“Therefore, write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the people of Israel. Have them learn it by heart, so that this song can be a witness for me against the people of Israel.”-Deuteronomy 31:19
Alrighty folks!
The fateful moment has arrived!
From today, we are beginning that section of Torah that has been studied, debated over and loved more than any other section in the Torah.
I’m talked about the revered SONG OF MOSES!
This song is literally a canon within a canon and contains so much theological insight we could literally spend months plumbing the depths of what’s written here.
Honestly, I have no idea how long it’s gonna take to blog through this staggering Song of Moses.
But let’s get going.
From verse 19, the Lord instructs Moses to write this song and teach it to the children of Israel before he goes the way of his ancestors.
Although Moses is the main author, Joshua also played an important role in this song’s creation.
He either stood as an eyewitness to the making of the song or may actually have been the scribe who physically penned the words of the song onto a scroll.
It is important to note that this song was to be first written and then shared orally with the Israelites.
This indicates just how important this Song of Moses was.
However, don’t misunderstand me and think I’m saying that those teachings of HASHEM that were transmitted orally carry any less weight or are any less inspired.
They are not.
Recall the Rabbinical method of KAL V’HOMER that I spoke about in the past.
Literally translated, it means “light and heavy”.
This is a principle we use to determine which of God’s commandments to obey when in a sticky situation where we have to make the difficult decision to break one of the Lord’s commands in order to obey another.
KAL V’HOMER tells us to always obey the “heavier” or more important commandment.
A perfect example is an ambulance rushing to save a life on the Shabbat.
Although we are forbidden from working on the Shabbat, when one’s life is in danger, saving a life is always more important.
Thus, in this case, the ambulance driver and associated medical professionals break the Shabbat in order to save a person who is in danger of dying.
In the same way, the written word is considered to carry more weight than a word transmitted orally.
Another important point to notice here is that the people are to memorize this song.
Let’s ask ourselves for a second…
…what exactly is a song?
Well, simply put, a song is a set of words or a poem set to music.
It’s a scientific fact that when words and phrases are connected to music, it is so much easier to memorize them and before the printing press, this was pretty much how knowledge and history was passed on from generation to generation.
And it’s a VERY effective method for long-term retention.
I still have some songs etched in my memory banks from childhood that I can still recite from scratch…
…like the A-B-C song for example!
Here’s the ALEPH BET song in Hebrew:
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