Vayelech - in Critical Analysis

In Critical Analysis

Some secular scholars who follow the Documentary Hypothesis find evidence of three separate sources in the parshah. Thus some scholars consider God’s charges to Moses in Deuteronomy 31:14–15 and to Joshua in Deuteronomy 31:23 to have been composed by the Elohist (sometimes abbreviated E) who wrote in the north, in the land of the Tribe of Ephraim, possibly as early as the second half of the 9th century BCE. Some scholars attribute to the first Deuteronomistic historian (sometimes abbreviated Dtr 1) two sections, Deuteronomy 31:1–13 and 24–27, which both refer to a written instruction, which these scholars identify with the scroll found in 2 Kings 22:8–13. And then these scholars attribute the balance of the parshah, Deuteronomy 31:16–22 and 28–30, to the second Deuteronomistic historian (sometimes abbreviated Dtr 2) who inserted the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:1–43) as an additional witness against the Israelites.

While in the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 31:1 begins, “And Moses went and spoke,” in a Qumran scroll (1QDeutb), some Masoretic manuscripts, and the Septuagint, Deuteronomy 31:1 begins, “And Moses finished speaking all.” Robert Alter noted that the third-person forms of the verb “went,” wayelekh, and the verb “finished,” wayekhal, have the same consonants, and the order of the last two consonants could have been reversed in a scribal transcription. Alter argued that the Qumran version makes Deuteronomy 31:1 a proper introduction to Deuteronomy chapters 31–34, the epilogue of the book, as Moses had completed his discourses, and the epilogue thereafter concerns itself with topics of closure.

In the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 31:9 reports that Moses simply wrote down the Law, not specifying whether inscribed on tablets, clay, or papyrus. But a Qumran scroll (4QDeuth) and the Septuagint state that Moses wrote the Law “in a book.” Martin Abegg Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich suggested that the verse may have reflected a growing emphasis on books of the Law after the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile.