The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among
you, from your brothers - it is to him you shall listen (Devarim /
Deuteronomy18:15; ESV)
Moses has a most honored place in the history of Israel, and
by all rights he should! He was chosen by God to lead our people out of
oppressive bondage in Egypt. He failed miserably at first when his care and
compassion for his people resulted in the murder of an Egyptian and his running
away into the wilderness as a result. By the time God called him as his
appointed deliverer, any ambition to lead that he may have had was gone to the
point of his resisting God. Yet, in the end, God prevailed. It is hard to
believe that the same man who said "No" to God at the burning bush,
turned out to be the able leader he was. Obviously God knew he could count on
Moses.
The Torah calls Moses the most humble man in the world (see
Bemidbar / Numbers 12:3). His humility is evident through the way he faithfully
delivered God's Word to Egyptians and Israelites alike. Moreover, every time he
encountered a difficulty, of which there were many, he turned to God for help.
One cannot overstate Moses' valuable legacy. His five books
are foundational to the entire Bible. The Hebrew Bible and the New Covenant
writings cannot be properly understood without Moses' words.
While Moses is one of a kind, he himself makes it clear that
his is not the only or final word. As we read at the start, God would send
others like him to whom the people were to listen. While caution was called for
with regard to who was to be regarded as a true prophet, Moses cleared the way
for them.
There appears to be two ways to understand this passage. The
first is that it is speaking of the many prophets who were to come. These men
and women of God would remind the people of God's ways, warning them of the
consequences of disobedience and encouraging them to stay faithful to him. At
times they would speak of near or distant future events. The Hebrew Bible
records the words of many of these.
The second way this passage was understood was that it
looked forward to a particular great Prophet to come - who would be the
culmination of Israel's prophetic heritage and would have a place similar to
Moses in the life of the people.
The New Covenant writings state that the great Prophet to
come was the Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth (see Acts 3:22, 23). Yeshua's fulfillment
of this special role is enacted through such things as his Sermon on the Mount
(see Matthew 5-7), where he provides definitive interpretations of Moses'
words. When Moses and Elijah appeared alongside Yeshua on the mountain, God
confirmed this role by echoing the words "Listen to him" taken from
our portion (See Matthew 17:1-8).
Lost from most expressions of Judaism today is the prophetic
anticipation of Moses. God never intended for Moses to be a religious relic to
which our religion does nothing but look back. Rather, through him we are meant
to discover the great unfolding of God's plan, living with eager expectation of
all he was yet to reveal through the prophets and the Great Prophet, the
Messiah.
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