Comentario citado sobre Deuteronómio 31:26

A person does not fulfill the commandment until the Torah is written in ‎accordance with the laws of a Sefer Torah. If there is a disqualification, even a missing or extra ‎letter, then a person does not fulfill this mitzvah, for it is not a Sefer Torah at all. The gemara ‎‎(Menachot 30a) asks, "Could a Torah be missing a letter? It is written(Devarim 31:26), 'Take this ‎Sefer Torah'!" The Rambam (Hilchot Tefillin, Mezuzahv'Sefer Torah 7:11) lists disqualifications and ‎says, "It does not have the status of a Sefer Torah, only as a chumash from which they teach ‎children." The Ran (Megilah) also writes that a person does not fulfill the mitzvah of writing a sefer ‎Torah with [a Torah that is] missing a letter. According to this, we cannot fulfill the mitzvah, for the ‎gemara (Kiddushin 30)explains that previous generations were expert in which letters to exclude ‎and which to include, but we are not expert. Therefore, we who are not expert might include a ‎letter in a word that should be written without it, or the reverse, and consequently we would not ‎fulfill the mitzvah [of writing a Torah] at all. The Shaagat Aryeh (36) has already suggested that we ‎might be exempt from this mitzvah today because we are not expert in missing and extra letters. ‎We can suggest that we are expert in the four chapters of the tefillin, for if this were not so, then ‎we could not fulfill the mitzvah of tefillin. We must say that since tefillin area constant mitzvah and ‎only include four‏ ‏paragraphs, we did not forget how to write‏ ‏it. As to the entire Torah, we are not ‎expert.‎‏ ‏Nonetheless, this remains difficult; writing a Torah is also a mitzvah, so how could people‏ ‏have failed to set their hearts against‏ ‏forgetting it?... How could the proper writing‏ ‏of the Torah ‎have been forgotten in the days‏ ‏of the Amoraim [recorders of the gemara]?‎‏ ‏In my humble ‎opinion, the explanation is‏ ‏that there are two types of missing or extra‏ ‏letters. One type involves a ‎missing or extra‏ ‏letter which changes the meaning of the‏ ‏word, or has the potential to change the‏ ‏meaning, like the examples cited in the‏ ‏gemara (Sanhedrin 4a)... According to theone who says ‎that we translate based on the‏ ‏word as it is written, a word which has an‏ ‏extra letter or is missing a ‎letter changes the‏ ‏message of G-d, for many laws will be‏ ‏altered from their true status. Even‏ ‏according to the opinion that we translate‏ ‏based on the word as it is pronounced, so‏ ‏that should ‎law does not change [based‏ ‏upon our incorrect writing], the Torah‏ ‏must still be written as it was ‎given. Therefore, when a Torah is missing a‏ ‏letter, since the Torah was given to us to‏ ‏be written ‎thus and not the way the word is pronounced [this change will disqualify ‎‏ ‏the Sefer Torah]… ‎However, other‏ ‏missing or extra letters do not change the‏ ‏meaning of the word…‎‏ ‏Certainly, the ‎first type of letters [i.e. the‏ ‏letters that would change the meaning of a word] were not forgotten… ‎but the‏ ‏missing or extra letters that would not‏ ‏change the meaning or cause harm by their absence ‎or inclusion were not‏ ‏known… and these letters, which do not‏ ‏change anything, do not harm this‏ ‏mitzvah and a person fulfills entirely the‏ ‏mitzvah to write a Torah with this act of writing… G-d ‎forbid that the Jewish‏ ‏people could not fulfill a biblical mitzvah‏ ‏for many generations.‎

ויעל משה, “Moses ascended;” according to the view of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, these words and all those that follow have been written by Moses’ disciple Joshua, seeing that after Moses ascended he did not come back, and when should he have written these words and where? Joshua wrote these lines after having been prophetically inspired, seeing that he was not an eye-witness to what is described in these verses. Ibn Ezra views the words ויראהו ה', “the Lord showed him,” as proof that Moses could not have written this, else he would have written ויראני ה', “the Lord showed me.” He also feels it is impossible for Moses to have written, concerning himself, “he was buried there.” Ibn Ezra felt constrained to adopt this approach as he could not accept that Moses describes his own death and burial while still alive.
However, this is not true; his commentary is not correct. The correct way of viewing these lines is that we must accept the tradition that Moses wrote the entire Torah including the last eight verses at the dictation of G’d. In fact, one may view Moses as someone who copied verbatim a book which had been written long before he ever lived. This is the view of Rabbi Meir in Baba Batra 15 who said: “is it conceivable that the Torah would be complete if even a single letter of it were missing? Was it not Moses himself who commanded the Levites in Deut. 31,26: ‘to take this book of the Torah?’ Did he command them to take an incomplete Torah?” We must adopt the opinion of the sages in the Talmud who hold that Moses wrote these last verses בדמע. [I have never been sure if this means “tearfully,” or “with tears,” i.e. substituting tears for ink. Ed.]
I do not believe that it is something so extraordinary for us to believe that Moses could write a verse saying: “Moses, the servant of Hashem, died there, and He buried him in the valley, etc.,” seeing he was writing matters which had not happened yet but would surely happen in the future. He had previously written about things which had not happened yet but would happen in the future, when he wrote (Deut. 32,19) “the Lord saw and became exasperated and spurned His sons and daughters, etc.” At that time Moses had predicted events which would not occur until the fall of the Temple. He had also described many other events in the future in the past tense, as if they had already taken place. This was a style employed by many prophets and is something we should not have too much trouble to understand (Compare Nachmanides on Exodus 15,1 and the use of the future tense there for an event which had just occurred).

I have already mentioned in connection with Exodus 16,32 that the Ark constructed by Betzalel was secreted inside the Temple (of Solomon) together with the bottle of manna and certain other sacred vessels at the instruction of King Yoshiah who hid them under an area of the Sanctuary known as מחילה. There was a special reason why these specific vessels were selected for hiding rather than others. The reason that King Yoshiah hid the Ark rather than most other sacred vessels was twofold; one reason was its superior holy status unmatched by other sacred vessels. Seeing that it was the first of the holy vessels to be constructed, its holiness was greater than the vessels fashioned later. It was perceived as a symbol of the celestial throne. As a result of such considerations it was feared that loss of the Ark would be equivalent to a departure of G’d’s presence from the land of Israel. The king knew that the state of Israel was going to be destroyed by Nevuchadnezzar as the prophets of his time had been threatening this if the people did not return to G’d wholeheartedly. It was clear to him that the conquerors would capture and take with them the holy vessels of the Temple to Babylon; this is why he was so concerned with the honour of the Holy Ark that he preferred to bury it and hide it.
The second reason was that the Holy Ark symbolized for him the journeys of the Jewish people. He experienced that the staves of the Holy Ark which protruded a long distance beyond either corner to enable it to be carried. [It was very heavy due to the outer and inner layer of solid gold plus the weight of the Stone Tablets. I have seen a calculation of the total weight of the Ark complete with contents in Eliyahu Ki Tov’s commentary on Parshat Terumah or Tetzaveh. If my memory does not deceive me the weight approximated 3 tons. (76,000 lbs) Ed.]
During the reign of King Yoshiah these staves became visibly shorter, making transportation by means of them impossible. They reverted to the size they had been in Moses’ time. The king viewed this as a bad omen. Originally, the staves could be seen protruding through the dividing curtain of the Sanctuary from the Holy of Holies by causing the curtain to protrude into the airspace of the Sanctuary where it was pushed by these staves. The retraction in the length of these staves meant for King Yoshiah that the Ark was once more destined to travel, just as in the days of Moses. The Israelites, when looking into the open doors of the Sanctuary, could no longer perceive the curtain bulge at the point they were used to see it do so.
The king also saw that when the High Priest Chilkiyah came to perform the service in the Sanctuary (Kings II 22,8) that he found a Torah scroll on the side of the Holy Ark which had rolled into the Sanctuary instead of remaining in its assigned place in the Holy of Holies on top of the Ark (compare Deut. 31,26 and Talmud Baba Batra 14). These occurrences meant for him that the Temple would be destroyed. This is the reason why Targum Yonathan renders Ezekiel 1,1 “it was in the thirtieth year” as a reference to the year that Chilkiyah found the Torah scroll we mentioned. When considering these various omens King Yoshiah decided to hide the Holy Ark so that it would not have to travel into captivity.
We have established that the sanctity associated with the Ark applied to the Ark made by Betzalel, not the box made by Moses to accommodate the Tablets when he would come down from the mountain many months before the Tabernacle had been erected. Moses’ “ark” was strictly a temporary housing for the Tablets pending the construction of the Tabernacle. Concerning the Ark constructed by Betzalel, the Talmud in Eiruvin 63 taught that whenever the Ark and therefore the Presence of the Shechinah were not in their assigned abodes the Israelites were forbidden to engage in marital relations with their wives. It is totally impossible to understand this statement of the Talmud as applying to the ark made by Moses, i.e. the ark that went to war with the people. Seeing that the Holy Ark was held in captivity by the Philistines for seven months (Samuel I 6,1), we cannot assume that during all this time the people did not practice the commandment to be fruitful and to multiply. [I do not understand the author here. He had previously accused the sons of Eli of taking Betzalel’s Ark to war without G’d’s authorization although normally only Moses’ ark would be taken to war. Moreover, note that in Samuel I 4, it is clear that it was not Moses’ ark the people took to war on that occasion. Ed.]
David is also reported to tell Uriah (Bat Sheva’s first husband) to go home and engage in marital relations, all of this while war was in progress (Samuel II 11,8). Surely the prohibition mentioned in the Talmud could have applied only to the Ark of Betzalel. The lesson the sages taught must have been “When the HOLY ARK was not ‘at home,’ i.e. G’d was not at home, how could the people feel “at home,” by indulging in marital relations and carry on “business as usual!”

וימת שם משה AND MOSES DIED THERE — Is it possible that Moses, died, and then wrote: “And Moses died there”? But, thus far did Moses write, from here and onward Joshua wrote. Rabbi Meir said: But is it possible that the Book of the Torah would be lacking anything at all, and yet it would state before the account of Moses' death was written in it, (Deuteronomy 31:26) “Take this book of the Torah” -? Rather the Holy One, blessed be He, dictated this, and Moses wrote it in tears (Sifrei Devarim 357:28; Bava Batra 15a, Menachot 30a).