Essay su Deuteronomio 3:30

Moshe’s narrative moves the people toward their present location, east of Jericho, detailing their disappointments and triumphs in meetings with the indigenous peoples of the area. The account begins tentatively, with Israel warned not to antagonize their “cousins,” the Children of Esav, but ends with a foreshadowing of the conquest of Canaan—the successful war-making of the two and a half tribes (cf. Num. 32) that received land east of the Jordan.

Before Moshe begins his appeal to the people of Israel to keep the covenant, he recalls his fervent prayer to God to be allowed into the land himself, a prayer that is, of course, answered in the negative. This recollection raises the emotional stakes of what is to come; the bulk of the book is now established as Moshe’s last words.