Vayelekh: a chapter rich with farewell speeches, a sacred scroll, and signs that the pen traditionally attributed to Moses may not have been his own. We begin with a third-person narrator introducing Moses—not as the author, but as the subject. Ross highlights the layered voices within the text and the key moment where “this Torah” is described as a completed scroll—suggesting the hand of a later scribe writing in the name of Moses. We examine the idiom “go out and come in,” and the evolving reasons given for why Moses was barred from the land—was it disobedience, divine anger, or was he just too old to continue? We also contrast Deuteronomy’s public reading of the Torah with Ezra’s deviating address in Nehemiah 8, asking what this divergence reveals about the development of the Torah. In light of this, we ask: should we be observing the feast days at all? This episode adds yet another layer of evidence to the case: that while the scroll may carry Moses’s name, the ink was still wet from later hands.

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