The story goes that when Moses realized that Heaven and Earth, the very cosmos, wouldn’t answer his prayers, he turned to humanity. He sought solace, intercession, from those he had guided. According to Legends of the Jews, Moses first went to his disciple, Joshua.
"O my son," Moses pleaded, "be mindful of the love with which I treated thee by day and by night, teaching thee mishnah (oral law) and halakah (Jewish law), and all arts and sciences. Implore now for my sake God's mercy, for perhaps through thee He may take pity upon me, and permit me to enter the land of Israel."
Can you feel the weight of that request? Moses, the man who spoke to God face to face, now humbled, begging for mercy through the prayers of his student.
Joshua, overcome with grief, wept and beat his palms in sorrow. But as he was about to pray, something intervened. Samael, often identified as an angel of death or a prosecuting angel, appeared and stopped his mouth. "Why dost thou seek to oppose the command of God," Samael challenged, "who is 'the Rock, whose work is perfect, and all whose ways are judgment?'"
Talk about a gut punch.
Joshua, defeated, returned to Moses with the heartbreaking news: "Master, Samael will not let me pray." At these words, the Legends of the Jews tells us, Moses burst into loud sobs, and Joshua, too, wept bitterly.
The image is powerful, isn’t it? Moses, the leader, the prophet, brought to tears, and Joshua, his faithful disciple, weeping alongside him, helpless in the face of divine decree. What does this moment tell us about fate, about free will, about the limits of even the most righteous among us? It reminds us that even in the face of immense power, there are moments of profound human vulnerability.