Receiving the Covenant

On the day of his death, Moshe brought the entire nation together in the presence of G-d to enter them into a covenant with Him. The text details the various factions of the nation he gathered in descending order of importance: The leader of the tribes, the elders, the officers, the other men, the young children, the women, the converts and finally the woodcutters and water drawers. These woodcutters and water drawers are listed at the end and separately as these were the Canaanites who pretended that they wanted to convert to Judaism during Moshe’s time however Moshe was on to them so in failing to trust them, he made them into woodcutters and water drawers. The same thing happened later in Yehoshua ’s time with the Gibeonites who similarly pretended to want to convert to Judaism though Yehoshua didn’t trust them and similarly made them into woodcutters and water drawers.

Moshe made the nation stand in ranks, as a way to encourage them in transitioning from him to another leader (Yehoshua). Yehoshua acted similarly before his death as did Shmuel the prophet when his leadership was about to be passed to Saul.

The way covenants were set up is that there would be demarcations set up on two sides and those parties to the covenant would pass through it.

Get full access to Sarede’s Substack at sarede.substack.com/subscribe