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Intermediary


          The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” (Deuteronomy 18:15-16)
          “God is too intimidating. If He talks to us, we’ll die” That’s what the Israelites told Moses and Moses had accepted the argument. Forty years later, he reminded the new generation of Israelites what their fathers had said as he spoke about what would happen after he was gone.
          Just as Adam and Eve likely look at each son born for signs that he was the one who would crush the serpent’s head, I suspect the Israelites looked at Joshua and the judges who followed them, hoping that he would be the prophet like Moses. After a while, I suspect they gave up. God renewed the concept by telling David that his son would be king forever. David thought it would be Solomon, but he failed. The Israelites were still looking for a descendant of David to come.
          Moses tells us just a little about this one who would come. He would be a prophet like Moses. Moses spoke with God, and God with him. Moses did almost all that God asked and demanded. He would be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. He would also either be someone among those who left Egypt or one of their descendants.
          The most important thing that this one who came after Moses would do would be to act as an intermediary between God and Israel. As God’s intermediary, it would be vitally important that the Israelites did a better job of listening to Him than they had done of listening to Moses.

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