Parashat Devarim פָּרָשַׁת דְּבָרִים

I understand that many colleges and universities give retiring faculty a chance to present their “last lecture” as part of their retirement year. Well, in this week’s parsha, Devarim, that’s what we’ve got - Moshe is giving his last lecture.  

He is 36 days away, not from retirement, but from death. He is so worried about the future of the Israelites. if miracles didn’t keep us faithful, how can we be expected to follow God’s commandments when the miracles are no longer a part of our daily lives?

So, Moses - who we remember told God that he was “slow of speech and slow of tongue” - has a lot to say. 

Virtually the entire Book of Deuteronomy is his farewell discourse to the people he has tried so hard to lead. The book actually has two common names, one derived from Hebrew and the other from Greek. The Hebrew, Sefer D’Varim, refers to its first words: Eleh ha-d’varim, “These are the words [that Moses addressed to all Israel]“.  Derived from the Greek translation for Mishnah Torah, Deuteronomy means  “second law“ and refers to the fact that Moses is repeating the Exodus/Numbers narrative. 

But we know that that is not quite the case. Moses doesn’t simply restate the Exodus narrative - he takes some liberties with this second telling, perhaps for good reasons.

For example, he takes credit for the appointment of the magistrates, even though it was his father-in-law who suggested it to him. And when he rebukes the people for the lack of faith of the twelve scouts, he blames them for refusing to move forward to the promised land. But he doesn’t ever mention the negative account of giants that left the people so terrified or even the fact that it was HE who sent out the spies in the first place. 

In this second rendering Moses will simplify complexities and complications, resulting in a narrative in which Moses is God’s most faithful and obedient servant, and the people are the faithless bane of his existence.

Nachmanides (Ramban) euphemistically remarked that Moses’ rendition of this twice- told tale was designed l’hosif bahen bi’ur,  “to add clarity and explanation“ and to make sure that the entirety of the generation that would enter the Land heard it - just as the entirety of the Exodus generation experienced Sinai. 

We don’t know whether the Moses we see here is deliberately simplifying and changing some details, or whether this is truly how he remembers these events. We all know how fragile and tricky human memory can be. Sometimes we forget. And sometimes memories morph into something else. And sometimes we adjust our memories - without even realizing it - to fit what we need them to be. This may well be Moses’ emotional need as he nears the end of his life. The Moses of this parsha is aged and tired and worried.

In HIS last lecture, the fate of the Jewish people is at stake, and he knows it. ​