Ki Tisa: Meeting Outside the Camp

Following God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night gets the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai. But then the divine pillar disappears, and God terrifies the people with an earth-shaking, volcanic, deafening revelation. God dictates dozens of laws that to Moshe (“Moses” in English), and the Israelites all agree to do whatever God says.

Altar and high priest, from Treasures of the Bible, Northrop, 1894

Moshe climbs Mount Sinai and spends 40 days in the cloud at the top, listening to God’s instructions for a new, centralized religion. Previously, families burned their own offerings to God at their own stone altars. Now there will be a single bronze altar in front of a richly furnished sanctuary. Only consecrated priests are allowed to officiate at the altar or enter the sanctuary, which will be erected in the center of the camp.

The Torah portions Terumah and Tetzaveh consist entirely of directions for the sanctuary and its furnishings, and the priests’ vestments. The directions continue in the first part of this week’s portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).

By the fortieth day, the Israelites despair of ever seeing Moshe or God’s pillar of cloud again. So they make a golden calf to lead them to Canaan. When Moshe comes back down the mountain with the pair of stone tablets, he sees them carousing in front of their new idol. He smashes the tablets, grinds the idol into gold dust, adds water, and makes the people drink it. Then he orders the men of his own tribe, the Levites, to go through the camp and kill the offenders—about 3,000 people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Golden Calf, Stone Commandments.)

The next day, Moshe tries to get God to issue a blanket pardon for the surviving Israelites, but God sends a plague that kills more people. (See my post Ki Tisa: Seeking a Pardon.) Then he gives the survivors some bad news.

The plan changes

In the portion Terumah, God had begun his instructions for the sanctuary by telling Moshe:

“Then let them make for me a holy place, and I will dwell betocham.” (Exodus 25:8)

betocham (בְּתוֹכָם) = among them, in their midst.

This holy place or sanctuary (or “tabernacle” in English) is subsequently called God’s mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן = dwelling place) or God’s ohel mo-eid (אֺהֶל מוֹעֵד) = Tent of Meeting, Tent of Appointment. (See last week’s post, Tetzaveh: Meeting Place.)

But after the golden calf worship in this week’s Torah portion, God declares that a divine messenger will go ahead of the Israelites to Canaan, and drive out the native inhabitants—

“But I will not go up in your midst, since you are a stiff-necked people,¹ lest I finish you off on the way!” And the people heard this bad news, and they mourned, and no man put on his ornaments. (Exodus 33:3-4)

Hirsch wrote: “We see how deeply they felt about their spiritual calling and how deep-seated was their consciousness of it.”²

I think their need to believe that God is in their midst is not so much a “spiritual calling” as desperation—the desperation of people who have spent their whole lives enslaved in Egypt, and now find themselves in an alien wilderness, on their way to an unknown place. It helps to have Moshe back with them, but they know it is God who leads them and provides manna and water. Moshe still has not told the Israelites about God’s directions for centralized religious worship. As long as God refuses to go in their midst, there is no point in making an ohel mo-eid for God to dwell in.

A temporary Tent of Meeting

Then Moshe took³ the ohel and pitched it for himself outside the camp, putting it far away from the camp. And he called it the ohel mo-eid, and it happened: anyone seeking God was going out to the ohel mo-eid that was outside the camp. (Exodus 33:7)

ohel (אֺהֶל) = tent: either a tent for humans, or the ohel mo-eid for God.

The text does not say which tent Moshe pitches outside the camp, but it is not the elaborate ohel mo-eid that God originally planned. The classic commentary assumes that “the ohel” is Moshe’s own tent.

And in the 20^th century, Cassuto explained: “It was impossible for him to seclude himself with the Divine Presence in the Camp of Israel because the camp had been defiled by the sin of idolatry, so that God did not want to have His Divine Presence rest there. Hence Moshe took his tent and planted it outside the camp to serve him as a meeting place between himself and God.”⁴

But Steinsaltz wrote: “Moses continued to sleep in his family tent inside the camp. Every day he would leave that tent and pass through the camp to the Tent of Meeting outside.”⁵

In the rest of the Torah, “outside the camp” means either a ritually pure ash-heap where specific parts of certain sacrificial animals are burned;⁶ or an impure area where people with the skin disease tzara-at must live,⁷ where pieces of a moldy house are dumped,⁸ and where people are stoned to death after being sentenced for blaspheming God or Shabbat.⁹ But thanks to the golden calf worship, the camp itself is impure at this point in the story. The Israelites are used to “seeking God” in the camp by asking to Moshe to speak to God or tell them what God says. Now they have to walk to a tent outside the camp.

Deference

And it used to be when Moshe was going out to the Tent, all the people would rise; and they stationed themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent, and they gazed after Moshe until he entered the Tent. (Exodus 33:8)

Rising in someone’s presence is a way of honoring them, in the Torah and to this day. I imagine the Israelites gazing after Moshe with longing, feeling like outcasts because their leader has to leave them in order to speak with God.

Pillar of Cloud, by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, 1731

And it used to be when Moshe came into the tent, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance of the Tent, and [God] spoke with Moshe. And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the Tent, and all the people rose and prostrated themselves, each man at the entrance of his tent. (Exodus 33:9-10)

This is the first time God’s pillar of cloud has appeared since the Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai. Now it shows up in front of the temporary Tent of Meeting every time Moshe goes inside, but the people cannot follow it. All they can do is prostrate themselves, bowing and flattening themselves on the ground in the accepted gesture for honoring a king or a god.

Cassuto wrote: “That is a sign that they were suffused with a spirit of repentance and complete faith in the Lord, their God, and His servant, Moshe. … because of this inclination towards repentance of theirs, the Children of Israel merited complete forgiveness …”¹⁰

Two men in the Tent

The narrative about the temporary Tent of Meeting concludes with a verse about both Moshe and Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English).

And God used to speak to Moshe face-to-face, as a man speaks to his fellow. Then he returned to the camp, but his personal attendant,¹¹ Yehoshua son of Nun, did not depart from within the Tent. (Exodus 33:11)

Moshe goes back into the camp periodically—perhaps to report what God says, perhaps to eat and sleep in his own family’s tent in camp, perhaps even to fetch food and water for his attendant Yehoshua, who lives inside the temporary Tent of Meeting full-time.

According to Sforno, Yehoshua stays there “in order to ensure that none of the Israelites would enter this tent, seeing all of them were in a state of disgrace”.¹²

If any of the refractory people whom God wants to avoid tried to enter the temporary ohel mo-eid, then God would boycott the tent, and Moshe could no longer talk with God there. But God does not object to Yehoshua’s presence in the Tent. Yehoshua was not even in camp when the Israelites worshiped the golden calf. He waited alone near the foot of the mountain until Moshe returned with the stone tablets.

Still, according to Hirsch: “To him, the pillar of cloud did not descend. Only when Moshe entered the tent did the pillar of cloud descend and stand at the entrance of the tent.”¹³

Two Tents of Meeting

Thus the story of the ohel mo-eid outside the camp can be explained as a natural interlude in the Torah portion Ki Tisa. Of course Moshe would erect a temporary Tent of Meeting after the golden calf fiasco, so he can continue to converse with God without climbing Mount Sinai. Then when he thinks God’s anger might have faded, he begs God to go in the midst of the Israelites after all, and God agrees.¹⁴

Moshe climbs the mountain one more time and returns with a second pair of stone tablets. Then the Israelites proceed to make the official ohel mo-eid according to God’s instructions, and pitch it in the center of their camp. Once it is complete, there will be no more need for a temporary ohel mo-eid.

Yet an ohel mo-eid outside the camp shows up again in the portion Beha-alotkha in the book of Numbers and in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy.

When Moshe complains that he cannot handle the Israelites all by himself, God says:

“Gather for me 70 men from the elders of Israel … and take them to the ohel mo-eid, and station them there with you. And I will draw from the spirit that is upon you, and place it upon them Then they will carry the burden of the people with you …” (Numbers 11:16-17)

After the elders have received the spirit of prophecy,

Then Moshe took himself back to the camp, he and the elders of Israel. (Numbers 11:30)

Obviously Moshe and the elders stand in front of an ohel mo-eid outside the camp, and then Moshe leads them back to the camp where the ohel mo-eid of the priests is.

Later in the same Torah portion, after Miriam and Aharon (“Aaron” in English) complain about their younger brother Moshe, God commands:

“Go, the three of you, to the ohel mo-eid!” And the three of them went. And God came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the ohel … (Numbers 12:4-5)

Just like in the portion Ki Tisa, God shows up as pillar of cloud at the entrance of the tent, not as a mysterious manifestation above the ark inside the Holy of Holies, the back chamber of the priests’ ohel mo-eid. The same thing happens in the portion Vayeilekh in Deuteronomy, when God commands Moshe:

“Call Yehoshua, and station yourselves at the ohel mo-eid, and I will give him orders.” And Moshe went, and Yehoshua, and they stationed themselves at the ohel mo-eid. And God appeared at the ohel in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance of the ohel.” (Deuteronomy 31:14-15)

Moshe is a Levite, but Yehoshua (“Joshua”) is from the tribe of Efrayim, and would not be allowed to even approach the entrance of the ohel mo-eid in the middle of the camp. In Ki Tisa, Yehoshua merely guards the Tent of Meeting, but in Deuteronomy Moshe is near the end of his life and Yehoshua is slated to lead the conquest of Canaan. So God speaks to both of them from the pillar of cloud.

All three of these stories take place after the Israelites have finished making the priests’ ohel mo-eid and journeyed north from Mount Sinai. The Torah offers no explanation of why there is still an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in these stories.

Modern source scholars agree that the brief scene in Ki Tisa about a Tent of Meeting outside the camp is an interruption in the account that comes from the “P source”, written by priests in the 6^th century B.C.E. or later. The P source is invested in a system of worship conducted by priests at a central location. The Tent of Meeting in the middle of the camp stands in for the temple in Jerusalem. In both places, God dwells deep inside where no one can see, and the priests run the show.

The source that refers to an ohel mo-eid outside the camp in this week’s portion and the three stories in later books offers an alternative. Anyone can see God manifest as a pillar of cloud in front of the Tent of Meeting outside the camp. And God speaks from that cloud not only to a priest, Aharon, but also to two prophets, Moshe and Miriam, and to the man who is variously a personal servant, a general, and a chieftain: Yehoshua.

According to Jeon, “The non-Priestly Ohel Moed layer is marked by its focus on a new authority and leadership structure, especially in a struggle with a priestly group. This fits the social and political circumstances of the kingless, postexilic period [after 538 B.C.E.], in which various social and religious groups struggled with each other over different ideas of the community’s restoration, in particular about its leadership.”¹⁵

Regardless of any political agendas after the 6^th century B.C.E., the two different Tents of Meeting in the portion Ki Tisa present a contrast between formal public worship conducted by specialists at a central location, and the option of personal meetings with God outside.

Personally, I wish I could join public worship more often. Singing with a whole congregation lifts my soul, and repeating ancient prayers and rituals puts me in a meditative space. For me, a personal meeting with God—in other words, a numinous experience—is unforgettable, but rare. I am not a Miriam, Aharon, or Yehoshua. But the more ordinary sense of awe I feel when I walk through a forest also reminds me of God.

So I am glad that the Torah hints at a two-tent solution.

See my post Ki Tisa: Stiff-Necked People.
19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 783.
The verb yikach (יִקַּח) is in the imperfect, so it would normally be translated as “he will take”, but that makes no sense in this context.
Rabbi Moshe David Cassuto (1883-1951), translation in www.sefaria.org.
21^st-century rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, electronic edition in www.sefaria.org.
Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12, 4:21, 6:4, 8:17, 9:11, 16:27; Numbers 19:3.
Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 12:14.
Leviticus 14:40-45.
Leviticus 24:14, 24:23; Numbers 15:35-36. The bodies of Nadav and Avihu, whom God killed after a sacrilege, must be dragged outside the camp in Leviticus 10:4.
Cassuto, ibid.
The text refers to Yehoshua (“Joshua” in English) as na-ar (נַעַר) = boy, young man, unmarried man, manservant. Many commentators have counted the years backward from when Yehoshua dies at age 110 to show that he is in his mid-50’s at Mount Sinai, hardly a young man. 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher explained that Yehoshua is Moshe’s “personal valet”.
16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.
Hirsch, p. 787.
Exodus 33:12-17.
Jaeyoung Jeon, “The Non-Priestly Ohel Moed”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-non-priestly-ohel-moed.

Vayeilekh: Long-Term Prophecy

(I am flying cross-country to see my sister for the first time since 2019, so I will not be able to write new blog posts for the next three weeks. You can read some of my favorite earlier posts for this time of year at the following links: Ha-Azinu: Raining Wisdom; Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur: Our Father, Our King; Haftarot for Rosh Hashanah & Shabbat Shuvah—1 Samuel & Hosea: From Smoke to Words; Yom Kippur & Isaiah: Ending Slavery; and Jonah: Turning Around. You can also look under “Categories” on my home page to find all my previous posts.)

Most prophecies in the Hebrew Bible are short-term; they predict events during the lifetime of the prophet’s audience. They are also conditional; the prophet announces what will happen if the people, or their rulers, do not change their course of action. If they do change, like the Assyrians of Nineveh in the book of Jonah, God changes the decree.

But a prophecy containing the idiom be-acharit hayamim is about events in the distant future, not a warning to anyone alive at the time of the prophecy. Moses makes one of these long-term prophecies near the end of this week’s double Torah portion, Nitzavim and Vayeilekh (Deuteronomy 29:9-31:22), after God has told him what will happen many generations later, after the Israelites have conquered Canaan.

And God said to Moses: “Hey, you will be lying with your fathers, and this people will rise up and go whoring after the foreign gods of the land where they are coming into their midst. And they will abandon me and violate my covenant that I cut with them. And on that day my nose will heat up against them, and I will abandon them! And I will hide my face from them. And they will be [ripe] for devouring, and many bad things and troubles will find them. And on that day they will say: Isn’t it because our God is not in our midst that these evils found us?” (Deuteronomy 31:16-17)

Not only God, but also the writer of these verses knows that the Israelites will backslide again and be punished. According to some 21st-century biblical scholarship, much of the book of Deuteronomy was written in the 7^th century, but it was rewritten and expanded in the 6^th century during the Babylonian exile.¹ The rewriter made two major changes: the book was recast as a series of speeches by Moses; and “predictions” were added that Judah and its capital would be destroyed someday because the Israelites would disobey God’s primary command: do not worship any other gods.

The Babylonian army razed Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and the rewriter of Deuteronomy lived through it. According to biblical reasoning, Judah could only be conquered if God stopped protecting it; and God would only stop protecting Judah if its people persistently disobeyed God. Therefore the conquest and destruction of Judah was the people’s own fault.

Moses duly transmits God’s message to the people, saying:

For I know that after my death, you will indeed act ruinously, and you will swerve away from the path that I commanded to you, and bad things will happen to you, be-acharit hayamim. For you will do what is bad in the eyes of God, offending [God] through your handiwork. (Deuteronomy 31:29)

be-acharit (בְּאַחֲרִית) = in an end, when afterward, as an aftermath, in the future. Be (בְּ) = in, at, when, through. Acharit (אַחֲרִית) = an end, outcome, future. (From achar (אַחַר)= behind, after, afterward, following.)

hayamim (הַיָּמִים) = (literally) the days; (as an idiom) a long period of time.

be-acharit hayamim (בְּאַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים) = (literally) “at the end of days”; (as an idiom) a long time afterward, in the distant future, as a long-term outcome.

A long time from now

The phrase be-acharit hayamim appears 15 times in the Hebrew Bible, and even though it could be translated as “at the end of days”, none of these verses refer to the end of the world as we know it. They usually predict the future of the people of Israel, and describe events that had actually happened by the time the second temple was built in Jerusalem in the 5^th century BCE. (Prophecies about two neighboring kingdoms foretell events in the same time period.²)

The first appearance of be-acharit hayamim is in Jacob’s deathbed prophecies, supposedly about his twelve sons, but actually about what happens to the twelve tribes of Israel after the land of Canaan is settled.³

The second appearance is in Bilam’s introduction to the fourth prophecy he delivers to King Balak of Moab about the Israelites camped on the king’s border:

Bilam Prophesies, by James Tissot, ca. 1900

And now, here I am going [back] to my people. I will advise you what this people will do to your people be-acharit hayamim. (Numbers 24:16)

Bilam says Israel will conquer Moab and Edom; 2 Samuel 8:11-12 reports King David’s conquest of those two kingdoms. Bilam says Amalek will perish forever; 1 Samuel 7-33 reports that King Saul killed all the Amalekites (although a few of them show up later in the bible).⁴ Bilam says the Kenites (allies of the Israelites who are nomads in their territory) will be captured by Asshur (the Neo-Assyrian Empire); the Assyrians did take over the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century BCE, a conquest reported in 2 Kings 17:5-6, and they attacked Judah, the southern kingdom, so they may well have captured the Kenites. Bilam’s final prediction is that enemies on ships will destroy Asshur forever; the Medes and the Babylonians did conquer the Assyrians in 614-612 BCE, but the Tigris River was too shallow for ships to reach the capital.

Some modern scholars attribute this prophetic poem to a refugee from the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel.⁵ The only event in the prophecy that had not happened by the time the refugee recorded it was the conquest of the Assyrian Empire.

The phrase be-acharit hayamim occurs twice in the book of Deuteronomy. In this week’s portion Vayeilekh, Moses tells the Israelites:

… bad things will happen to you, be-acharit hayamim. For you will do what is bad in the eyes of God, offending [God] through your handiwork. (Deuteronomy 31:29)

Sure enough, although the Israelites toe the line in the book of Joshua, they repeatedly worship foreign gods in the book of Judges and the first and second books of Kings, as well as in most of the books of the prophets. Meanwhile, the Assyrians wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century BCE, and the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem in the 6^th century BCE. Thus when Deuteronomy was revised and Moses’ prophecy was recorded, it had already come true.

Earlier in Deuteronomy, Moses predicts that after the Israelites have been living in Canaan for generations, they will make and worship idols, and God will get angry and drive them out of their land into other nations. In fact, the Assyrians deported many leading citizens of Israel, and the Babylonians deported many leading citizens of Judah. Moses continues:

But if you seek there, then you will find God, your God, if you inquire with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have found you, be-acharit hayamim, then you will return to God, your god, and you will listen to [God’s] voice. (Deuteronomy 4:29-30)

It may be no accident that here Moses sounds like second Isaiah, who wrote after the Persians conquered Babylon. Second Isaiah repeatedly urges the exiles in Babylon to seek God and return to their religion and to Jerusalem.

The phrase be-acharit hayamim also appears in first Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, in predictions that are so vague, they merely express optimism that someday the Israelites will return to their God. Ezekiel uses be-acharit hayamim in two expressions of pessimism over the long-term future of the Israelites, when he invents a foreign king called Gog who will overrun the land. Although none of these predictions from the Prophets refer to specific events in the future, they do all refer to a distant future in historical time, in this world.⁶

Not the end of the world

The phrase be-acharit hayamim appears twice in the book of Daniel, but neither time does it refer to the End of Days. First Daniel uses the Aramaic version be-acharit hayamim when he interprets King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about a statue made of different materials, from a gold head down to feet of iron and clay.⁷ It is not an apocalyptic image, but merely foretells a succession of kingdoms ruling Mesopotamia. The second time the phrase appears in Daniel, an angel proceeds to tell him the future of the Persian Empire.⁸ In both cases, a better translation of be-acharit hayamim would be “in the distant future”.

The verse that does mean “the End of Days” comes at the end of the book of Daniel, when an angel tells him:

“But you go to the keitz. And you will rest [in the grave]; then you will stand up for your destiny at keitz hayamim.” (Daniel 12:13)

keitz (קֵץ) = end (of someone’s existence), limit, boundary, extremity.

keitz hayamim (קֵץ הַיָּמִים) = the end of days; the limit of time.

Acharit means an outcome sometime in the future, after which history will continue. But keitz is an absolute end. The verse at the end of Daniel is is the only occurrence in the Hebrew bible of the phrase keitz hayamim—and the book of Daniel is the only book that seriously proposes the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world as we know it. Although the Daniel story begins during the 6^th-century CE Babylonian Exile, the book was written in the 2^nd century CE, well after all the other books of the Hebrew Bible. The starting point for Jewish and Christian eschatology⁹ is the final chapter of Daniel, which includes not only the phrase “the end of days”, but also the concept of resurrection of the dead—the righteous to “everlasting life” and others to “everlasting shame”.

Some people hope for a life after death; others believe this world is the only one we get, and humans only live once. Some people believe the ethical level of humanity will continue to improve, rapidly enough so we will save ourselves and our polluted earth; others believe we will not get our act together in time.

Will we win the human race, or self-destruct? Will humankind learn how to manage without war? How bad will the damage be from our degradation of the planet, and when will it stabilize? And what about my own nation, my own religion, my own people? Will we ever get it right?

We might want to know the short-term future for selfish reasons: so that we can make choices that will improve our own lot, or our family’s. But we want to know long-term future because we care about the fate of human beings who come after us, even those we will never meet.

I pray that enough people find enlightenment, dedicate their lives to doing no harm, and repair what they are able to repair. I am not interested in an End of Days, but I pray for a better future for this world, be-acharit hayamim.

See Eckart Otto, www.thetorah.com/article/deuteronomy-rewritten-to-reflect-on-the-exile-and-future-redemption.
Jeremiah 48:47 and 49:39.
See my post Vayechi & 1 Kings: Deathbed Prophecies.
Amalekites appear in 1 Samuel 30:1-2 and 2 Samuel 1:5-10.
The “E” or Elohist source.
Isaiah 2:2; Jeremiah 23:20, 30:24, 48:47, 49:39; Hosea 3:5; Micah 4:1; Ezekiel 38:8, 38:16.
Daniel 2:28.
Daniel 10:14.
The orthodox Christian tradition is that the “The End of Days” or “The End Times” will be a world-wide apocalypse, as described in the Book of Revelation, followed by the Second Coming of Jesus and the Last Judgment, when life on earth will become obsolete. Jewish eschatology is moderate by comparison. The orthodox Jewish tradition, established as a subject for argument in the Talmud before 500 CE, is that in some distant future there will be a happy olam haba (world-to-come) here on earth. There will be a new king (moshiach, מַשִׁיַח = “anointed one”) who is a descendant of King David; the Jews in the diaspora will return to the land that was once David’s kingdom; and righteous people who have died over the centuries will be resurrected bodily.

Vayeilekh: Two Transitions

An old era ends, a new era begins. The old leader steps back, the new leader steps forward.

In the Hebrew calendar both the new year and the new leader are recognized at the beginning of autumn, before the final harvest. The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah, “Head of the Year”), is a time to reflect on how we missed the mark during the previous year, individually and communally, and to prepare to turn around and dedicate ourselves to being more ethical and, if you will, God-centered during the next year.¹ And the Israelites are given a new leader in the Torah portion for this coming Shabbat, Vayeilekh (“And he went”).

The portion begins with Moses announcing that he is 120 years old and cannot lead the people in the conquest of Canaan. He mentions that God had told him he would not cross the Jordan River; he knows he will die without setting foot on the “promised land”.

Moses urges first the Israelites, then their next leader, not to be afraid of the Canaanites:

“Chizku and imtzu! You must not be overawed nor in dread of their faces, because God himself, your God, is the one going with you. [God] will not let go of you nor abandon you.” Then Moses called Joshua and said to him before the eyes of all Israel: “Chazak and eimatz! Because you yourself will bring this people to the land the God vowed to give your forefathers, and you yourself will apportion inheritances [of land] to them.” (Deuteronomy 31:6-7)

chizku (חִזְקוּ) = (plural imperative of chazak, חָזַק) Be strong! Be courageous! Be resolute! chazak (חֲזַק) = (singular imperative of חָזַק).

imtzu (אִמְצוּ) = (plural imperative of amatz, אָמַץ) Be strong! Be courageous! Be resolute! eimatz (אֶמָצ) = (singular imperative of amatz).²

Moses gives Joshua and the Israelites the same message. But when God speaks to Moses and Joshua inside the Tent of Meeting, God gives them different messages.

And God said to Moses: “Hey, you will be lying with your forefathers, and these people will rise up and go whoring after the foreign gods of the land that they are coming into. And they will abandon me and break my covenant that I cut with them. And my nose will heat up against them on that day, and I will abandon them! And I will hide my face from them, and they will become fodder, and they will encounter many evils and constrictions …” (Deuteronomy 3:16-17)

Then God tells Moses to teach the people the song in next week’s Torah portion, Ha-Azinu, so that someday they will realize how they screwed up.

And [God] commanded Joshua, son of Nun, and said: “Chazak and eimatz! Because you yourself will bring the children of Israel into the land that I have vowed to them, and I myself will be with you.” (Deuteronomy 31:23)

That is all God says to Joshua—a repetition of Moses’ earlier encouragement. Although both men stand inside the Tent of Meeting, each one seems to hear only the divine message addressed to him.

Why does God give Moses a discouraging prediction?

Moses dedicated the last 40 years of his life to shepherding the recalcitrant Israelites to Canaan. How can he die in peace now that he knows they will abandon God again in their new land?

I have discovered that when I am giving up a project that was important in my life, I am finally able to accept any unpleasant truth about it. As long as I did my best, most of the time, that is enough. But I am curious about what will happen next. If I found out that the project I started would fail, but could someday be revived, I think I would be content.

Why does God encourage Joshua?

The new leader of the Israelites has more energy than Moses. If Joshua knew that is charges were going to abandon God and go after idols again, wouldn’t he do something to mitigate the situation?

I have noticed that when I am about to begin a new enterprise, I feel nervous and I crave encouragement. I do not need someone to tell me the project will fail; I can easily imagine that myself. If an authority figure confirmed my fears, I might give up prematurely.

For everything there is a season: a time to release and accept, and a time to be brave and resolute. In the Torah portion Vayeilekh, God knows which time it is for Moses, and which time it is for Joshua.

Jews outside Israel observe Rosh Hashanah for two full days. Synagogues provide ten or more hours of services in addition to the outdoor ritual of Tashlich, in which we symbolically cast away our regrettable behaviors from the past year by tossing pebbles in the water. The extra liturgy for Rosh Hashanah introduces the themes of repentance that come to full bloom on Yom Kippur. In between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we still read a Torah portion from Deuteronomy as we approach the end of the annual cycle of readings.
Chazak and eimatz are close synonyms. Biblical Hebrew often uses a pair of synonyms either to indicate emphasis or as a poetic device.