A Different Kind of Prophet (expanded English edition)

בס"ד

Studies in the Moreh Nevuchim

Part II, Chapters 34–35

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PROPHET

Moshe Rabbeinu's Prophecy and Wonders in the Guide of the Perplexed

ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה אשר ידעו ה' פנים אל פנים

"Never again did there arise a prophet in Israel like Moshe, whom Hashem knew face to face" (Devarim 34:10)

Adapted and expanded from a shiur delivered in chaburah

Michoel Or

I. The Rambam's Project — and Where Moshe Stands in It

In the long sequence of chapters that the Rambam devotes to prophecy in the second part of the Moreh Nevuchim,[1] his aim is nothing less than a complete theory of the phenomenon: what prophecy is, by what mechanism it reaches a human being, and how the various kinds and degrees of prophetic experience arrange themselves into a hierarchy. Before descending into the details of that hierarchy, however, he pauses in chapter 35 to lay down a foundation that carries the entire structure, and it is a startling one: the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu is not the top floor of the building he is about to construct — it is not in the building at all. The Torah itself places Moshe's distinction precisely in his prophecy, ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה‎,[2] "never again did there arise a prophet in Israel like Moshe," and it is here that one must stop and understand what exactly makes that prophecy special — special enough that the Rambam refuses to discuss it under the same name as everyone else's.

Begin with the verse itself. Everyone senses that when the Torah says ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה‎, this is not an incidental remark, not something that merely slipped out in passing. To feel the force of that, set it against another of Moshe's distinctions, one about which such a claim could at least be entertained. When the Torah testifies והאיש משה עניו מאד מכל האדם אשר על פני האדמה‎,[3] "and the man Moshe was exceedingly humble, more than any man on the face of the earth," the statement emerges entirely within the flow of a narrative: had Miriam not spoken against Moshe, the Torah would never have needed to tell us that Moshe could not possibly have held himself above his family, for "the man Moshe was exceedingly humble." It happens to be; it is a story. Had the episode not occurred, no reader would ever have been told that Moshe was the humblest of all men. And this itself is a chiddush worth pausing over — that the single character trait the Torah states explicitly about Moshe is not that he was the greatest kadosh or the greatest chacham but that he was the humblest of men — yet the manner of its telling remains, on the surface, incidental: a fact pressed out of the text by the needs of one episode.

About his prophecy no such reading is possible. The entire Torah is the prophecy of Moshe. In the last eight verses of the Torah the tradition itself wrestles with this — how Moshe could write of his own passing[4] — precisely because everyone understands that the Torah is toras Moshe, called by his name, משה קיבל תורה מסיני‎.[5] There is no Torah without Moshe; a statement about the rank of his prophecy is a statement about the standing of the Torah itself, and such a statement the Torah does not make by accident.

II. The Line That Binds Heaven and Earth

And more than this, as we have noted many times: the whole project of Torah is a single prophecy that Moshe received and set down. Moshe is the messenger, and Moshe is the connecting line that binds Klal Yisrael to the Ribbono shel Olam. Of him one may borrow the image of סולם מוצב ארצה וראשו מגיע השמימה‎,[6] a ladder set on the earth whose head reaches the heavens — he is here and he is there, he ascends and descends, he speaks with God and he speaks with us. And the chiddush is that he does not only carry the prophecy and the Torah downward; he is also the saneigor shel Yisrael, the advocate who stands in the breach when God would punish, the one who brings them out of Mitzrayim. Every great thing happens through him. Yetzias Mitzrayim itself — אנכי ה' אלקיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים‎: who brought them out? The Ribbono shel Olam brought them out, but through whom is this known? Moshe led them out, and Moshe directs the credit upward — ויאמינו בה' ובמשה עבדו‎,[7] "and they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant." The same point recurs throughout: left to ourselves we do not know, as Pharaoh said, מי ה' אשר אשמע בקולו‎,[8] "who is Hashem that I should heed His voice?" — it is Moshe who tells us that God is here. There is, so to speak, no knowledge of God among us without Moshe.

It follows that the Rambam had, so to speak, a vested interest in establishing Moshe as the true prophet — for without it the entire edifice of the religion does not stand. The faith rests on Maamad Har Sinai, and Moshe Rabbeinu is the central figure of that event; this much is obvious. But there is a deeper and almost opposite point. The Rambam's whole theory of prophecy is that prophecy is a natural attainment[9] — not merely that God arbitrarily selects a favorite, but that a man can rise to prophecy from his own side, through the perfection of his faculties. On that theory, Moshe was the man who earned all of this: his greatness is not separable from his prophecy, for his prophecy is itself an attainment, a perfection of the man. This is not how most others would frame it — on the common framing, God found a faithful shepherd, Moshe was worthy for whatever reason, and God took him. The Rambam holds no: the madreigah was his.

III. The Torah Never Says Why Moshe Was Chosen

Here a very fine observation emerged in the give-and-take of the shiur. Of the others whom God chose, the Torah states the reason explicitly. Of Noach — נח איש צדיק‎, and at the moment of his summons, כי אותך ראיתי צדיק לפני בדור הזה‎,[10] "for you have I seen righteous before Me in this generation." Of Avraham — כי ידעתיו למען אשר יצוה את בניו ואת ביתו אחריו‎,[11] "for I have known him, that he will command his children and his household after him"; that is the stated quality, אברהם אוהבי‎, "Avraham who loves Me." But of Moshe the Torah never says why God chose him. All of his qualities surface incidentally, over the course of his career: the humility emerges only through the episode of Miriam, the singularity of his prophecy is stated only at his death. There is never a declaration of who he was and why he, of all men, was taken.

And this is a legitimate difficulty — indeed, for the Rambam it is an urgent one. If one is going to say, as he does, that God did not simply pluck Moshe out of the world but that Moshe rose to this from his own side, one needs some evidence in the verses themselves. It is always precarious to explain why the Torah dwells on one matter and passes over another; but what can be said is this: the only narrative the Torah gives us of Moshe before his call — and arguably a sequence of narratives with a single thread — concerns Moshe's selflessness.

IV. Selflessness — the Root of Prophecy

The story of Moshe and the Mitzri[12] carries two ideas. The simpler one is משתתף בצערו של ישראל‎ — ויצא אל אחיו וירא בסבלותם‎, "he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens" — and sharing the suffering of Yisrael is already a credential for leadership. But the essential point, it would seem, is that the story reveals a man with no account of his own. And it is not merely a "fine middah" in the manner of Rivkah's וגם לגמליך אשקה‎,[13] which is an act of chessed; here the tone is different because the meaning is different. Moshe jeopardized his entire existence. He was a man of standing in Pharaoh's house; he killed the Mitzri to save a fellow Jew, and he lost everything — fleeing under sentence of death, into exile, because he had put his own neck forward for another. This is not a homiletic flourish; this is the plain sense. For consider the alternative: Moshe was simply a fine Jew, and God chose him? Perhaps someone could hold that. The Rambam certainly could not be comfortable with it.

The narrative admittedly does not say to what extent one may build on it. But if one reads it, one may fairly say: who merits to lead Klal Yisrael? One who carries within himself the capacity for mesirus nefesh, who has already risked his life to save another. And this is more than a proof of his personal stature — it fits into the inner logic of prophecy itself. When God takes a man as His messenger, He requires a man who can be His vessel: a man who thinks of the greater good and not of himself. A navi — whether Zechariah, Yeshayahu, or Yirmiyahu — must carry this qualification, that he is not a man for himself; he stands there to serve others, to be a faithful bearer of the word of God. One sees this in Yonah as well,[14] in the struggle of a navi with his role: he is not a man who is permitted to live for his own judgment, and that was precisely the claim against him. It makes no difference what your own opinion is — you are there to effectuate the mission: God wishes to save these people, you must go; God wishes to warn, you must warn. A messenger of God cannot be a selfish man, for a selfish man — the other does not concern him. It may well be that the Rambam himself spells this out in the coming chapters; we shall see as we proceed.

V. Prophecy and Leadership — in Moshe, One Thing

And here a larger point comes into view, one that appears precisely when the two subjects are learned together: in Moshe, prophecy and leadership are bound into one. With the other nevi'im it was not so; there, prophecy was an institution standing apart from the crown. David HaMelech was the leader, and Nosson HaNavi was the prophet; the roles were divided. Moshe held every crown in one hand — he was the navi, he was the king, and during the days of the milu'im he served as kohen as well: kesser Torah, kesser kehunah, kesser malchus.[15] He was, lehavdil, the president and the supreme court and the congress and the priest in one person. And Korach indeed argued exactly this: what kind of arrangement is it?[16] Either you are a navi or you are a king — in a well-ordered society the roles must be separated! And the Ribbono shel Olam answered: no; Moshe is the man who embodies them all.

But if one man is to embody them all, then it must be that his prophecy and his selflessness are a single fabric — and this is what one sees throughout. He intercedes for the Jewish people, he stands in the middle and pleads: ועתה אם תשא חטאתם, ואם אין מחני נא מספרך אשר כתבת‎,[17] "and now, if You will bear their sin — and if not, erase me, I pray, from Your book which You have written." These are not mere words of rhetoric; they are the idea that he is not there al menas lekabel pras, not there to be a rebbe and acquire chassidim. It is not about him — "I am only the messenger." Unlike men who say: I am a tzaddik, I want honor, I want to control — with Moshe it was never about the power, and it was so transparent that the people could challenge him again and again and he remained standing at their side. And I think the fact that he was not permitted to enter Eretz Yisrael brings out the same point: the Ribbono shel Olam says to him, as it were — you are the symbol of laboring without receiving even thanks. You worked for others and were belittled for it; it pursued you your entire life; they said you took for yourself — and Moshe cries out לא חמור אחד מהם נשאתי ולא הרעתי את אחד מהם‎,[18] "not one donkey have I taken from them, nor have I wronged one of them" — and no one believes him, and his own family speaks of him, and in the end he does not enter, and the reward is handed to his talmid; Yehoshua leads them in. This is the parable of Moshe: selflessness and the service of others. And in Moshe, prophecy is tied to precisely this — God chose him because he is the only truly unbiased, trusted emissary, who turns nothing back toward himself. Only such a man is the ultimate. Others are magnificent; they wish to do for God — but they also wish for themselves, for their children. With Moshe, even his children do not inherit his place; it is given away to the student. That is Moshe, and that is prophecy and leadership together.

VI. The Rambam's Words — Moshe Is Outside the Discussion

First, a brief review of chapter 34, where the previous shiur concluded. There the Rambam reads the verse הנה אנכי שלח מלאך לפניך‎,[19] "behold, I send an angel before you," as referring not to a visible angel marching before the camp but to the prophet whom God would raise up for Klal Yisrael, as it is stated, נביא אקים להם מקרב אחיהם כמוך ונתתי דברי בפיו‎[20] — the angel is sent to the navi, and the people are commanded to heed the navi who carries its word. And he closes the chapter with the foundation he never tires of repeating: that every prophet other than Moshe Rabbeinu receives prophecy through the intermediation of an angel — "know this." With that foundation in hand one enters chapter 35, where the Rambam sets out to define what זולת משה רבינו‎, "other than Moshe Rabbeinu," really means. These are his words:

Moreh Nevuchim II:35 (Ibn Tibbon)"כבר בארתי לבני האדם כולם הארבעה הבדלים אשר נבדלה בהם נבואת משה רבנו מנבואת שאר הנביאים, והבאתי ראיה על זה וגיליתיו בפרוש המשנה ובמשנה תורה, ואין צורך להשיבו ואינו מענין המאמר.ואשר אודיעך אותו, כי כל דבר שאומר אותו בנבואה בפרקי זה המאמר, אמנם הוא בצורת נבואת כל הנביאים אשר לפני משה ואשר יבואו אחריו. אמנם נבואת משה רבנו לא אדבר בה באלו הפרקים אפילו מלה אחת, לא בבאור ולא ברמיזה. והוא, ששם נביא אמנם יאמר אצלי על משה ועל זולתו בסיפוק. וכן הענין אצלי עוד בנפלאותיו ונפלאות זולתו, כי אותותיו אינם מכת נפלאות שאר הנביאים.""I have already explained to all men the four differences by which the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu is distinguished from the prophecy of all the other prophets, and I have brought proof for this and set it forth in the Commentary on the Mishnah and in the Mishneh Torah, and there is no need to repeat it, nor is it the purpose of this treatise. What I shall now inform you is this: everything I say about prophecy in the chapters of this treatise concerns only the form of the prophecy of all the prophets who were before Moshe or who will come after him; but the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu I will not discuss in these chapters with even a single word, neither explicitly nor by allusion. For the term 'prophet' is, in my view, said of Moshe and of all others equivocally; and so too, in my view, regarding his wonders and the wonders of others — for his signs are not of the class of the wonders of the other prophets."

The Rambam points back to the four distinctions he has already enumerated in the Commentary on the Mishnah and in the Mishneh Torah,[21] and declines to repeat them here — ואין זה ממטרת החיבור‎, it is not the purpose of this work. (He wrote, of course, for readers without a search engine, and he assumed that whoever held the Moreh held his Peirush HaMishnah as well.) In the shiur the four points were not before us; since the entire chapter leans on them, it is worth setting them out here as the Rambam himself codifies them:

Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 7:6 (abridged)"ומה הפרש יש בין נבואת משה לשאר כל הנביאים? שכל הנביאים בחלום או במראה, ומשה רבנו מתנבא והוא ער ועומד... כל הנביאים על ידי מלאך, לפיכך רואים מה שהם רואים במשל וחידה; משה רבנו לא על ידי מלאך, שנאמר פה אל פה אדבר בו... שאינו מתנבא בחידה אלא במראה, שרואה הדבר על בוריו... כל הנביאים יראים ונבהלים ומתמוגגין, ומשה רבנו אינו כן, שהכתוב אומר כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו... כל הנביאים אין מתנבאים בכל עת שירצו; משה רבנו אינו כן, אלא כל זמן שיחפוץ רוח הקודש לובשתו ונבואה שורה עליו... לפיכך מתנבא בכל עת, שנאמר עמדו ואשמעה מה יצוה ה' לכם.""And what is the difference between the prophecy of Moshe and that of all the other prophets? All the prophets prophesy in a dream or a vision, while Moshe Rabbeinu prophesies awake and standing. All the prophets receive through an angel, and therefore see what they see as parable and riddle; Moshe Rabbeinu — not through an angel, as it is stated 'mouth to mouth I speak with him'... he prophesies not in riddles but in clear perception, seeing the matter in its clarity. All the prophets are terrified and overwhelmed and dissolve, but Moshe Rabbeinu is not so — as the verse says, 'as a man speaks to his friend.' And all the prophets cannot prophesy whenever they wish; Moshe Rabbeinu is not so — whenever he desires, ruach ha-kodesh clothes him and prophecy rests upon him... therefore he prophesies at any time, as it is stated, 'Stand, and I will hear what Hashem will command concerning you.'"

Four differences, then: awake and not in a dream; without an angel, and therefore without parable or riddle — פה אל פה‎, the thing seen על בוריו‎; without terror — כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו‎, as naturally as a man hears his friend; and at will — בכל עת שירצה‎.[22] But the essential chiddush of our chapter is not the four differences; it is the declaration built upon them. Everything the Rambam will say in all these chapters about prophecy concerns only the prophecy of the other nevi'im; about the prophecy of Moshe he will not say one word, לא בבאור ולא ברמיזה‎, neither explicitly nor by hint. And the reason: the name "navi" is said of Moshe and of the others בסיפוק‎ — as an equivocal term, a shared word laid over two things that are not one kind of thing.[23] And the same, he says, holds for the wonders: Moshe's mofsim are not of the same class as the mofsim of all other prophets. Two creatures wearing one name.

VII. "Is Not Like the Perception of the Avos" — Another Thing, Not a Greater One

Moreh Nevuchim II:35, continued"אמנם ראית התורה על היות נבואתו נבדלת מכל מי שקדמו, היא אמרו: וארא אל אברהם וגו' ושמי ה' לא נודעתי להם — הנה כבר הודיענו שהשגתו אינה כהשגת האבות, אבל יותר גדולה, כל שכן השגת זולתם ממי שקדם. ואמנם הבדלה מנבואת כל מי שיתאחר, הוא אמרו על צד ההגדה: ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה אשר ידעו ה' פנים אל פנים.""The Torah's evidence that his prophecy is distinct from all who preceded him is the verse: 'And I appeared to Avraham... but by My name Hashem I was not known to them' — it has thereby informed us that his perception is not like the perception of the Avos but greater, and all the more so than the perception of those before them. And its distinctness from the prophecy of all who come after is His statement, by way of declaration: 'Never again did there arise a prophet in Israel like Moshe, whom Hashem knew face to face.'"

The proof that Moshe stands above those who came before him is the verse וארא אל אברהם אל יצחק ואל יעקב בא-ל שד-י, ושמי ה' לא נודעתי להם‎[24] — to the Avos the Shem Havayah was not made known, and to Moshe it was; and the proof regarding all who come after is ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה‎. But one must listen closely to the Rambam's language. He writes that Moshe's perception «אינה» — is not — like the perception of the Avos; he does not write that it is שונה‎, different from theirs. In concepts of this kind the gap between those two words is a world. "Different" means we are still holding one and the same thing, and one party has more of it: I have twenty dollars and you have thirty — different, yet really the same thing in two quantities. "Is not" means: this is not that. You have an apple and I have an automobile — here one is not comparing two measures of one thing but speaking of two things. When the Torah says that no prophet ever arose like Moshe, it means that Moshe knew God in a manner essentially unlike anyone else's, even Avraham Avinu's — he was not the greatest navi; he was a different kind of navi. When things are different enough, they become a different thing: the distinction is not in quantity but in quality. That is precisely what the Rambam's בסיפוק‎ encodes — apples to oranges, not a larger apple.

And this sits perfectly in the larger picture the Torah paints. A prophecy is a communication: God is hidden from us, and through the navi He reveals Himself. The vessel, the messenger, stands somewhere in the middle — he communicates with God and he communicates with us. But most nevi'im are, in the main, men — men who sometimes speak with God. Of Moshe the verse says אשר ידעו ה' פנים אל פנים‎, whom Hashem knew face to face — as though he belongs there: the Torah relates that he spent forty days and forty nights in heaven, in the company of the malachim,[25] a picture one does not find, even as metaphor, by any other navi. He is as much at home with God as he is with us. And this is how Rashi and the Rishonim render פנים אל פנים‎ — שהיה לבו גס בו‎, his heart was familiar with Him, and he spoke with Him whenever he wished[26] — a magnificent diyuk that says exactly this point: intimacy, closeness, not merely more perception. Moshe knew God personally. (And chas v'shalom, not as other faiths have distorted such language into a "son of God," lehavdil — one must process honestly what these expressions mean and what they do not mean.)

Yet here a difficulty carries over from the earlier chapters of the Moreh, and it should be stated even though our shiur left it standing. The Rambam himself holds that God cannot be comprehended — אחורי‎ may be seen, but ופני לא יראו‎: the "face" even Moshe could not see.[27] If comprehension is impossible, it is impossible; what then is Moshe's advantage over every other man, and what is that אחורי‎ which Moshe alone saw, which places him in a different league altogether? A direction of an answer may in fact lie in the Rambam's own words earlier in the Moreh. In I:54 he explains that when Moshe asked הראני נא את כבדך‎, two requests were before God: to know His essence — which was refused, כי לא יראני האדם וחי‎ — and to know His ways, הודיעני נא את דרכך‎, which was granted in full: כל טובי‎, all the created order and its governance, the Thirteen Attributes understood as attributes of action.[28] What Moshe attained, on this reading, was not a sight of the Divine essence but the most complete knowledge ever granted of how God acts in His world — a point worth holding on to, for it will return, unexpectedly, at the end of this essay.

VIII. The Wonders — in Public or in Private

Moreh Nevuchim II:35, continued"ואמנם הבדל מופתיו על הכלל ממופתי כל נביא על הכלל: כי כל הנפלאות אשר עשאום הנביאים או נעשו להם, הגידו בהם יחידים מבני אדם, כאותות אליהו ואלישע. הלא תראה מלך ישראל תמה מהם וישאל גחזי שיגידם לו... ולזה הגידה התורה עליו גם כן, שלא יקום נביא לעולם שיעשה אותות בפרהסיא, לעיני הנאות לו והחולק עליו, כמו שעשה משה. והוא אמרו: ולא קם נביא עוד וגו' לכל האותות והמופתים וגו' לעיני כל ישראל — שהוא קשר הנה שני הענינים יחד: שלא יקום מי שישיג כהשגתו, ולא מי שיעשה כמעשיו. ואחר כן באר שהאותות ההם היו לפרעה ולכל עבדיו ולכל ארצו — החולקים עליו, והיו גם כן בפני כל ישראל הנמשכים אחריו — לעיני כל ישראל. וזה דבר לא נמצא לנביא לפניו, וכבר קדמה הגדתו הצודקת שלא יהיה זה לזולתו.""As for the general distinction of his wonders from the wonders of every other prophet: all the wonders that the prophets performed, or that were performed for them, were told of by individuals — such as the signs of Eliyahu and Elisha. Do you not see that the king of Israel wondered about them and asked Geichazi to recount them to him?... Therefore the Torah declared of him likewise that no prophet will ever arise who performs signs publicly, before his supporter and his opponent alike, as Moshe did. This is the verse: 'Never again did there arise a prophet... for all the signs and the wonders... before the eyes of all Israel' — for it bound the two matters together here: that none will arise who perceives as he perceived, nor one who does as he did. It then explained that those signs were 'for Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land' — his opponents — and were likewise in the presence of all Israel who followed him, 'before the eyes of all Israel.' And this is a thing found in no prophet before him; and His truthful declaration has already preceded, that it will belong to no one after him."

All the wonders of all the nevi'im, the Rambam observes, were done for individuals, and reached the world only through tellers. The king of Israel himself must ask Geichazi, ספרה נא לי את כל הגדולות אשר עשה אלישע‎, "recount to me, please, all the great things Elisha did" — and at that very moment the woman arrives: זאת האשה וזה בנה אשר החיה אלישע‎[29] — the king never saw the revival; he hears it from a narrator. Moshe's wonders, by contrast, were done in the open — before Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land, the opponents, and לעיני כל ישראל‎, before the eyes of the entire people who followed him. And the verse of ולא קם נביא‎ binds the two matters into one: none will arise who perceives as he perceived, and none who does as he did. (The Rambam is consistent here to the point of audacity: in the continuation of the chapter he must deliberately minimize the sun standing still for Yehoshua — noting that there it says only לעיני ישראל‎ and not kol Yisrael, and reading כיום תמים‎ as merely "the longest of summer days" — for otherwise the entire theory does not stand.[30] He has put himself in a tight spot, and he knows it.)

But here leaps out the difficulty that occupied the entire last portion of the shiur. The first distinction, פנים אל פנים‎, is perfectly intelligible — it places Moshe nearer to God than to us. But the second — what does the public scale of the wonders have to do with the greatness of his prophecy? One can say many true things: Moshe was a great leader, a founder of the nation; his nissim were relevant to everyone, while the other nevi'im were merely maintaining Klal Yisrael. All true — but what has any of it to do with prophecy? A wonder before one person and a wonder before a thousand: the impact is greater, certainly, but why is it a higher madreigah? Why could Elisha not perform his wonder while a hundred people watched? And if the whole argument is only that the verse happens to join the two clauses — שהוא קשר הנה שני הענינים יחד‎ — then very well, the Rambam is anchored in the pasuk, and that is to his credit; but it has not added one measure of understanding as to what signs and wonders before all Israel have to do with the difference between Moshe and every other navi. And if it explains nothing, the Rambam has said it for nothing — which cannot be.

IX. The Statement, and the Price of a Miracle

A first answer emerged in the give-and-take. A miracle has two components. One is the accomplishment itself — the child lives again; that, Elisha can do. But perform it before a thousand people and you have accomplished two things: the child lives, and you have made a statement — a bold, public declaration. Perhaps the other nevi'im possessed the koach to return the child to life, but not the koach to do it while a crowd watched; to overturn nature on a public stage is to defy סדרי בראשית‎ in an altogether louder register. They could get the task done — the child lives, and no one knows how. On the Rambam's own principles one can build this into a fine piece of Torah, for the Rambam holds, in the spirit of the Gemara's remark about the man for whom a miracle was performed — כמה גרוע אדם זה שנשתנו לו סדרי בראשית‎, "how inferior is this man, that the orders of creation were altered for him"[31] — that a miracle is not, in itself, a thing of praise: the alteration of nature is not something God does lightly, and indeed the Rambam famously minimizes miracles altogether, holding that they were stipulated into creation from the six days.[32] At the very least, then, one may say that God's willingness to work wonders through Moshe before the eyes of all testifies to an esteem granted to no one else. But the essential question still stands open: how does any of this make the prophecy greater?

X. The Proposed Resolution — the Prophet as the Vessel of God's Acts

And here, b'derech efshar, is the mehalech that emerged — and perhaps from within it an explanation will surface for the first half as well. If a navi were merely a message-bearer, the entire institution would be puzzling. To deliver a message one needs a telephone, a telegram: I lift the receiver, I speak, you hear. And God has other channels, especially on the Rambam's account — a dream can be sent; a malach can be sent. Evidently a navi is not merely a message. A navi is, as the sefarim put it, the entity through which God acts, not only the entity through which God speaks. And if that is true, then a great navi carries, as it were, Godly powers in this precise sense — that the Ribbono shel Olam works through him.

So when we say that God brought Yisrael out ביד חזקה ובזרע נטויה‎, and the verse says לכל האותות והמופתים אשר שלחו ה' לעשות בארץ מצרים‎ — God does it, but Moshe is the instrument. As far as Pharaoh is concerned, he does not know who stands behind the curtain; he knows only that Moshe Rabbeinu arrives, lifts the staff, and the world turns over. He is acting, before Egypt's eyes, as the power that governs. And with this the distinction becomes clear: a small vessel and a great vessel. It is not merely that the impact is greater, that everyone says "what a great thing he did" — he does greater things. Put it in human terms: a small doctor heals one patient; a great doctor produces the cure for the disease itself — he is not merely cleverer, he does more, he brings into the world what no one before him could. That is what Moshe did: לכל האותות והמופתים אשר שלחו ה' לעשות‎ — he walks in before Pharaoh and his servants, and he overturns the entire order. He is, lehavdil, the chief executive, and the Ribbono shel Olam the chairman: he is the one who puts the plan into action — he punishes whom judgment requires, he answers Korach, he leads six hundred thousand out of Mitzrayim. ותחסרהו מעט מאלקים‎,[33] "You have made him but little less than the angels."

And I take enormous pleasure in this Rambam, because it sits in the words. The verse itself says ולכל היד החזקה ולכל המורא הגדול אשר עשה משה לעיני כל ישראל‎[34] — the mighty hand and the great awe are ascribed to Moshe; he, as it were, did them. That, most likely, is how the Rambam is reading the pasuk, and that is why he writes ולא מי שיעשה כמעשיו‎, "nor one who does as he did." A navi is engaged in two things: יעסוק בהשגותיו‎ and יעסוק במעשיו‎ — his perceptions and his deeds. The perception is one axis; and the deeds are themselves a madreigah within prophecy, because the navi is an extension, a vessel, through whom God works in the world. A wonder on a small scale, in private, is therefore a far lower madreigah than deeds on the grand scale, before the eyes of all Israel — the greater vessel carries more. And with this the two halves of the verse become one subject: אשר ידעו ה' פנים אל פנים‎ — the perception; לכל האותות והמופתים... אשר עשה משה לעיני כל ישראל‎ — the deeds; both are one prophecy, the prophecy of the only navi who was at once the supreme knower and the supreme doer.

And here the thread we set aside earlier returns of its own accord. The Rambam taught in I:54 that what Moshe was granted at the cleft of the rock was not the Divine essence but כל טובי‎ — the complete knowledge of God's actions, the Thirteen Attributes as attributes of governance, given, the Rambam says there, precisely because Moshe was about to lead: he needed to know how God runs a world in order to run a people.[35] If knowing God means, for the Rambam, knowing His ways of acting, then the navi whose knowledge is deepest and the navi through whom God acts on the grandest scale are not two claims but one: the השגה of פנים אל פנים‎ and the מעשים of לעיני כל ישראל‎ are the inner and outer faces of a single madreigah. One may suggest — ונראה לבאר‎ — that this is why the Rambam insists the verse "bound the two matters together": they were never two matters.

XI. Where the Sugya Stands

To summarize what this chapter has established: the statement ולא קם נביא עוד בישראל כמשה‎ is no incidental remark but a declaration about the standing of the Torah itself; on the Rambam's naturalistic account of prophecy, Moshe's selection was earned, and the one pre-call narrative the Torah supplies — the Mitzri — identifies the qualification as radical selflessness, the same quality that makes a man capable of bearing the word of God and of leading without taking; the term "navi" applies to Moshe and to all others only equivocally, a difference of kind and not of degree, אינה‎ and not שונה‎; and the public wonders are not a rhetorical flourish appended to his greatness but the second axis of the prophecy itself — the navi as the vessel of God's deeds, אשר עשה משה‎. What remains open is honest and should be said plainly: the four distinctions deserve to be learned inside, in the Peirush HaMishnah and in Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah; the question of what אחורי‎ yields on the Rambam's negative theology is only pointed toward I:54, not settled; and the proposed resolution of the mofsim, however well it sits in the words שיעשה כמעשיו‎, is offered as a mehalech, not as the Rambam's explicit statement. The continuation of the chapter — Yehoshua's sun at Giv'on, and the Rambam's charge to "set apart in your mind" Moshe's prophecy and wonders before hearing anything further about the prophecy of the rest — awaits the coming shiur.

One closing word about the learning itself. It is when one learns with a chavrusa that these things open, because one slows down and thinks inside the problem. Read the chapter alone and one says, "a navi does both things — wonderful," and passes on. Stop and ask — why did the Rambam say this? how is the Rambam reading the pasuk? — and the diyukim leap out, שיעשה כמעשיו‎, and the chapter becomes light. May we merit to continue learning and understanding.

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