רבינו בחיי — ויעל משה

Q — Ibn Ezra famously hints that Moshe could not have written the last eight psukim of the Torah describing his own death and burial — so Yehoshua must have completed them. Is this defensible?

A — Rabbeinu Bachya, in his closing comment on the entire chumash, rejects Ibn Ezra by name and lays out the alternative. The kabbalah ha'amitis we possess is that Moshe wrote all of the Torah, from בראשית through לעיני כל ישראל, every letter — and he wrote not as composer but as copyist, transcribing letter-for-letter from a sefer kadmon that pre-existed creation. RBB cites the Talmudic position of R' Meir (Bava Basra 15a): Hashem dictated and Moshe wrote — ומשה כותב בדמע — Moshe wrote those final eight verses in tears, because he was copying his own death from the celestial scroll. RBB asks: ואין לתמוה אם יכתוב משה וימת שם משה... כי היה כותב מה שעתיד להיות — a prophet routinely writes future events in past-tense (the Torah's other future-as-past references — וירא ה' וינאץ — prefigure Bayis Rishon). The closing eight verses are therefore Moshe's most heroic act: he transcribed his own death, in tears, because the Torah he was copying did not stop at his lifetime, and his obedience as scribe could not stop either.