Rabbi Eliezer Hamodai taught that Moses was one of four great tzaddik (a righteous person)im (the righteous) — righteous people — to whom God gave a subtle hint about the future. The four were Moses, Jacob, David, and Mordechai. Two of them understood the hint and acted on it. Two did not.
Moses received his hint when God told him to "place it in the ears of Joshua" (Exodus 17:14). By singling out Joshua as the one who should hear the prophecy of Amalek's future destruction, God was quietly revealing that Joshua — not Moses — would lead Israel into the Promised Land. Moses, however, did not pick up on the implication. He continued to plead with God for permission to enter the land himself, only to be refused again and again.
Jacob likewise missed his hint. And David and Mordechai? They caught theirs and acted decisively.
The teaching reveals something striking about prophecy in rabbinic thought. God does not always announce the future with thunderbolts and burning bushes. Sometimes the message arrives buried inside an ordinary instruction — a quiet signal hidden in plain sight. The test is not whether you receive the hint, since all four tzaddikim received one. The test is whether you can read the room, detect the deeper meaning, and adjust your expectations accordingly. Even Moses, the greatest prophet who ever lived, could miss a divine signal when it told him something he did not want to hear.