Comentario citado sobre Josué 1:10

וילך משה וידבר את הדברים האלה אל כל ישראל. בן מאה ועשרים שנה אנכי היום, וגו', “Moses went and spoke these words to all of Israel. ‘I am 120 years old this day.’” It is possible that the 120 years Moses lived corresponded to the 120 days he spent on Mount Sinai. During the first 40 days he received the first set of Tablets. During the second 40 days he pleaded for G’d to forgive the people the sin of the golden calf; he spent the next 40 days on the mountain in order to receive the second set of Tablets. This may be the reason why he used the term אנכי instead of אני.
Our sages in Sotah 13 feel that he meant to say that on that day he was precisely 120 years old, i.e. that he died on the same day of the same month as he had been born. This may also be the reason why he used the word היום at the beginning of the previous Parshah, so that all these speeches took place on the same day. The day in question was the seventh day of Adar at the end of the Israelites 40th year in the desert. We have further proof of this in 34,8 where the Torah reported that the people mourned Moses for 30 days during which they did not journey. The Torah states explicitly that the days of Moses’ mourning came to an end. It is proper to read this verse in conjunction with Joshua 1,10: “Joshua commanded the law-enforcement officers of the people: ‘prepare for yourselves provisions for in another three days you will cross the river Jordan.’” Anyone reading these two verses together will realize that Joshua would not command the people to prepare these provisions until the mourning period for Moses had passed. To make this plain, the Torah had to write the verse: “the days of crying for (the death of) Moses had concluded.” The Book of Joshua 4,19 reports that the Jewish people completed crossing the river Jordan on the tenth of the first month, i.e. 3 days after the conclusion of the mourning period for Moses. By counting backwards you will arrive at the date of the 7th Adar as the date on which Moses had died. When the Torah in Exodus 2,3 reported that Moses’ mother was unable to hide him any longer, the date referred to is the 6th of Sivan, the day on which the revelation at Mount Sinai took place 80 years later. On that day, the light which filled only his parents’ home on the day he was born became so powerful that it shone for the whole Jewish nation. The light which had filled the house of Amram had already forecast the eventual greatness of the boy that had been born to Yocheved. The reason Yocheved had to hide Moses in a basket, well insulated, was that the light surrounding the baby had become so much stronger that it represented a danger to the family. The Torah speaks of Yocheved having hidden Moses for שלשה ירחים ‘three lunar months,” rather than שלשה חדשים, “three months,” (Exodus 2,2) to indicate that these were lunar months. The months Adar, Nisan, and Iyar are 29,30, and 29 days long, respectively. This gives us a total of 88 days during which Moses was kept “hidden” at home, or it takes us back to the 7th day of Adar as Moses’ birthday. From all this it becomes clear that Moses died on the same day of the same month on which he had been born. The word חדש implies a period which equals 1/12th of the year, something not subject to variation either by adding or subtracting from it. The same is not true of the period known as ירח, a period which may comprise either 29 or 30 days. The reason why the Torah used the term ירחים in the verse mentioned was to enable us to calculate the precise date on which Moses was born. This prompted our sages in Kiddushin 38 to state that G’d completes the life cycle of the righteous from day to day (to grant them whole years) something they base on Exodus 23,26: את מספר ימיך אמלא, “I will fill (round out) the number of your days (meaning “years”).

ובני ישראל אכלו את המן ארבעים שנה, “and the Children of Israel ate the manna for forty years.” At first glance there could not have been forty whole years as the first month after the Exodus they did not have any manna. It did not start descending until the middle of Iyar and the dough they had taken out of Egypt had lasted them for a month. If the report of the Torah is correct the manna should not have stopped until the middle of Iyar after Moses’ death, i.e. more than a month after the Israelites crossed the Jordan. We have a report in Joshua 5,11-12. that on the morrow of the Passover i.e. on the sixteenth of Nissan they ate from the produce of the land both unleavened bread and parched grain! The verse continues by reporting that on the day the Israelites ate from that produce the manna ceased. We are forced to understand the words “for forty years” in our verse as an approximate figure. In order to make certain that we do not misunderstand and believe that the manna was eaten for a full forty years, the Torah repeats giving further details by saying “they ate the manna until they came to an inhabited land, the edge of the land of Canaan.” You will find that this information corresponds exactly to what is written in Joshua 5,12: “on that same day, when they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased. The Israelites got no more manna.” According to our tradition the manna fell from the 15th of Iyar in the first year of the people’s wanderings and ceased falling the day after Moses died on the seventh day of Adar. For the next 38 days when the Israelites were already under the authority of Joshua no manna fell. The first thirty days were observed as mourning for Moses. They were followed by three days of preparing to cross the Jordan (Joshua 1,10) after which they crossed the Jordan on the 10th of Nissan. This was followed by the male Israelites born since the Exodus being circumcised at Gilgal (Joshua 5,9).