The Sifrei Devarim, a collection of early rabbinic legal interpretations on the Book of Deuteronomy, brings up this very point by looking at the death of King David.
"And thus do you find with David," the Sifrei tells us, "that he charged Solomon his son only close to his death, viz. (I Kings 2:1) 'And the days of David drew near to die, etc.'"
David, a warrior, a poet, a king…he waited until the very end to give his final instructions to his son and heir, Solomon. It makes you wonder what those instructions were, and why they were so important to deliver at that specific moment. What urgency lay within that exchange? We can imagine the scene: the aged king, summoning his strength to guide his son, his kingdom, into the future.
But the Sifrei Devarim isn’t just interested in royal deathbeds. It also grapples with something even bigger: the entirety of the Torah itself.
The text asks a powerful question tied to Deuteronomy 1:3: "...that Moses spoke to the children of Israel." Did Moses only prophesy these words that we find in Deuteronomy?
If so, what about the rest of the Torah? What about all the mitzvot, the commandments? The detailed laws, the general principles, the subtle inferences? Did Moses only transmit these words, or was there more?
The answer, according to the Sifrei, is a resounding "more."
The text continues: "Whence do I derive (the same for) all the words in the Torah: the less stringent and the more stringent, the identities (gezeiroth shavoth), the general principles, the details, and the inferences? From (Ibid.) 'according to all that the L-rd commanded him concerning them.'"
Gezeiroth shavoth, by the way, refers to a specific type of Biblical exegesis – a way of interpreting the text by finding similar words or phrases in different contexts. So, the Sifrei is saying, how do we know that Moses didn't just deliver the words of Deuteronomy, but the entire Torah? Because the text itself says, "according to all that the Lord commanded him concerning them." The phrase "all that the Lord commanded him concerning them" is expansive and all-encompassing.
It’s a reminder that what we see on the surface is often just the tip of the iceberg. That beneath the words, beneath the stories, lies a depth of meaning, a web of connections, that stretches back to Moses on Mount Sinai. A depth that continues to resonate today. What are the "last words" that guide your actions, your interpretations, your life? And what unseen depths might they contain?