Why Moses Could Not Enter The Promised Land
Why was Moses condemned to die in the wilderness?
Perhaps the historical Moses simply expired before reaching the Promised Land and was buried in Transjordan in a now-forgotten grave (Deuteronomy 34:6). But the Torah—the Hebrew name for the five books of Moses—seems to stress that Moses did not just die of old age. Whatever the exact meaning of “his eye had not dimmed, nor had his moisture fled” (Deuteronomy 34:7), it is clear that even at age 120 Moses retained considerable vigor.
The biblical authors are at pains to justify Moses’ exclusion from Canaan, viewing it as punishment. Notice the plural: biblical authors. Veteran BR readers know that modern scholarship detects in the Torah multiple literary strata, composed in different social and historic situations and joined together in stages.1 Much 19th- and 20th-century biblical research has focused on isolating these sources and listening to the dialogue or debate among them.
Here we will examine two versions of why Moses was barred from the Promised Land. These versions were derived from different sources—the Deuteronomic source (referred to as D) and the Priestly source (P). In looking closely at these two narratives, we discover something important: D likes Moses very much; P doesn’t. P seems to take every opportunity to point out Moses’ flaws and to put the high priest Aaron, Moses’ older brother, in as favorable a light as possible. P even blames Moses for Aaron’s exclusion from the Promised Land.
In Deuteronomy Moses bitterly tells the Israelites three times that God has punished him for their sake, forbidding him entrance to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:37, 3:26, 4:21). The trouble began with the episode of the spies (Deuteronomy 1:19–46; compare Numbers 13–14). At the people’s suggestion, Moses had dispatched scouts from the wilderness of Kadesh to reconnoiter Canaan. They reported that the land was fertile but that its gigantic occupants were impregnable in their fortress-cities. As a result, the people feared to enter the Promised Land, and God condemned the entire generation of adults, including Moses, to die in the wilderness. The only exceptions were Caleb and Joshua, who, as old men, would lead the next generation into Canaan. Thus in D an innocent Moses is punished for the people’s sin, paying the intercessor’s ultimate price: total identification with the guilty party he represents.
The Priestly source offers a different and more complex perspective on Moses’ death. Although D and P agree on core religious values—one God, one place of worship, a covenant between God and Israel conditioned on ritual and moral behavior—the two documents differ sharply over who may serve as priests. In Deuteronomy any descendants of Levi (called Levites) will do (Deuteronomy 18:1). Aaron, the high priest, appears only once—after the golden calf incident (Deuteronomy 9:20), when God was so angry at him that God would have killed him but for Moses’ intercession. P, on the other hand, exalts Aaron, saying only he and his descendants among the Levites may be priests. The rest are to be the Aaronids’ servants (Numbers 3:6–9, 8:19, 18:2–6).
Another important difference between D and P is their attitude toward Moses in particular and toward prophets in general. In D, Moses is a heroic mediator, standing between the Israelites and God (Deuteronomy 5:5, 27). He is a spotless hero-victim who dies for his people’s sin. The Moses of P is, in contrast, innately flawed.
In Moses’ first appearance in P, he is described as “uncircumcised of lips,” apparently indicating a speech impediment (Exodus 6:12, 30). An older source, E (for the Elohist strand), had called Moses “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue,” a more typical idiom for encumbered speech (Exodus 4:10).2 P recasts this tradition about Moses not speaking well in a more pejorative manner—Moses’ mouth is not just “heavy,” it’s “uncircumcised.”3 Literal uncircumcision is a major sin in P (Genesis 17:14) and probably a cause of ritual defilement. The uncircumcised are barred from the Passover meal (Exodus 12:48), excluded from Temple worship (Ezekiel 44:7, 9) and even banned from Jerusalem (Isaiah 52:1). The prophet Isaiah, prior to his consecration, also was described as “impure of lips” and unfit to convey the divine word, but his mouth was purified by fire (Isaiah 6:5–7).4 In P, God does not purify Moses’ mouth but appoints Aaron as Moses’ “prophet,” or
P transfers certain miracles to Aaron—further exalting Aaron and detracting from Moses. In the JE (for the combined Jahwist/Elohist) account of the ten plagues, Moses works the wonder, often using his rod (Exodus 7:15–17, 20b, 9:23, 10:13). In P, however, Aaron works miracles using his own rod (Exodus 7:19, 8:1, 12–13).
P also unflatteringly describes Moses’ inaction when the Midianites seduce Israel to sin and to defile the Tabernacle at Baal Peor (Number 25:6–9). There Aaron’s grandson Phinehas saves the day by skewering a couple fornicating in the Tabernacle, thus ending a divinely sent plague. God then reaffirms the priestly prerogatives of Aaron’s house (Numbers 25:10–13).5
P even goes so far as to denigrate Moses, according to one interpretation of Exodus 34:29–35, claiming Moses suffers disfigurement from his close encounter with God.a
I do not want to overstate the case. In P, Moses is still Aaron’s superior, a virtual god compared to his brother (Exodus 7:1). And according to the most widely accepted interpretation of Exodus 34:29–35, Moses’ face shines with divine splendor after he comes down from Mt. Sinai. But P renders Moses, unlike Aaron, as a complex character, supremely great and yet imperfect.
P’s ambivalence toward Moses seems strange only at first. Moses represents two groups considered rivals by the Priestly source: Levites and prophets. P accordingly asserts that after Moses’ death only the House of Aaron has legitimately wielded religious leadership.6
The tense relationship between Moses and Aaron, and between the social groups they represent, provides the key to understanding what P claims was Moses’ crime. The story begins with the great showdown known as Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16:1a, 2b–11, 15–24, 27a, 32b, 35).7 Korah the Levite and his followers sought priestly status for the Levites, a flagrant violation of God’s plan, according to P. Moses castigated the rebels and proposed a test: All shall present the incense offering at the Tabernacle, ordinarily a priestly prerogative (Exodus 30:1–10; Numbers 17:5 et al.) and a procedure fraught with danger (Leviticus 10). When the rebel leaders do so, fire from God consumes all the rebel Levites and their supporters. The moral: Only Aaron and his descendants are protected from God’s dangerous holiness, and only they can serve as his priests.
God then proposes his own trial: Each tribal elder is to deposit his rod, the symbol of his authority, in the Tabernacle (Numbers 17:1–5). For this test, Aaron is to head the tribe of Levi, even though his clan is not the senior one (Exodus 6:16–25). Aaron’s staff alone blossoms, proving his primacy among both the Israelites and the Levites. God then commands, “Restore Aaron’s rod before [the Ark of] the Covenant, to be kept as a sign for rebels, so that their complaints may cease from before me, and they not die” (Numbers 17:10). Terrified, the people lament, “See, we have expired, perished, we all have perished! Anyone who approaches Yahweh’s Tabernacle will die! Have we finished expiring?” (Numbers 17:12–13).b Yahweh then explicitly reaffirms the Aaronids’ priestly prerogatives and the Levites’ less exalted role (Numbers 18).8
As noted above, in D God punishes Moses for the people’s sin. In P Moses is denied entry to the Promised Land because of his own sin.
According to P, as soon as the people of Israel arrive at Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, they complain to Moses about the lack of water. “Would that we had expired when our brothers expired before Yahweh. Why did you bring Yahweh’s community to this desert, that we might die here, we and our cattle?” (Numbers 20:3–4). Moses and Aaron withdraw to the Tabernacle, where God commands them to take the rod and to speak to the rock (literally, “order the rock”) in the presence of the people (Numbers 20:8). “It will give its waters, and you shall produce for them waters from the rock, and you shall water the congregation and their cattle.” Instead, Moses shouts, “Listen, rebels! From this rock shall we produce waters for you?” (Numbers 20:10) and strikes the rock twice with the rod; water flows out, and the people and cattle drink, but Yahweh is greatly displeased. He says to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not show faith in me by sanctifying me in the sight of Israel’s children, therefore you shall not bring this community to the land that I have given them” (Numbers 20:12).
Moses’ offense seems obvious enough: He was supposed to produce water by speech alone. (The creative power of speech is a theme in P, traced back to Genesis 1: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”) Instead, Moses hits the rock, a less impressive miracle. Thus he displays a lack of faith, failing to “sanctify” God—in P, the greatest sin imaginable. Both Moses and Aaron must die, to be succeeded, respectively, by Joshua son of Nun and Eleazar son of Aaron (Numbers 20:24, 27:12–23; Deuteronomy 32:48–52 [part of P]).
As soon as scholars began to discern multiple sources underlying the Torah, they recognized in this Priestly tale a retelling of an older story, set at a spring called Massah-and-Meribah (Trial and Strife), where, to relieve the people’s thirst, Moses is indeed commanded to strike a rock to produce water (Exodus 17:1–7).9 The Priestly source turns this older story—one that reflected well on Moses—upon its head, moving the location from Horeb, site of the covenant, to Kadesh, scene othe spies story (Numbers 13:26).10
Two problems stand out in P’s version: Why does God command Moses to take the rod if using it is sinful, and why must Aaron also suffer?11
I see only one possible answer: The rod must have been Aaron’s and was not to be used for striking.12 The rod is in the Tabernacle, where Aaron’s staff was just deposited, in chapter 17, after Korah’s rebellion.13 According to Numbers 17:10, Aaron’s rod was to be “kept as a sign for rebels [
But this interpretation is probably incomplete. Commentators have traditionally found Moses’ sin in his words as much as in his deed.14 They draw support from Psalm 106:32–33, “And they enraged him [God] by the waters of Meribah, and he did harm to Moses on their account, for they embittered/ changed/made rebellious15 his spirit, so that he expressed [it] with his lips.” For the psalmist, at least, Moses sinned in what he said at Meribah. For the Priestly source, too, Moses probably offended in both deed and word, but not because he presumptuously claimed the power to work miracles by asking, “Shall we produce?”16 God had already commanded him, “You shall produce.” More likely, Moses’ syntax expressed incredulity: “From this [solid] rock can we produce waters?”
In any case, Moses spoiled the moment. God intended a dignified event, with Aaron’s rod serving as a silent rebuke to the rebels and Moses producing water by speech alone. Instead, Moses castigates the people aloud, even striking the rock for emphasis.17 The miracle still occurs, and the people are saved, but at the expense of God’s honor. For this offense Moses is condemned to die.
And Aaron? He is completely innocent. There might be a sort of guilt by association, inasmuch as it is his rod, the sign of his priestly supremacy, that Moses abuses. But Aaron is really Moses’ victim.18 The great intercessor in P, Aaron pays the price for his brother’s faithlessness.19
MLA Citation
Footnotes
See William H.C. Propp, “Did Moses Have Horns?” BR 04:01. The reading proposed there is not, so far, generally accepted.
Endnotes
These literary strata probably represent independent documents. They are usually referred to as J (the Jahwist/Yahwist source), E (the Elohist source), JE (J combined with E), D (the core of Deuteronomy) and P (the Priestly source). See Baruch J. Schwartz, “What Really Happened at Mount Sinai?” BR 13:05; Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987), and “Torah (Pentateuch),” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 6, pp. 605–622.
See Jeffrey H. Tigay, “‘Heavy of Mouth’ and ‘Heavy of Tongue’: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 231 (1978), pp. 57–67. While the idiom elsewhere connotes an inability to speak a particular language (Ezekiel 3:5–6), I do not think this is relevant here, given God’s answer in Exodus 4:11, “Who gives man a mouth, or who makes dumb or deaf or percipient or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh?”
In creating the unique expression “uncircumcised of lips,” the Priestly source may have drawn inspiration from Exodus 4:10–31, in the older JE document. There we find Aaron’s mission as Moses’ interpreter (Exodus 4:14–16, 27–31 [E]) treated together with an obscure tale about circumcision, the so-called bridegroom of blood story (Exodus 4:24–26 [J]). For my interpretation of the latter, see “That Bloody Bridegroom,” Vetus Testamentum 43 (1993), pp. 495–518.
Compare also Psalm 12:4–6, which contrasts the purity of God’s word with humanity’s sinful speech.
When reading this account and the following narrative about slaughtering the Midianites, one should remember that in non-Priestly tradition Moses’ own children were half Midianite (Exodus 2:21–22, 18:1–6).
Frank Moore Cross, who has exposed in greatest detail the rivalry between priest and Levite, thinks the conflict is specifically between Aaronid priests and Mosaic, or Mushite, priests (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973], pp. 195–215); see also Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? I do not doubt that there was a Mushite priesthood, but I think its traditions are not preserved in the Bible. In a specifically Mushite text, Moses’ sons would presumably play a greater role.
This Priestly story (Numbers 16:1a, 2b–11, 15–24, 27a, 32b, 35) has collided, as it were, with a non-Priestly account of the earth swallowing Dathan and Abiram (Numbers 16:1b–2a, 12–14, 25–26, 27b–32a, 33–34). To smooth things over, Dathan and Abiram were later added in Numbers 16:24, 27; they are absent from our oldest witness, the Greek Septuagint. Significantly, Deuteronomy 11:6 mentions Dathan and Abiram but not Korah, suggesting that the two stories were not yet combined when Deuteronomy was composed.
The following chapter, Numbers 19, is not obviously relevant to what precedes and follows. Yet it treats what may be the priest’s supreme task: removing, through the red heifer rite, Israel’s blood-guilt, which would otherwise cause its destruction. Thus chapter 19 continues to stress the priesthood’s unique role in maintaining communal purity before God.
The spring is located at Mount Horeb—a point missed by almost all interpreters (but see the 13th-century commentary of Nachmanides). Horeb thus exemplifies the holy mountain running with life-giving water, a theme more often associated with Zion (Ezekiel 47:1–12; Joel 3:18; Zechariah 13:1, 14:8; Psalms 36:7–10, 46:4, 65:10, 84:6; Revelation 22:1–2; also compare Isaiah 2:2–3 [= Micah 4:1–2] and Jeremiah 31:12). Horeb’s waters reappear in Exodus 32:20 to absorb the ashes of the golden calf. Levi’s blessing in Deuteronomy 33:8–11 also seems to associate Massah-and-Meribah with the golden calf; compare Exodus 32:26–29. See Propp, Water in the Wilderness, Harvard Semitic Monographs 40 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), pp. 51–93.
Accordingly, the name Massah-and-Meribah is changed to Meribath-Kadesh (Numbers 27:14; Deuteronomy 32:51; Ezekiel 47:19, 48:28) or Meribah for short. Psalm 95:8–10 also appears to associate Massah-and-Meribah with Kadesh, where God decreed 40 years of wandering for Israel.
The solution was rediscovered independently by me and the German scholar Erhard Blum in the late 1980s, though we were both anticipated by Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam, c. 1100 C.E. See Propp, “The Rod of Aaron and the Sin of Moses,” Journal of Biblical Literature 107 (1988), pp. 19–26; Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 189 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 271–278.
This itself is not a new insight, see most recently Katharine D. Sakenfeld, “Theological and Redactional Problems in Numbers 20.2–13, ” in Understanding the Word, ed. J.T. Butler et al., Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 37 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1985), pp. 133–154.
Note that the source is P, which replaces Moses’ rod with Aaron’s. Admittedly, Moses splits the sea with his rod in Exodus 14:16, which most assign to P. Apparently, we must either attribute the words “raise your rod” to the editor who combined P with JE or conclude that in P Moses uses his rod once only, for the supreme miracle during the Exodus. Note also that in its first two appearances the staff is simply called “the rod.” No owner is specified, merely its location in the Tabernacle. But in the rod’s third appearance, Moses strikes “with his rod” (
For Jacob Milgrom, Moses’ real crime is speaking while performing a miracle, like a mere magician (“Magic, Monotheism and the Sin of Moses,” in The Quest for the Kingdom of God, ed. H.B. Huffmon et al. [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983], pp. 251–265). Milgrom’s analysis, however, presupposes an original text in which God commands Moses to strike the rock! And it relies upon and even extends Yehezkiel Kaufmann’s far-fetched speculation that silence had to be maintained during Temple worship.
Why he hits twice is unclear. I imagine Moses striking as he says “this rock” (hassela’ hazzeh), a blow per word. Abraham ibn Ezra (c. 1150) suggested that nothing happened after the first blow. If so, the scene is almost comic.
In Numbers 20:1–13 the entire family is finished off: Miriam, their sister, died and was buried at Kadesh (verse 1). Locating Miriam’s death at Meribath-Kadesh could be a play on words, for her name,
Scholars have recently readdressed their attention to the Torah’s final form, reading “holistically” again, as Jews and Christians did for centuries. As we have seen, D and P maintain different concepts of why Moses had to die. As often happens, the combination of sources has yielded new meanings. In the Torah as we have it, Deuteronomy 1:37, 3:26 and 4:21 must be assumed to refer to Numbers 20:1–13. This changes the meaning of Deuteronomy: At Kadesh God punished Moses for Israel’s “sake”—not because they sinned, but because Moses insulted them, calling them “rebels.” This was the view of some rabbis, and it probably underlies Psalm 106:33.