Commentaire de citation sur Les Psaumes 118:17

The explanation of יה, the half of the name of God, will be found in the Book of Psalms,³In his Commentary on Ps. 118:17, I. E. explains וזמרת, but not the meaning of יה. He intended perhaps to do it on Ps. 68:5, to which verse he refers also in his commentary on Isaiah 26:4. It is, however, explained, Ex. 3:15, and Sefer Hashem, 100:8. and of זמרת in the Pentateuch (Exod. 15:2)

“Enough” [3:26]. The Holy One said to Moses: Adam brought death into the world, so that each person must die. Moses responded: Lord of the Universe, Adam committed a sin. The Holy One said: did Abraham have to die? He allowed himself to be thrown into the fire for the sake of God. Moses responded: an evil son, Ishmael, came from Abraham. The Holy One said: Isaac stretched out his neck to be slaughtered for the sake of God and he had to die. Moses said: the evil Esau came from Isaac. The Holy One said: Jacob had twelve righteous children and he had to die. Moses said: however, Jacob did not ascend to heaven like I did, and he did not receive the Torah, as I did. Moses said: there were six hundred thousand Israelites and they sinned many times, and You forgave them, and You do not want to forgive me? The Holy One responded: one does much more for the sake of a community than one does for the sake of an individual. Moses said: punish me with torments to my body, but do not give me into the hands of the angel of death. I will tell Your praises in the whole world, as the verse says, “I shall not die but live and proclaim the works of the Lord” [Psalms, 118:17]. The Holy One responded: there is a gate through which even the righteous have to enter, as the verse says, “this is the gateway to the Lord – the righteous shall enter through it” [Psalms, 118:20]. Moses saw that he could not win his case, so he went to heaven and earth and said: pray for me. They responded: we have to pray for ourselves, since we will also be destroyed in the end, as the verse says, “the heavens should melt away like smoke, and the earth wear out like a garment” [Isaiah, 51:6]. This means, the heavens will dissolve like smoke and the earth will melt like a skein of thread. So Moses went to the stars and to the sun and moon, and the high mountains. They all responded: we have enough to deal with. He came to the sea and the sea said to Moses: what happened to you? You beat me with your stick and I had to split. The Shekhinah always stood at your right hand. As soon as Moses heard that the sea spoke about the wonders that he did in his youth, Moses ran and screamed, and cried before the highest angel and said: pray for me. The angel responded: I have heard that your prayers will not help. Moses immediately shouted and cried. The Holy One said: I have sworn two oaths. If you want to remain alive, then Israel must be destroyed, heaven forbid. If Israel were to remain alive, then you must die. Moses responded: I and my thousands should be destroyed, before any Israelite should be destroyed. The Holy One said: if your fear of the angel of death is so great, then I will place the angel of death in your hands. Moses responded: how should my mother, Yocheved, not mourn? She has already buried two children, and should she also bury the third one? The Holy One said: the time has come for Joshua to be a king over Israel. Therefore, you must die. Moses said: if this is why I must die, I will be a disciple to Joshua and let him be the teacher. The Holy One responded: If you want to do that, then it is good. Moses immediately went to the tent of Joshua, early in the morning, and stood by the door. Joshua taught Torah to Israel and did not see Moses, since Moses had bent down so that he should not be seen, and closed his mouth with his hands, so that he should not be recognized. All of Israel came to Moses’ tent and they found him with Joshua. Moses stood and Joshua sat. All of Israel said to Joshua: what is this? You are sitting and your teacher is standing? As soon as Joshua saw that Moses was standing, he tore his garments and cried, and said: my teacher, my teacher, my lord, what are you doing? The Israelites said to Moses, teach us Torah. Moses responded I am not supposed to. They said: we will not allow you. A heavenly voice came down from heaven and said: learn Torah from Joshua. They immediately learned Torah from Joshua and Moses sat at the right hand of Joshua and Eliezer on his left side, and Joshua taught Torah before Moses. Afterwards, when all of Israel left the house of study, all of Israel came to Moses and said to him: teach us and explain what Joshua had said. Moses responded: I cannot do it. That hour, Moses said: Lord of the Universe, it is time; I will die. They said to Moses: there is still an hour to your death. Moses said: let us wait a while; I will first bless Israel. He blessed each tribe separately. Then he saw that it was almost time to die; he blessed all of Israel together. Then they said to him: Moses, there is still a half hour before your death. He began to ask forgiveness of all of Israel and said: I have troubled you many times to study Torah, forgive me. Then they said: Moses there is still a minute to your death. Immediately, he said: blessed be His name, who lives and exists forever. He said to Israel: when you will come to the land of Israel, remember me. They said: how should we not remember you? You have done everything good for us. Immediately they said: Moses, there is still half a minute before your death. Moses immediately put both hands on his heart and said to Israel. These hands that received the Torah will be buried in the earth. His soul immediately left him. No man and no angel buried him, but the Holy One himself. He died on the seventh day of the month of Adar, the same day that he was born. The Holy One counts the days of the righteous.³Tanhuma, Veethanan, 6.

וימת שם משה, “Moses died there.” According to Psalms 118,17, Moses said to G–d at the time of his death: “I do not wish to die but to live and to proclaim the works of the Lord.” G–d replied that it was impossible to fulfill his wish, as it has been decreed that every human being must die. Thereupon Moses said to G–d: “I have one request to make from You so that they can all see that there is absolutely no one like You;” before he could articulate his request all the gates of the earth and the great deep opened up, and this is what Moses meant when he had said to the people in Deuteronomy 4,39: וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך כי ה' הוא האלוקים “you will know this day and it will register in your hearts, that the Lord is the G–d;” as soon as he had gotten to this word, Moses added: אין עוד, “no one else.” As soon as G–d had heard Moses saying these words, He said to him: “since you have said the words: אין עוד,“I will testify with the same words that there never has been nor ever will be again a prophet comparable to your stature.” (verse 10 in our chapter). Immediately following this conversation, G–d, personally, accompanied by the three angels Michael, Gavriel and Zagzagel (the angel who teaches fetuses in their mother’s wombs the Torah) descended to earth, Gavriel prepared the bier on which Moses was to die, Michael spread a red woolen sheet over it, whereas Zagzagel arranged his headrest on the bier. G–d instructed Moses how to arrange the various parts of his body when he laid down on the bier, and as soon as he had done so, He spoke to the soul of Moses, reminding it that it had been granted the privilege of being a guest in Moses’ body for one hundred and twenty years, but saying that the time had now come for it to return to its place in the celestial regions. The soul replied in a very respectful manner to G–d that although it was aware that G–d had created it in order to reside within Moses’ body, the fact that during all these one hundred and twenty years she had enjoyed being hosted by the purest body a body that had never been host to any worm or otherwise destructive creature. Even flies had never settled on Moses’ skin. The body she inhabited had never been jealous or envious of a fellow human being. Seeing that she had been privileged to inhabit such a body, the soul said, she was very reluctant to leave such a body. After having listened to the soul, G–d again asked her not to delay His timetable. He promised that soul to promote it to the loftiest rank of all the creatures in the celestial spheres. Its permanent seat would be immediately below His throne, next to the highest ranking groups of angels. Still, the soul responded that it would prefer to remain in Moses’ body to sharing such honours with the highest ranking angels. It pointed out that from those groups of angels several when becoming residents on earth, i.e. Uzza and Azael, had become more corrupt and had lusted after human females until G–d had been forced to put an end to them. Moses, on the other hand, when G–d had appeared to him at the burning bush, never once continued to have sexual relations with his wife. As a result, she, this soul, begged to remain part of Moses. In view of all this, G–d decided to remove Moses’ soul from his body by kissing it. This is the meaning of the word: על פי ה', “by the mouth of the Lord”, at the end of our verse. At that hour, G–d Himself broke out weeping, seeing that He had been forced to remove Moses from earth through a decree issued by oath a long time ago; this is alluded to in Psalms 94,16: מי יקום לי עם-מרעים מי יתיצב לי עם פועלי און, G–d mourned the fact that from now on “who will take My part against evil men, who will stand up for Me against wrongdoers?” The angels in heaven were also weeping and saying: והחכמה מאין תמצא ונעלמה מעיני כל חי, “but where can wisdom now be found, and where is now the source of understanding?” The heavens were weeping and saying: אבד חסיד מן הארץ, “the pious have vanished from earth.” (Michah 7,2). The author continues in this vein, quoting all parts of creation bemoaning the death of Moses as an irreplaceable loss for mankind. (The sources of the above statements are found in Devarim Rabbah at the end, and in Yalkut Shimoni on the portion of Vayelech) Concerning the last eight verses in the Torah, their author, and how to relate to this as it is difficult to attribute them as having been written by Moses either posthumously or before his death, the Talmud tractate Baba batra folio 15, suggests as a possible way to deal with this problem, that they be read by individuals but not as part of the public Torah reading. This line in the Talmud is interpreted differently by a number of commentators. Seeing that we read these lines in the normal fashion, there is no point in challenging what has been accepted for many hundreds of years by all sections of orthodox Judaism.