No Prophet Like Moses - Reflections on Deuteronomy 34:1-12, 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Monday, July 20, 2026
The Pentateuch, the so-called Five Books of Moses, later called The Torah, ends in both a grand and ultimately mysterious way. Moses is not allowed by YHWH to enter the land of promise (several reasons are offered in the Bible for why that is the case), but YHWH will “let him see all the land” (Deut.34:1), that stretches from “Gilead as far as Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah as far as the Sea, and the Negeb, the plain of the Valley of Jericho, town of the palm trees, as far as Zoar” (Deut.34:2-3). Moses is standing on “the steppes of Moab, on the top of Mt. Pisgah, that faces Jericho” (Deut.34:1), as his eyes sweep from east of the Jordan at Gilead to the west and north of the land (“Dan,” though in earlier times Dan settled near the coastal plain in the south, and only later moved north), then gazing south, ending with the Negeb desert plain along the Dead Sea. In effect, YHWH directs Moses’s gaze to encompass the whole of the land of promise, but reminding him “you shall not cross over there” (Deut.34:4).
As Moses looks, YHWH offers to him what must seem a painful reminder of exactly what God’s prophet is seeing, while denying him the right to experience the land firsthand. “This is the land that I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob, saying ‘To your seed I will give it’” (Deut.34:4). Is not Moses a seed of the great patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel? Yet, he cannot enter this sacred and long-promised land, though he has spent his life in service to the people, extracting them from Egypt, leading them though the terrible wilderness for forty long years, suffering their continuous grumbling and threats against his very life. Still, he will die outside the land, after looking longingly at what YHWH has promised to the seed of the founders.
“And Moses, YHWH’s servant, died there in the land of Moab by the word of YHWH. YHWH buried him in the glen in the land of Moab opposite Beth-Peor, and no one has known his burial place to this day” (Deut.34:5-6). For such a monumental figure in Israel’s history, this scene of Moses’s death and burial is highly peculiar. We have heard earlier in the Torah of the Cave of Machpelah where the patriarch Abraham, along with his family—Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, and Leah— were buried. And King David’s tomb is still a site of tourist visitation in Jerusalem even now, however exactly uncertain historically that site may be. But the place of Moses’s grave is completely unknown, and the few geographical indications of where it is to be found are so vague in this text as to keep its exact location hidden forever.
The reason for this reality, the obfuscation of the final resting place of one of Israel’s greatest figures, one unique in the annals of the people, one of whom it is said that “no prophet again rose in Israel like Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face, with all the signs and portents that YHWH sent him to do in the land of Egypt to pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and with all the strong hand and with all the great fear that Moses did before the eyes of all Israel” (Deut.34:11-12), is a mystery still. The Torah ends with this long and completely celebratory sentence about the astonishing work of this prophet, and makes it plain that no one like him will ever be found again. And yet, do not bother to look for his tomb; it will never be discovered!
It is, I would suggest, a very special way to underscore the uniqueness of the man. While Abraham, Jacob, and David may be venerated in their sepulchers, Moses is not to be so worshipped or admired. There will be no cult of Moses, no pilgrimages to his tomb. His legacy is to be honored by the memory of his grand and glorious deeds in service to YHWH, the God who appeared to him first in the fire of a bush, and later in a cloud, and finally face to face in the Tent of Meeting. There is finally no one at all like Moses, and if one could find his grave, he would be merely what we all are, men and women who finally die and are buried in places someone knows. But not this prophet. Not this Moses. He is singular, unequaled, one of a kind. For Israel, he alone is the prophet par excellence.
In the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, that writer attempts over and again to suggest that Jesus is in some ways a new Moses: he gives a central sermon from a mountain; he is transfigured on a mountain with Moses and Elijah as witnesses; he ends his tale on a mountain in Galilee, after Jesus’s resurrection, commanding that his disciples are to go into the whole world teaching about this Jesus and urging all to become his followers. Moses has much to do with mountains in his story, encountering YHWH again and again in high places, serving YHWH as he is commanded. Yet, Jesus’ tomb is known, his commands are clear and certain. Moses, too, utters clear and certain commands from YHWH and struggles to relay to his people what God demands of them. Yet, there is no cult of Moses; there is no final resting place that we may find. But this Moses is for Israel, for later Judaism, unique; there will never be another prophet like him. Little wonder that many Jews of Jesus’s time simply could not accept Jesus as the final prophet of God. Little wonder that later many Jews could not accept that Mohammed was the final prophet of God, as Islam demanded. Moses remains unique, buried in a place undiscovered, the prophet that made Israel at last the unique people of YHWH.