All of You Stand
The reading opens with all of Israel standing together before God to enter His covenant: leaders and elders, men, women, and children, down to the woodcutter and the water drawer. No one is left out, and remarkably the covenant binds not only those present but every generation still to come. Moshe warns against the hidden root of idolatry and against the person who privately imagines he can follow his own stubborn heart and still find peace. He then distinguishes the hidden things, which belong to God, from the revealed things, which belong to Israel and its children to live by.
Return and Choose Life
The covenant gives way to one of the Torah's most hopeful promises. Even scattered to the ends of the earth, Moshe foretells, the people can take their exile to heart, turn back to God with all their heart, and be gathered home with hearts made new. He assures them that this way of life is not far off in the heavens or across the sea, but very near, in their mouth and in their heart. Calling heaven and earth as witnesses, he sets before them life and death, blessing and curse, and urges them with all his strength to choose life.
Moshe's Farewell
Now Vayeilech begins, and the tone shifts to leave-taking. Moshe tells the people that he is one hundred and twenty years old and can no longer lead them out and back, and that God has told him he will not cross the Jordan. Yet he steadies them: God Himself will go before them, and Yehoshua will lead them across to victory. Calling Yehoshua forward before all Israel, Moshe charges him to be strong and courageous, promising that God will never fail him nor forsake him.
The Torah Entrusted
Moshe writes down this Torah and gives it to the priests and elders who carry the Ark. He commands that once every seven years, in the sabbatical year at the festival of Sukkot, the whole nation be gathered, men, women, children, and strangers, to hear the Torah read aloud so that they may learn to revere God. In this great assembly, later known as Hakhel, every soul becomes a student once more. The written teaching is meant to be the shared inheritance of the entire people, never the possession of a few.
A Song for Witness
God calls Moshe and Yehoshua to the Tent of Meeting and appears in a pillar of cloud. He foretells, with sorrow, that after Moshe's death the people will stray after foreign gods and break the covenant, and that hard times will follow. So God instructs Moshe to write down a song and teach it to Israel, a melody that will endure on their lips as an honest witness when they most need to find their way back. Moshe finishes writing the Torah and has it placed beside the Ark, then gathers the assembly to hear the words of the song.