דברים

ויעל משה. כתב החכם רבי אברהם ז"ל, לפי דעתי כי מזה הפסוק ואילך כתב יהושע, כי אחר שהלך משה לא ירד, ובדרך נבואה כתב אותו, והעד ויראהו ה', גם ויאמר ה' אליו, גם ויקבר אותו, עד כאן. הוצרך לפרש כן לפי שקשה בעיניו שיכתוב משה מיתתו וקבורתו. ואינו אמת, ואין פירושו נכון. אבל הנכון להאמין והקבלה האמתית שיש לנו כי משה כתב התורה כלה מבראשית עד לעיני כל ישראל הכל מפי הגבורה. והנה משה כמעתיק מספר קדמון מתחלה ועד סוף אות באות, וזו היא דעת רבי מאיר שאמר אפשר ספר תורה חסר אות אחת ומשה אומר לקוח את ספר התורה הזה, אלא הקב"ה אומר ומשה כותב בדמע. ונראה לי שאין לתמוה אם יכתוב משה וימת שם משה עבד ה' ויקבור אותו בגי והוא בחיים, כי היה כותב מה שעתיד להיות, וכן למעלה בדברי השירה (דברים לב) וירא ה' וינאץ מכעס בניו ובנותיו, שהודיע בזה מה שעתיד להיות בבית ראשון, וכן בשאר הענינים בפסוקי העתידות שמדבר בהם בלשון עבר, שכל הנביאים נוהגין המנהג הזה בדבריהם לדבר עבר במקום עתיד.

ויעל משה, “Moses ascended;” according to the view of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, these words and all those that follow have been written by Moses’ disciple Joshua, seeing that after Moses ascended he did not come back, and when should he have written these words and where? Joshua wrote these lines after having been prophetically inspired, seeing that he was not an eye-witness to what is described in these verses. Ibn Ezra views the words ויראהו ה', “the Lord showed him,” as proof that Moses could not have written this, else he would have written ויראני ה', “the Lord showed me.” He also feels it is impossible for Moses to have written, concerning himself, “he was buried there.” Ibn Ezra felt constrained to adopt this approach as he could not accept that Moses describes his own death and burial while still alive. However, this is not true; his commentary is not correct. The correct way of viewing these lines is that we must accept the tradition that Moses wrote the entire Torah including the last eight verses at the dictation of G’d. In fact, one may view Moses as someone who copied verbatim a book which had been written long before he ever lived. This is the view of Rabbi Meir in Baba Batra 15 who said: “is it conceivable that the Torah would be complete if even a single letter of it were missing? Was it not Moses himself who commanded the Levites in Deut. 31,26: ‘to take this book of the Torah?’ Did he command them to take an incomplete Torah?” We must adopt the opinion of the sages in the Talmud who hold that Moses wrote these last verses בדמע. [I have never been sure if this means “tearfully,” or “with tears,” i.e. substituting tears for ink. Ed.] I do not believe that it is something so extraordinary for us to believe that Moses could write a verse saying: “Moses, the servant of Hashem, died there, and He buried him in the valley, etc.,” seeing he was writing matters which had not happened yet but would surely happen in the future. He had previously written about things which had not happened yet but would happen in the future, when he wrote (Deut. 32,19) “the Lord saw and became exasperated and spurned His sons and daughters, etc.” At that time Moses had predicted events which would not occur until the fall of the Temple. He had also described many other events in the future in the past tense, as if they had already taken place. This was a style employed by many prophets and is something we should not have too much trouble to understand (Compare Nachmanides on Exodus 15,1 and the use of the future tense there for an event which had just occurred).