Shabbat Parashat Vaetchanan - 5784

Shabbat Parashat Vaetchanan - 5784

Rabbi Hal Miller

  Ascend to the top of the cliff and raise your eyes westward, northward,

  southward and eastward, and see with your eyes, for you shall not cross

  this Jordan. [Devarim 3:27]

If Moshe looked to the west, then the north, then the south and then the east, and

in all directions he was looking at the promised land, doesn't that mean he was in

the middle of that land? We always understand that Moshe was not permitted to enter

the land, so how was he able to do this? We can postulate three answers to this.

First, if we say that the directions were not given as emanating from where Moshe

stood, rather from the Temple Mount, all makes sense. We do not have anything to

indicate this is the case, but there are many uses of 'direction' that have implications

for something other than from where one is standing.

Second, Moshe was prohibited here from crossing the Jordan. We see elsewhere

the specification that he is not to enter "the land". But when God promised the three

patriarchs the land, it stretched back to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and Moshe

at this point was well beyond those. Thus he was apparently only banned from that

portion of the land to the west of the Jordan, not from all of the promised land. Chizkuni

for example says that Moshe saw with his eyes all the land that Yehoshua would

conquer as well as what Yehoshua would not get to and divide up during his lifetime.

Thus the ban on Moshe only applied to "phase 1" of the project, that which would be

divided up among the tribes in this world, but the ban did not apply to what would

eventually be given to Israel in the times of Moshiach. Ramban seems to support

this when he writes, "All of the land that was on the other (west) side of the Jordan".

Third, there may be a miraculous connection going on here. Or HaChayim notes that

God told Moshe to lift his eyes, meaning that "whatever Moshe intended to accomplish

by walking in the land he would now be able to do with his eyes alone." He also

suggests that God applied a little of the light created on the first day of Creation for

Moshe to see with, the way Adam was able to see from one end of the earth to the other.

Rav Soloveitchik explains that Moshe was no longer bound by the rules of nature at

this point. He explains that there are two states a man can be in, subject or object. As a

subject, the man is the actor. He climbs a mountain, straining to maintain his footing and

reach the summit. But if he loses his footing or the rock breaks out from under him, he

becomes an object and things happen to him. Moshe climbed the cliff here as a subject,

using his free will against the forces of nature. But at the top, he became an object and

was subservient to those forces. He was transformed, in effect, into a sacrifice. We know

that the bringing of animal sacrifices was to substitute for ourselves, but now Moshe

could no longer substitute, rather had to submit himself to his personal judgment.