Essay for Deuteronomy 34:1

Genesis concluded with the death of Yosef; Joshua will end with the death of the victorious general. Moshe’s passing provides the natural ending for the Torah; like that other great work of the first millennium B.C.E., the Iliad, a funeral marks the end of the old generation and old circumstances. Israel, the narrated audience of the book of Deuteronomy, is now armed for what lies ahead, thanks to the leader’s orations that have comprised an entire book. The rhetorical force of Deuteronomy thus caps the stories, poems, and laws of Genesis through Numbers, and makes of the five books truly a “teaching” or Instruction.