Endnote 19 – Why Moses Could Not Enter The Promised Land

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.