Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha, diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, this is Imu Shalev. In Parshat VaEtchanan, Moshe recounts the story of getting the Torah at Har Sinai. And we all know the story from back in the Book of Exodus. But when Moshe repeats the story, here in Deuteronomy, there's something really interesting about the way he tells it. Of course, there's the smoke and fire, the thunderous voice, the tablets and the commandments. All the basic elements are there. But the way Moshe tells the story - the details he plays up, the words he uses, the things he elaborates upon - there are a whole bunch of those, that make this version of the story different. What if these differences were pointing us to a new way to look at the events of Matan Torah, and Moshe's role in them - another perspective on the experience of Har Sinai that the Torah wanted us to know about?

Today, It’s my pleasure to introduce a new scholar at Aleph Beta to talk to you about these ideas: Ari Levisohn. We’re thrilled to have him on the team, and excited to be able to share his thoughts with our listeners. Here he is.

Ari Levisohn: Hi, this is Ari Levisohn. We just started reading the book of Deutoronomy, Devarim. It’s filled with repeats of laws and stories found earlier in the Torah. But is that all it is? A nice recap for those of us who were sleeping the first time through? This week I would like to show you how that is not the case at all, how the book of Devarim actually provides us with a unique perspective we don’t get anywhere else in the Torah. Ok. Let’s jump in.

In this week’s parsha, Parshat Va’etchanan, Moses retells the story of God speaking the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. There’s something about the way Moses retells that story that really caught my attention. There are hidden references here, echoes from earlier in the Torah. I’ll take you through the highlights of Moses’s speech, and I want you to listen closely and ask yourself: Where have I heard this before?

The Story of the Ten Commandments

“God made a covenant with you at Chorev”, Moses reminds the people (Deuteronomy. 5:2). וְהָהָר בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ, the mountain was on fire, and the people heard God’s voice from the midst of that fire  (Deuteronomy. 5:20). They heard God speak the Ten Commandments: אָנֹכִי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods besides me, the whole shebang  (Deuteronomy. 5:6-18). That part you probably remember. But then Moses describes something interesting, something that you might not have remembered. It has to do with how the people reacted to hearing God’s voice. It was too much for them. They couldn’t handle it. They were terrified, afraid that if they heard God utter even one more word, they would die. They said:  

אֶת קֹלוֹ שָׁמַעְנוּ מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ

(Deuteronomy 5:21)

‘We have heard [God’s] voice from the midst of the fire.’

וְעַתָּה לָמָּה נָמוּת כִּי תֹאכְלֵנוּ הָאֵשׁ הַגְּדֹלָה הַזֹּאת אִם יֹסְפִים אֲנַחְנוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ אֶת קוֹל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ עוֹד וָמָתְנוּ

(Deuteronomy 5:22)

‘Why should we die? This great fire is going to consume us! If we continue to hear God’s voice anymore, we will die.’

They propose an alternative:

קְרַב אַתָּה וּשְׁמָע, אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר יֹאמַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

(Deuteronomy 5:24)

‘You, [Moses], you go close to God,’ the people urged him. They wanted God to speak to Moses, and for him to relay the message to them. They begged him to be their intermediary. 

So that’s the speech. Now, did you notice that the word אש, fire, keeps coming up? The mountain is בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ – burning in fire  (Deuteronomy. 5:20). God’s voice comes מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ – from the midst of the fire  (Deuteronomy. 5:4). כִּי תֹאכְלֵנוּ הָאֵשׁ, – “the fire will consume us”  (Deuteronomy. 5:22). Fire, fire, fire. We actually see the word 7 times in our chapter! What is so important about this fire? Does it possibly remind you of another fire we know about? Something is on fire, God speaks from that fire, attention is paid to the fire’s ability to consume… this all sounds eerily familiar. Where have we heard this all before?

The Burning Bush

It’s the story of the burning bush. In that story too we hear about something engulfed in flames. Not the mountain, but the bush itself. God speaks מתוך, from within the burning bush. And at the burning bush, too, special attention is given to the fire’s ability to consume — although it’s kind of the opposite of what happens at Mount Sinai. הַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל – the bush was not consumed by the fire (Exodus 3:2).

If you read the language with a closer eye, you’ll find that there’s even more convincing evidence that Moses is referencing the burning bush here in his speech. I’m going to get a bit technical for a moment here, but stay with me. Recall how the fire is described at Mount Sinai: הָהָר בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ – the mountain was burning in fire (Deuteronomy 5:20). And what language do we find at the burning bush? הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ – the bush was burning in fire (Exodus 3:2). Exactly the same language! That might not seem remarkable, but בער באש is actually not the way you would normally describe something burning in biblical Hebrew. Normally you would describe the fire as the thing doing the burning. You would say האש בער בהר or האש בער בסנה, the fire burned on the mountain or the fire burned in the bush. To say הָהָר בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ or הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ, the mountain or the bush burned with fire — that is an extremely rare wording. So rare, in fact, that these are the only two places in all of Tanach that we find this wording!

And if all that wasn’t enough to persuade you that Moses is referencing the burning bush, let me ask you: where did the burning bush take place? The Torah tells us it was at הַר הָאֱלֹהִים חֹרֵבָה – the mountain of God in Chorev (Exodus 3:1). What is another name for that mountain? Mount Sinai. And Interestingly, in Va’etchanan, in Moses’ speech, Moses doesn’t use the name Sinai,. He only refers to it as the mountain at Chorev. It’s as if he is hinting to a time before it was called Mt. Sinai, to the very first time that we read about this place, Chorev… to the time of the burning bush. 

How interesting that here in Va’etchanan, Moses is describing the giving of the Torah, but he’s dropping burning bush references right and left. It really does seem like he’s got the burning bush on his mind.

A Third Story

And the burning bush is actually not the only reference that I think we find here in Moses’ speech. There’s another event from a different point in his life that he seems to be referencing. Let’s keep reading in Va’etchanan. After the people ask Moses to be their intermediary, how does God respond?

שָׁמַעְתִּי אֶת קוֹל דִּבְרֵי הָעָם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר דִּבְּרוּ אֵלֶיךָ

(Deuteronomy 5:25)

‘I have heard what the people have said to you,’ God tells Moses. God heard about how they feared His fire, feared that it would consume them. They don’t want to have a direct encounter with God. And how does God feel about the people’s reaction? God seems perfectly OK with it:

הֵיטִיבוּ כָּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּרוּ: מִי יִתֵּן וְהָיָה לְבָבָם זֶה לָהֶם לְיִרְאָה אֹתִי וְלִשְׁמֹר אֶת כָּל מִצְוֺתַי כָּל הַיָּמִים

(Deuteronomy 5:25-26)

‘It’s good, what they said,’ God declares. ‘I approve.’ מִי יִתֵּן, if only they would always feel this way, to fear me and to keep my commandments always.

Listen to that language of מִי יִתֵּן, “if only…” Does that sound familiar to you? It’s an unusual phrase, and Moses has only said it once before, in a different story. 

It takes place in Parshat Beha'alotcha. After another round of Israelite complaints, Moses turns to God and says, I can’t lead these people by myself anymore. It is too much for me! God hears Moses and provides him with 70 elders who will lead and prophesy along with him. When they all go into the tent to prophesy, two elders, Eldad and Medad, stay in the camp and prophesy in the open. Joshua turns to Moses and tells him to make them stop. Joshua seems to think that what Eldad and Medad are doing is deeply problematic. They’ve gone too far, somehow, with this prophecy business. But Moses doesn’t seem at all troubled by their actions. He doesn’t tell them to stop. Instead, he says to Joshua:

מִי יִתֵּן כׇּל עַם יְהֹוָה נְבִיאִים 

(Numbers 11:29)

If only all of God’s nation could be prophets. He uses that same language, מִי יִתֵּן – if only.

Now, you’re probably thinking: Ari, maybe it’s just a turn of phrase. Moses is allowed to say מִי יִתֵּן without us jumping on it and saying that he’s intentionally referencing the Beha’alotcha story. And normally I would agree. But there’s something else really striking here, something that makes me think that this is much more than mere coincidence. Think about what the מִי יִתֵּן means in each story. In Beha’alotcha, Moses is saying that he wishes that everyone could be a prophet. That every member of the nation could hear God speak directly. If only! And what does the מִי יִתֵּן mean in Va’etchanan, when God says it? It means the exact opposite! God says: The people are afraid to hear My voice… and that’s a good thing! If only they would always feel this way! Do you hear that they’re inverses? In Beha’alotcha: If only everyone could receive prophecy! In Va’etchanan: If only everyone would always have such fear of prophecy! 

And that’s not the only reference that Moses makes to Beha’alotcha. We don’t have the time here to go into depth, but I noticed some cool other parallels - like, an unusual phrase that comes up in both stories: וְלֹא יָסָף (Deuteronomy 5:19) and וְלֹא יָסָפוּ (Numbers 11:25). In Va’etchanan, Moses describes how God spoke to the people וְלֹא יָסָף – and then God spoke no more. And in Beha’alotcha, we find that the elders received revelation from God וְלֹא יָסָפוּ – and then they heard God no more. Both boil down to the same thing: the interruption of prophecy. If that piece of evidence went by a little bit too quickly, don’t worry about it. What I want you to know is that מִי יִתֵּן isn’t the only clue in Moses’ speech that seems to be pointing to Beha’alotcha. In fact, I think there may even be some really tantalizing parallels between Beha’alotcha and the burning bush. We might be dealing with a whole triangle of connections here. You may want to sit down with the texts of these three stories and see what else you come up with.

A Common Thread

We’ve established the parallels, now ask the big question: Why are these parallels here?

But I think we’ve seen enough to say that the parallels are there. In this speech in Va’etchanan, Moses is saying one thing but we’re hearing these multiple meanings. On the surface, he is just recounting what happened at Mount Sinai when God spoke the Ten Commandments. But if you read between the lines, he’s recounting other stories too, earlier moments in his life — the burning bush, the Beha’alotcha episode. Why? Why is Moses doing that?

Let me ask you a question that I think will point the way to the answer. What do these three stories have in common? They’re all relating, in some way, to the same core theme. What is that theme?

There might be different answers to this question, but I’ll tell you what I see: All three stories deal with the dynamic of Moses occupying a special role as an intermediary between God and the people.

We see this at the burning bush. God asks Moses to take on this special role, to lead the people out of Egypt, and Moses is so resistant! Please God, choose anyone but me, I’m not a man of words, I’m not the right guy. Moses struggles with the idea of being the leader, the one who goes between the people and God.

We see this in Beha’alotcha, which takes place about a year after the Exodus. Moses feels that he can’t lead the people by himself. He desperately wants help. Then, when Eldad and Medad get in on the prophecy game, Moses expresses how happy he’d be to live in a world in which everyone was a prophet like him. If you read these two facts together, if you consider how Moses is feeling about shouldering the burden of leadership by himself, then it sounds like he’s implying that if everyone was a prophet, if everyone could have their own direct connection to God, then maybe Moses could retire. It’s the same struggle we saw before. His protest has changed slightly since the burning bush, but he is still struggling with his role as the intermediary.

And we see this theme again in Va’etchanan. It’s all about this dynamic, all about the special role that he occupies. About how God allowed the people to hear His voice, but the people freaked out and didn’t want to hear it anymore and insisted that Moses go between them. 

At the burning bush and Beha’alotcha Moses is really struggling with his role as the leader, but then we get to Va’etchanan, and what do we see? At this point in his life, how does Moses feel about being the intermediary? I don’t know. At first glance, he doesn’t really seem to offer any commentary one way or the other. 

But when I read his speech more closely, I do start to see clues: 

For one thing, Moses doesn’t protest, he doesn’t argue, as he did both at the burning bush and in Beha’alotcha. 

And here’s another clue. When Moses recalls how the people requested an intermediary, he describes how God said: “הטיבו- I heard their request, and it’s good.” So it’s clear that God feels good about Moses being the intermediary. And even though the Torah doesn’t say explicitly how Moses feels, he seems to give God the last word here, which suggests to me that he accepts it.

A Consuming Fire

And there’s one more thing that I’m seeing here in Moses’ speech that really drives home for me the notion that his attitude has changed, that he has come to accept his special role as the intermediary. And here I think the parallels that we uncovered reveal a fascinating insight. 

Think back to Moses’s description of what it was like to stand at Mount Sinai. He uses all of this “burning bush” language. In both events, something was on fire, and God’s voice emanated from within. Both events took place at Horev. But you might remember that one of the parallels wasn’t actually a parallel. It was an inverse. 

At the burning bush Moses saw a fire. What struck him about the fire was that it wasn’t consuming the bush. It piqued his curiosity. He wasn’t afraid of the fire. 

The people also see God’s fire – but their experience is the exact opposite. Instead of seeing a non-consuming fire, they see an all-consuming fire. They are scared to death that this very fire will consume them. And they are sure that they can’t handle it anymore. 

The Israelites turn to Moses and say:

כִּי מִי כׇל בָּשָׂר אֲשֶׁר שָׁמַע קוֹל אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים מְדַבֵּר מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ כָּמֹנוּ וַיֶּחִי

(Deuteronomy 5:23)

For who has ever heard God’s voice speaking from the fire and survived? You know who has? Moses has. That’s who. And when did we learn that Moses had what it takes to encounter the fire of God and not react with fear? We learned it at the burning bush. He did it then, and he has been doing it ever since. When facing the fire of God, the whole rest of the nation fear for their lives. But not Moses. And that is exactly the qualification that he will need to do the job. 

And when we read Moses’ words in Va’etchanan, and we see the way that he himself seems to have noticed these parallels — it suggests to me that he himself has finally realized this. He’s come to understand that the people need an intermediary, an intermediary with very specific abilities. And he’s the only guy on the scene who has what it takes. And that, as hard a job as it is, it’s the one he was born for. And he has no choice but to own it.

A Broader Narrative

These parallels, they urge us to read Moses’s speech from Va’etchanan in context. They remind us that this role that Moses played as the intermediary between the people and God — it’s a role that he has protested, resented, and struggled with. A role that he didn’t want in the first place, one which was at times so heavy it nearly crushed him. There’s a narrative here. What the parallels highlight for us is Moses’s growth. 

Consider the chronology of Moses’ career as a leader. Let’s plot these episodes on a timeline. It all started with the burning bush. That’s where God first recruited Moses to be a leader. He accepts the mission but he is reluctant, to say the least. What about the Beha’alotcha episode? That takes place about a year after the revelation at Mount Sinai. Has Moses accepted his fate, his special status, yet? Nope. He’s still resisting it. The burden of being the sole, special leader — it’s too much. He’s desperate for help. מִי יִתֵּן — frankly, he’d be happy for every person to be his own navi. But that’s still the beginning of his leadership career. Where is Va’etchanan on the timeline? It’s been nearly forty years since Beha’alotcha. Forty years for Moses to reflect, to try to make sense of why God recruited him for this special role. And as he stands here, at the end of his life, he seems, finally, to have made his peace with it.

The Uniqueness of Deuteronomy

Moses is telling the people in Va’etchanan about the story of the Ten Commandments, but he isn’t just telling them what happened. He is telling them how he experienced it and what that experience means to him now. That’s what I find so exciting about this speech in Va’etchanan. Really, that’s what makes all of Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, so cool. It invites me to put myself in Moses’ shoes and ask questions that I never would have asked: What did it feel like for Moses to be plucked up from his quiet existence as a shepherd in Midian and tasked with becoming the greatest prophet who ever lived? What did it feel like to serve as God’s intermediary, as the bridge between heaven and earth? Deuteronomy is a window into Moses’ mind and heart. It repeats events that we already read about earlier in the Torah, but it’s not repetitive. It recounts the same events but from a different perspective, from a personal one. So as we continue to read the book of Devarim let’s keep that in mind, and let’s keep an eye out for the unique, personal perspective it gives us.

Credits:

Written and recorded by: Ari Levisohn

Editor: Beth Lesch

Audio Editor: Hillary Guttman 

Editorial Director:  Imu Shalev