The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael explores a tradition about what God revealed to Moses at the end of his life. Among the many visions granted to Moses before his death, the rabbis ask: did God also show him the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?
The answer comes through a careful reading of Deuteronomy. When the Torah describes what Moses saw from the mountaintop, it mentions "the plain" — a seemingly unremarkable geographical detail. But the rabbis connect this word to another verse entirely. In (Genesis 19:25), the Torah uses the same word when describing how God "overturned these cities and all of the plain." The verbal parallel is the key.
This technique — called gezerah shavah, linking two passages through a shared word — allows the rabbis to conclude that when Moses looked out and saw "the plain," he was not merely surveying landscape. He was witnessing the catastrophic overturning of Sodom and Gomorrah, replayed before his eyes as a prophetic vision.
The implication is staggering. Moses, standing on the threshold of death, was granted not just a view of the Promised Land he would never enter, but a panoramic vision of sacred history itself. The destruction of the wicked cities was part of that revelation — a reminder that divine justice is as real as divine promise. The land Moses saw carried within it the memory of both blessing and judgment.