Page 10

Barrick, The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34

ETS Annual Meeting, November 14-16, 2001

OêtfrØub:q-te) ü$yi) (Ûadæy-)×olºw

Would Moses ever refer to himself in the third person as "Moses the servant of

Yahweh" (Deut 34:5)? Firstly, "one's reference to oneself does not a priori preclude
one's being the author of the text. The use of the third person is common in early
histories."

For the exegete and expositor "the shift to the third person at least invites the

reader to look at Moses from another perspective."

That perspective, in the Pentateuch

and especially in Deuteronomy 34, is the divine perspective. It represents God's own
summation of Moses' character and attributes. Just as Moses opened the Pentateuch with
a divine account of Creation (to which no man was eyewitness) that God had revealed to
him, so he concluded the Pentateuch with God's assessment of the chosen messenger.

Secondly, nothing is said in Deuteronomy 34 that had not already been revealed
elsewhere in the Torah. In Numbers 11:11 Moses said to the Lord, "Why have you been
so hard on Your servant?" It is an obvious reference to himself as the Lord's servant.
Moses was quite aware of his status as the Lord's servant. He himself recorded the Lord's
statement that "My servant Moses ... is faithful in all My household" (Num 12:17).

Could Moses have recorded that he died in the land of Moab (Deut 34:5)? Let's

respond with a question of our own: Did he not also record what the Lord had revealed to
him in 32:50? God had already told Moses that he would die on Mount Nebo just "as
Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor." No redactor was needed to record these facts.
They were truly "according to the word of Yahweh" (34:5) that had been given to Moses
personally.

What about Moses' burial? Could he have written that the Lord Himself "buried

him in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor" (34:6)? Moses would have had at least
some idea that he would be buried somewhere either on the mountain or near it since his

hfrub:q/ hfrUb:q had already been used in Gen 35:20 (2x) and 47:30.

The term

{OYah is employed in Deuteronomy 59 times. heZah {OYah da(, which occurs 84 times in the OT

(13 in the Pentateuch, 6 of which are in Deuteronomy--2:22; 3:14; 10:8; 11:4; 29:3; 34:6), is not discussed
in P. A. Verhoef, "

{Oy," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, ed. by

Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 2:419-24. It is
discussed, however, by M. Sæbø, "

{Oy," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. by G.

Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, trans. by David E. Green (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 6:7-32 (esp. 15-16). The formulaic phrase "emphasizes the present status
of the narrator (or redactor) or of what is narrated, but also--through the prep. U^d--the continued
existence of a situation into this present" (ibid., 16). Interestingly, in "A Study of the Formula `Until This
Day'" (Journal of Biblical Literature 82/3 [Sept 1963]: 279-92) Brevard Childs makes no mention of Deut
34:6.

Block, "Recovering the Voice of Moses," 392 fn 41.

Ibid.

"Indeed, Deuteronomy ends the narrative begun in Genesis 1:1" (ibid., 402). Block takes the stance that

"the `deuteronomic' tone of much of Genesis-Numbers" (ibid.) is due to the final narrator of Deuteronomy.
I would agree that that is both reasonable and likely, but I would insist that that final narrator was Moses
himself. The shape and content of the Pentateuch was first of all divinely motivated, but was also the
conflation of divine revelation and superintendence (2 Pet 1:21) with human expression and composition.
No one was better qualified than the original writer to pen the concluding unit of the Torah.