This week’s parsha is one long song.  Apparently, the Rabbis didn’t want to break it up into three parts for the three-year cycle, as the parsha we read is the same one long one each year.

It’s a very poetic song that Moses sings:

Let my teaching drip like rain,
Let my words flow like dew,
like droplets on new growth,
like showers on grass.

In the song, Moses proclaims the greatness of God, who is a rock, who is perfect and just. 

Moses quotes God as saying God found Jacob (meaning the people Israel) “in a wilderness land, in a waste, a howling desert” and protected him like a young bird. God fed him. 

But, in the song, God reproaches future generations who go after false gods – no-gods. 

Nevertheless, God promises God will protect God’s people.

After Moses sings this song, God speaks to him.  “You are to die on the mountain that you are going up and are to be gathered to your kin.  You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it – the land that I am giving to the Children of Israel.”

Food for Thought

God says Moses is to die on the mountain because “you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the Children of Israel”

Does that seem like a good reason not to let Moses into the Promised Land?