The Hebrew Bible says Moses died "by the mouth of God" (Deuteronomy 34:5). Ancient tradition interprets this as death by a divine kiss—the gentlest possible departure from life. Targum Onkelos renders it "by the word of God." Not a kiss. A word. Even in death, Onkelos replaces the physical with the verbal, the anthropomorphic with the abstract.
The final chapter of the Torah is the shortest and the saddest. Moses ascends Mount Nebo. God shows him the entire Promised Land—Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah to the western sea, the Negev, the valley of Jericho. "I have shown it to you with your eyes, but you will not cross over there" (Deuteronomy 34:4). Onkelos translates this without alteration. No comfort is added. No theological explanation softens the verdict. Moses sees everything and enters nothing.
"He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab" (Deuteronomy 34:6). The subject is ambiguous in Hebrew—who buried Moses? God? An angel? Onkelos preserves the ambiguity. "And no man knows his burial place till this very day." The greatest prophet in Israel's history has an unmarked grave. Onkelos adds nothing because nothing can be added. The mystery is the point.
The Torah's final verses deliver its highest praise: "There has not ever arisen a prophet within Israel like Moses, whom God knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10). Onkelos renders "knew" as "appeared to"—God appeared to Moses in a way He appeared to no other prophet. The uniqueness of Moses is not that he knew God. It is that God chose to reveal Himself to Moses with an intimacy never repeated. The Torah ends with this claim, and Onkelos lets it stand as written—the one statement about God and humanity that needs no Aramaic adjustment.