Musar su Deuteronomio 34:10

When our sages commented on Deut. 34,10 "that there never did arise in Israel a prophet like Moses etc.," they said that among the other nations there did arise someone comparable to Moses, i.e. Bileam (compare Sifri on that verse). It is totally absurd to believe that a money-grabbing magician such as Bileam should have been equated by our sages with Moses! Surely they did not mean to compare Moses to Bileam as being equal or similar in holiness, character qualities, relationship with G–d, etc!

Another difficulty is the Torah saying: "Moses heard and fell on his face" (16,4). Sanhedrin 110, asks what it was precisely that Moses had heard, and Rabbi Samuel son of Nachmeyni says that he had heard that these people suspected him of committing adultery, since we read in Psalms 106,16: "ויקנאו למשה במחנה," which is interpreted by Rabbi Shmuel bar Vitzchak that each Jewish husband suspected Moses of a adultery with his wife, since the Torah had stated that "Moses took his tent and put it up outside the camp" (Exodus 33,7). The question arises that even granted the Jewish people were sinful, how could they have suspected Moses of adultery?! After all, Miriam had criticised Moses for not even living with his own wife, much less with other husbands' wives! What possible reason could these people have had to suspect Moses of something so patently absurd? Many commentators have written that this accusation is not to be taken at face value, but rather that the rebels denied the quality of Moses' prophetic insights, claiming that it was not, as stated, of a פנים אל פנים variety as described in Deut. 34,10, i.e. qualitatively superior to the prophetic powers of other prophets. The rebels claimed that these other angels by means of whom prophetic images are transmitted are known as "אישים," "men," meaning that they are the means by which humans receive intelligence from celestial sources. The recipient would then be described as אשת איש, "a married lady", much as a wife describes herself as such, seeing she is the "passive" part of her husband. Their intention then was to deny Moses his special relationship with G–d. It was this special relationship which Maimonides describes. In his Moreh Nevuchim he describes the people protesting Moses' arrogant behavior in claiming special status!

How can we reconcile all this with the Torah's statement in Deut. 34,10, that "there never arose another prophet in Israel such as Moses, with whom G–d communicated face to face?" Besides, this is in direct opposition to the explanation we have quoted on the word אליך, in 19,2,? We must certainly assume that Moses' intellectual capacity of comprehending the deeper meaning of the red heifer legislation exceeded that of any one after him. This is also the meaning of Bamidbar Rabbah 19,6, that "all the red heifers have been named after Moses; when all other red heifers are gone, the one Moses made will still remain." All that this means is that all the red heifers that have ever been made holy through being burned, etc., were able to perform the function assigned to them only because Moses had burned the golden calf and used its ashes, just as later generations used the ashes of the red heifer. What we must keep in mind is that the main concern when relating to all the commandments is to comprehend their meaning in their metaphysical significance, i.e. סוד, and there was certainly no one who knew and appreciated these meanings as Moses did. Now we understand why the "red heifer of Moses was the one that lent sanctity to all other red heifers."