Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the significance of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32.
On the Shabbat between Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and Succot (Tabernacles) we read the Song of Moses, known as Haazinu (Give ear) Deuteronomy 32.
Moses calls on heaven and earth to bear witness to the calamities which will befall Israel if she sins. Why heaven and earth? Because Moses knows he is about to die and wants witnesses who will outlive both him and future generations. Despite the sense of urgency there is timelessness. If necessary heaven will withhold rain, and earth will withhold her produce.
However, ‘May my teaching drop like rain’. Here the word ‘teaching’ is rooted in the Hebrew word ‘lkch’ ‘to take’. The student should take the teaching as a gift from the teacher and not merely regard it as boring instruction or worse. This kind of teaching is as precious a gift to the Jewish people as rain falling on parched Israeli soil in early autumn, with temperatures still often sky high!
‘May my utterance flow like the dew.’ Teaching can be little and often, which, like dew, often penetrates the best, or ‘like storm winds on the vegetation’, when students are already well prepared, or even ‘like raindrops upon grass’, a sprinkling of which can sometimes do the job as efficiently as more assertive methods.
Here Moses teaches us the valuable lesson that Torah students come in all shapes and sizes, working at different rhythms, dependent on ability, preparedness and previous knowledge. Torah, like rain, is for everyone, but can only be absorbed at the individual’s own pace.
But none of this can be possible without the One firm and steadfast Rock, G-d Himself, around Whom everything gathers and by Whom everything is held together.
G-d is ‘your Father Who both created you and firmed you up’ (v 6). ‘Jacob [the Jewish people] is the measure of His inheritance’ (v 9). G-d found Jacob ‘in a desert land in utter formlessness (Tohu), a howling wilderness’ (v 10). Doesn’t this birth of the Jewish people in utter chaos not remind us of the birth of the world in Genesis 1 and also of the newborn baby, helpless apart from his mother?
What did G-d do with this infant-like people? He proved ever-attentive, ‘encircled him, imbued him with discernment, attended to him like the apple of his eye.’ Here G-d is depicted as the ever-attentive mother hovering over her young offspring, never for one moment leaving them out of her sight, ‘like an eagle awakening her nest, hovering over her young, spreading her wings and taking them, bearing them up on her pinions. The Lord alone guided them and no strange deity was with them’ (vv 11-12).
This teaches us that G-d’s Torah in all its facets is supreme, based on the recognition of G-d’s unique Oneness, as necessary for the birth and sustenance of the Jewish people as a human mother’s milk for her newborn. The baby emerges from a state of chaos, just as it states of the world at the beginning of Genesis 1: ‘tohu vvohu’ - formless and void.
Later on, when the people are ready, this eagle will show her offspring how to soar to the heights. They must remember the chaos of their birth as a people and not succumb to false gods, riches and indolence. These themes are ‘all the words of this Song’ which Moses spoke to the people ‘he and Joshua ben Nun’ (v 44), the new leader who was to assume Moses’ mantle and guide the people into the Promised Land. The Torah ‘is not an empty thing for you, because it is your life and through this word you will prolong your days in the Land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess’ (v 47).
It is clear therefore that the Torah, the Song of G-d to Moses, is not only a teaching but a therapy to heal the Jewish people of the many ills they will encounter on their way to the Promised Land and also once they are in it and have to deal with enemies, physical, religious and psychological, who will try their best to unseat them and destroy their spirit.
At times like this, let’s remember and take heart in the knowledge that G-d is our maternal eagle, constantly carrying His people on heavenly wings, soaring above the fray. Moreover, as G-d’s people, the Jewish people, together with her Torah, and Land, will never be destroyed.
