Moses Says Goodbye

Forty years had gone by since the night they walked out of Egypt. The children who had come out on their mothers’ shoulders were grown up now, with children of their own, and they were camped at the edge of the land God had promised them. And Moses, who was very old, gathered them all together — everybody, the men and the women and the boys and the girls — to say the last things he had to say. This is what he told them: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord. And you are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength. And these words I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting in the house and when you are walking down the road, when you lie down at night and when you get up in the morning. Tie them on your hand, and keep them in front of your eyes, and write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.”

And Moses said, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land, you will live in fine cities that you did not build, and eat from vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and drink from wells that you did not dig. And when you have eaten and are full — that is the moment to be careful. Do not forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.” And he said, “And one day your son will ask you, ‘Why do we do all this?’ And you are to tell him: we were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of there with a mighty hand.”

Then Moses said, “I am a hundred and twenty years old today, and I cannot go out and come in any longer. And the Lord has told me that I will not cross this Jordan. But the Lord your God himself goes over ahead of you — and Joshua will lead you across. Be brave and strong. Do not be afraid of them, and do not lose heart — for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will never let you go, and he will never leave you.” And he called Joshua up in front of everybody, and said to him, “Be brave and strong. You are the one who will bring this people into the land the Lord promised their fathers, and you are the one who will give it to them. And the Lord goes with you. He will not let you go, and he will not leave you. Do not be afraid.” Then Moses wrote all the words of the law in a book, and gave it to the priests who carried the golden chest, and told them to read it out loud to the whole people — men, women, children, and strangers alike — every seventh year, so that nobody would ever forget. And he taught them a song, so that even the children would carry the words in their mouths.

Then Moses went up, all alone, from the flat plains of Moab to the top of a mountain called Nebo, where you can see a long, long way. And the Lord showed him the whole land: the hills of Gilead away to the north, and the country of Naphtali, and Ephraim, and Judah as far as the western sea, and the wilderness, and the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees. And the Lord said to him, “This is the land I swore to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, when I said, I will give it to your children. I have let you see it with your eyes — but you are not going into it.” And there, on the mountain, looking out over the whole good land, Moses the servant of the Lord died. He was a hundred and twenty years old, and his eyes were still bright and his strength had not left him. They buried him in a valley in Moab, and to this day nobody knows the place. And all the children of Israel wept for Moses out on the plains for thirty days. And there was never another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face — not in all the signs and wonders God sent him to do, and not in the great strong hand he showed in front of all Israel. The baby in the basket had brought a whole nation out of Egypt and home to the edge of their own land.