God as Gravedigger? Reflections on God’s acting in Deuteronomy 34
(2026) Discourses about the Divine: Language about Transcendence, Language Transcending Borders — Location: Rome (22.April.2026)
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- Deuteronomy 34 presents one of the most enigmatic passages in the Hebrew Bible. In many modern vernacular translations, God appears strikingly human, personally burying Moses, His greatest prophet. This depiction has inspired a wide spectrum of interpretations within Jewish and Christian traditions, reflecting ongoing engagement with the nature of divine action and presence. From a morphological and grammatical point of view, the Hebrew form wayyiqbōr poses no inherent difficulties; yet its interpretation remains far from straightforward. Furthermore, the manuscript evidence is not uniform. 4QDeutl, several Samaritan Pentateuch manuscripts, and the Septuagint, for example, employ a third-person plural form rather than the singular, rendering an interpretation that identifies God as the subject of the verb unlikely. This paper investigates how Deuteronomy 34 describes God’s actions and considers the implications of the images of divine physicality and temporality that emerge from this context. By tracing the history of interpretation, it demonstrates how translators and exegetes across centuries have grappled with a central theological question: to what extent can God be portrayed in anthropomorphic terms?
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Ausloos, H. (2026). God as Gravedigger? Reflections on God’s acting in Deuteronomy 34. Discourses about the Divine: Language about Transcendence, Language Transcending Borders, Rome. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/267357