside a mountain. Moses saw all of it.

What Moses Actually Received

Moses died alone on a mountain, with no son to witness and no brother to prepare the bed. Legends of the Jews records the instructions God gave him: go alone, let no one accompany you. While Aaron's son Eleazar walked up Mount Hor with his father, Moses climbed Nebo by himself. The reason given is that a greater honor awaited Moses in death than anyone alive could witness. God's own presence descended for Moses in a way that required no human witness.

But the midrash does not pretend that solitude was what Moses wanted. He wanted the cave, the bed, the words from his brother, the face of a son. He did not get those things. He got God alone on the mountain, which is the highest thing the tradition can imagine, and which still was not the thing he asked for. The desire is left standing in the text without apology. Moses envied his brother's death. That is a human feeling the tradition refuses to flatten into acceptance.