The final song of Moses

Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the importance of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32.

On the Shabbat between Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and Succot (Tabernacles) we read the Song of Moses, often known as Haazinu (Give ear) Deuteronomy 32.

Moses calls on heaven and earth to bear witness to the calamities which is able to befall Israel if she sins. Why heaven and earth? Because Moses knows he’s about to die and needs witnesses who will outlive each him and future generations. Despite the sense of urgency there’s timelessness. If crucial heaven will withhold rain, and earth will withhold her produce.

However, ‘May my teaching drop like rain’. Here the word ‘teaching’ is rooted within the Hebrew word ‘lkch’ ‘to take’. The student should take the teaching as a present from the teacher and never merely regard it as boring instruction or worse. This form of teaching is as precious a present to the Jewish people as rain falling on parched Israeli soil in early autumn, with temperatures still often sky high! 

‘May my utterance flow just like the dew.’ Teaching might be little and sometimes, which, like dew, often penetrates the very best, or ‘like storm winds on the vegetation’, when students are already well prepared, and even ‘like raindrops upon grass’, a sprinkling of which may sometimes do the job as efficiently as more assertive methods. 

Here Moses teaches us the helpful lesson that Torah students are available in all styles and sizes, working at different rhythms, depending on ability, preparedness and former knowledge. Torah, like rain, is for everybody, but can only be absorbed at the person’s own pace. 

But none of this might be possible without the One firm and steadfast Rock, G-d Himself, around Whom every thing gathers and by Whom every thing is held together.

G-d is ‘your Father Who each created you and firmed you up’ (v 6). ‘Jacob [the Jewish people] is the measure of His inheritance’ (v 9). G-d found Jacob ‘in a desert land in utter formlessness (Tohu), a howling wilderness’ (v 10). Doesn’t this birth of the Jewish people in utter chaos not remind us of the birth of the world in Genesis 1 and likewise of the newborn baby, helpless aside from his mother?

What did G-d do with this infant-like people? He proved ever-attentive, ‘encircled him, imbued him with discernment, attended to him just like the apple of his eye.’ Here G-d is depicted because the ever-attentive mother hovering over her young offspring, never for one moment leaving them out of her sight, ‘like an eagle awakening her nest, hovering over her young, spreading her wings and taking them, bearing them up on her pinions. The Lord alone guided them and no strange deity was with them’ (vv 11-12). 

This teaches us that G-d’s Torah in all its facets is supreme, based on the popularity of G-d’s unique Oneness, as crucial for the birth and sustenance of the Jewish people as a human mother’s milk for her newborn. The baby emerges from a state of chaos, just because it states of the world at the start of Genesis 1: ‘tohu vvohu’ – formless and void. 

Later on, when the persons are ready, this eagle will show her offspring the way to soar to the heights. They must remember the chaos of their birth as a people and never succumb to false gods, riches and indolence. These themes are ‘all of the words of this Song’ which Moses spoke to the people ‘he and Joshua ben Nun’ (v 44), the brand new leader who was to assume Moses’ mantle and guide the people into the Promised Land. The Torah ‘will not be an empty thing for you, because it’s your life and thru this word you’ll lengthen your days within the Land which you might be crossing the Jordan to own’ (v 47).

It is obvious due to this fact that the Torah, the Song of G-d to Moses, will not be only a teaching but a therapy to heal the Jewish people of the various ills they are going to encounter on their solution to the Promised Land and likewise once they’re in it and must take care of enemies, physical, religious and psychological, who will try their best to unseat them and destroy their spirit.  

At times like this, let’s remember and take heart within the knowledge that G-d is our maternal eagle, continually carrying His people on heavenly wings, soaring above the fray. Moreover, as G-d’s people, the Jewish people, together together with her Torah, and Land, won’t ever be destroyed.