Word: וילך, vayelekh, “He went” or “He walked” (Deuteronomy 31:1)
Context: This is the first word of the parsha. וילך משה , “Moshe went.” The Torah doesn’t tell us where Moshe went, just that he “went” and then, that he told the people of his upcoming death and that God would continue to be with them and aid them in their coming challenges.
Elsewhere in the parsha: The root halakh, “to walk,” is used three other times in the parsha. (1) There is another וילך, vayelekh (v 14), also referring to Moshe and also in the context of a discussion of his imminent death. (2) and (3) Both refer to God as ההולך, the one who continues to “walk” – in the present tense – “with you” (v 6) or “before you” (v 8), the people.
Interpretation: Many commentaries link Moshe’s walking at the start of the parsha with his death. The Ibn Ezra understands Moshe’s walking here as referring to the walk he took around the camp, to each and every tribe, to say goodbye and comfort them concerning his death. The Ohr HaChaim suggests – based on a Zohar tradition that the soul begins its journey out of the body 40 days before a person dies – that Moshe’s soul was indeed “going,” in transition, making its way out of his body during this time.
Indeed, the first time the Torah uses the word vayelekh in reference to Moshe is when Moshe “goes” to his father in law Yitro to request permission to return to his brothers in Egypt and Yitro grants him that permission with the words: lekh leshalom, “go in peace” (Exodus 4:18). Moshe’s last vayelekh in our parsha ties beautifully back to this first vayelekh – Moshe will indeed be returning now to “his brothers,” to his ancestors, and maybe we can hear the echo of Yitro’s blessing here, too – go in peace, Moshe, go in peace, return in peace to your people and to your Source.
Meanwhile, standing in contrast to Moshe’s past tense “he went” – implying a leave-taking from this world – we have God’s holekh, a present tense “walking with” presence that will never leave us, a sense of steady continuous companionship and protection. Moshe may die and “walk” away, but God continues to “walk with” the people.
Message: During this season, we are thinking about who has left us and who will leave us, who will come and who will go from among the living this year, and who, like Moshe, may be in the process of transitioning before our eyes from life to death, taking the ultimate “walk” to peace.
We may also be aware, as we consider the teshuva process and our own personal transformation, of the cost of such change inside us; even shifts for the better involve some loss, involve allowing something to “walk” out of us, to leave us – perhaps an ineffective or harmful habit or way of thinking or a pain we have been holding onto for a very long time or the comfort of some previously known way of being, whether good or bad, but still familiar and therefore comforting in some way. It is not easy to let things change inside us, to allow what needs to move on and “walk” off to do so, to allow what needs to die inside us to make its gradual transition to peace.
Moshe understood what sustains us during these leave-takings and transitions: a sense of some continual eternal holekh presence. ה’ אלוקיך הוא ההולך עמך לא ירפך ולא יעזבך, “For the Lord your God Himself walks with you; He will not fail your or forsake you” (31:6). I may leave you, says Moshe, I may walk away, walk on to the next world, but God continues to walk with you, always. You can count on that, hold on to that steadiness in your times of grief and in your times of internal change and turmoil, in your letting go and in your being left. There is always One who walks with you. Amidst the storm and swirl of constant change, inside and out, there is One that always walks with you through the storm, holding you in steadiness.
As we say in Psalm 27 regularly this season, “for my father and my mother may forsake me, but the Lord will gather me in.”
Moshe knows that people have trouble feeling this Presence, that we are not always aware of this steady Walker, and so he himself walks, for one last time, through the camp, to deliver this message to each and every tribe personally, to be, for the last time, God’s legs and mouth on earth, a walking emissary of the ultimate Walker, reminding people of God’s Presence through his own last bit of presence on earth.
We carry the eternal Walker inside us, and as we walk through the camp, through life, we deliver this message of ultimate steadiness, again and again, in each personal encounter we are granted, even as we, too, are always slowly leaving.
May we be sealed in the book of life.
Photo by Bob Price at Pexels
