Musar para sa 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!

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."

Rabbi Berechyah means to tell us that from the moment Moses had become an איש, he was headed towards his ultimate achievement. His early youth foreshadowed his career. This is true in spite of the fact that at one point the Midrash Shemot Rabbah 45,5 comments that when Moses began to prophesy he was a relative child, i.e. immature in the ways of prophecy, since he had asked to be shown G–d's glory. Moses progressed constantly, until at the end of his life the Torah testifies that no one ever again attained his stature as a prophet and a man of G–d. The reason that he is described as איש, a title denoting that he was someone of stature already when he was a young man, is to indicate that sparks of G–dliness already came forth from him, such as when -as an act of jealousy on behalf of G–d- he killed the Egyptian who had tortured a Jew. He displayed his close attachment to G–d already at that time. Our sages expressed this thought when they said that Moses slew the Egyptian by uttering the Ineffable Name of G–d when cursing the Egyptian (Midrash Hagadol Exodus 2,20). We observe that even when engaged in an act at the beginning of his spiritual development, Moses is already described in a complimentary fashion, –