NOTES for Deu 34:1-12
The final chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy tells of the death of Moses. The death of a leader who saw from afar the land into which he himself was going and into which he was leading his people, but which he did not have to enter. Strange? At first glance, yes. On the other hand, it is not Moses who is leading his people into the land promised by God, but God who is leading both the people and Moses himself there. Only why, then, was Moses not allowed to enter where all the others entered?
Yes, many different things happened along the way, and even Moses, the man of God, sometimes did something God looked on with disapproval. If, however, Moses and all the others are compared in this respect, then those others surely had no business on God's land. Moses remained a man of God, while this could not be said of most of those who made up God's people.
If Moses did not deserve to set foot on the land God had appointed for His people, then who did deserve it? Yet in practice everything turns out not to be so simple. The land is not simply a reward for correct behavior or for spiritual qualities. Dwelling on the land is itself a spiritual process. It requires a very definite state, a state that would correspond to the quality of the land as God intended it. After all, God is not simply leading the people to the place where He wants to settle them; He is leading them to a place of meeting with Himself.
He is leading them so that a new life may begin there for the people, life in God's presence, so that He may work with His people, making them the people-community He intended from the beginning. There can be no single, universal measure here. Everything depends on a person's capacities, on his spiritual potential. Strictly speaking, the path after God presupposes the unfolding of the capacities given by God to the person who follows Him. This is a God-human process, and the fullness of life with God is different for each person, as is the path to it. That is why the demand made of Moses was much greater than of anyone else among the people.
The point here is not punishment. The point is where exactly Moses needed to attain that fullness of earthly existence that was to complete his earthly path, just as the earthly path of every person should normally be completed. God decided to complete Moses' path on the threshold of the land He had promised to His people. This was His decision, and there is hardly any reason to doubt its fittingness, just as Moses himself did not doubt it.