After the palpitant story of the Exodus, the giving of the Torah, the building of the Mishkan and 40 years of traveling through the desert, welcome to Sefer Devarim! Here we are, east of the Jordan river, listening to Moshe’s big parting speeches, retelling the story of Bnei Yisrael’s travels up to this point. This last book of the five books of the Torah is very different from the previous ones. From Bereishit through Bamidbar, most of the pesukim are told in the voice of an anonymous narrator and the books of Shemot, Vayikra, and Bamidbar are punctuated by the words “and YKVK told Moshe: tell Bnei Yisrael …” The book of Devarim however, is comprised of three long speeches by Moshe, in which the great leader of the Jewish people becomes an author in his own right and fully owns his own words. As such, it is interesting to compare events and laws as they are told in the book of Devarim to their narration in previous books. 

Here is one example: 

They [Bnei Yisrael] marched on and went up the road to Bashan, and King Og of Bashan, with all his troops, came out to Edrei to engage them in battle. […] They defeated him and his sons and all his troops, until no remnant was left; and they took possession of his country (Bamidbar 21:33).

This is the account of Bnei Yisrael’s victory against Og, king of Bashan in the book of Bamidbar. When Moshe recounts this victory in Devarim, however, surprising details appear:

“So our God YKVK also delivered into our power King Og of Bashan, with all his troops […] Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. His bedstead, an iron bedstead (arsso eress barzel), is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, by the standard cubit!” (Devarim 3:11)

Why does Moshe retell Bnei Yisrael details about Og’s “eress,” his bedstead–its size, location, and material? This detail seems so peculiar and out-of-place.

Most mefarshim comment on the bedstead’s material. The pesukim tell us it was made of barzel (iron), they say, because wood could not sustain Og’s stature and weight (see, e.g. Ramban, Malbim, Abarbanel on Devarim 3:11). The mention of iron then comes to emphasize what a mighty enemy Og was. The mention of the eress’ dimensions, similarly, highlights Og’s extraordinary size, and adds to the victory over this terrible enemy. The Rashbam goes even further. He suggests that eress really means crib, and that the dimensions given in the pasuk refer to Og’s size as a baby. How much bigger must he have been as a grown up in battle! In sum, these descriptions are taken to emphasize Og’s imposing stature and what a powerful enemy he must have been. This serves both to explain Moshe’s fear of battling Og and his people and to highlight what strong enemies Bnei Yisrael are capable of defeating with God’s help.

However, none of these interpretations explain why Moshe recalls the location of Og’s bed (“His bedstead […] is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites”). While the material and size matter and tell us something about Og’s stature, why does it matter that his bed can be found in Rabbah of the Ammonites? 

Though most translations render eress as “bed” or “bedstead,” some commentators point to other meanings: It may mean “fortress,” following a pasuk in the book of the prophet Amos (see the Bechor Shor and Hadar Zekenim on Devarim 3:11). And finally, some modern scholars believe it might actually mean tomb or grave. Read as such, the surprising detail of Og’s “eress” might take on new meaning. The seemingly out of place description of the location of Og’s tomb (instead of his bedstead) is an intriguing point of contrast to the end of Sefer Devarim. Moshe will pass away soon but, as opposed to Og, “no one knows his burial place to this day” (Devarim 34:6). 

So we have at the beginning of Sefer Devarim, the death of a leader (Og), whose burial place is an enormous structure of iron, smack in the middle of the well-known location of Rabbah of the Ammonites. And at the end of Sefer Devarim, an unknown burial location, a nondescript tomb. Though only the last few pesukim of the Sefer deal explicitly with Moshe’s death, his impending passing is an inescapable part of the background tapestry of the book. Indeed, the first few words of Devarim point to the book’s inescapable tension: 

These are the words that Moshe addressed to all Yisrael on the other side of the Jordan (b’ever HaYarden) (Devarim 1:1).

The east side of the Jordan river is referred to as the “other side.” But if the east side is the other side, we must conclude that the anonymous narrator is situated on the west side, in the land of Israel. In other words, though the events of the book of Devarim take place on the east side of the Jordan, in the desert, the narrator is already on the west side. The book’s anonymous narrator is already in the land of Israel while Moshe, who delivers all the speeches of the book, will never enter. This is Devarim’s ineluctable tension. 

What will Moshe’s legacy be and what will Bnei Yisrael take of his leadership into the next chapter of their peoplehood? How does one measure a life? 

I wonder whether the telling of Og’s death at the beginning of Sefer Devarim and in particular, the seemingly innocuous mention of the location of his resting place, is a subtle hint at this question, offering Og as a point of contrast to Moshe. 

Og is “the last of the Refaim.” His death is the end of a people. He may well leave behind an iron grave of imposing physical measurements in a known and specific location, but there is no one left to mourn him (“… we dealt them such a blow that no survivor was left,” Devarim 3:3). He has no legacy. Moshe’s passing, on the other hand, is certainly the end of a chapter (of Chumash even), but it is mostly a beginning: Bnei Yisrael crossing the Jordan river into the Promised Land. Moshe’s leadership is humble enough to make space for a successor and for the people to continue to unfold their story without him. Though Moshe’s death will take up emotional space (“And Bnei Yisrael bewailed Moshe in the steppes of Moab for thirty days,” Devarim 34:8), it does not take up physical space (“no one knows his burial place to this day,” Devarim 34:6). Moshe’s life is not measured in his grave’s material, location or dimensions, but in years of life, service, and legacy. “Moshe was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (Devarim 34:7). And that is true leadership.