“1:1. the words that Moses spoke. In developing from a man of actions to a man of words, Moses imitates God. The Tanak depicts God as becoming more and more hidden over the course of history. In the first books of the Bible God apperas to humans, is seen and heard at Sinai, makes His presence known through miracles, angels, and the column of cloud and fire. But these visible signs of divine action in history disappear from the story one by one. And by the last books of the Tanak, there are no angels or miracles. The words of "YHWH appeared to" and "YHWH spoke to" do not occur to anyone. Instead, the priest Ezra reads the Torah aloud to the people. In the place of the acts of God there is the word of God. When the Torah pictures Moses ending his life in words, he imitates and prefigures the transformation of the human experience of God that will occur in the Bible.”