The majority of the Torah portion Haazinu (“Listen In”) is made up of a 70-line “song” that Moses sang to the Israelites on his last day on earth.
Moses urges the people to “remember the days of old / Consider the years of many generations / Ask your father, and he will recount it to you / Your elders, and they will tell you” how God “found them in a desert land,” made them a people, chose them as His own, and left them a prosperous land. He does this by citing heaven and earth as witnesses. The song also cautions listeners about the dangers of abundance—”Yeshurun grew fat and kicked / You have grown fat, thick, and rotund / He forsook God who made him / And spurned the Rock of his salvation”—and the terrible catastrophes that would follow, which Moses describes as G-d “hiding His face.” But ultimately, God will atone for the murder of His servants and make peace with His people and land, the prophet claims.
God commands Moses to climb Mount Nebo’s summit so he might see the Promised Land from there before he perishes on the mountain. This commandment comes at the end of the Parasha. You will see the country across from you, but you are forbidden from entering there since it belongs to the Israelites.
Read the entire Torah portion of Parashat Haazinu, in Hebrew and English, here.
