Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 34:5
So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.
5. the servant of Jehovah ] So JE, Num 12:7 f., my servant, and as here, Jos 1:1 f., Jos 1:7; Jos 1:13; Jos 1:15, etc.
according to the word of, etc.] Lit. mouth of, frequent in P.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
According to the word of the Lord – It denotes that Moses died, not because his vital powers were exhausted, but by the sentence of God, and as a punishment for his sin. Compare Deu 32:51.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Deu 34:5
So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died.
–
The death of Moses
I. the greatest of men are but instruments in Gods hands, and He can afford to lay them aside when He chooses. Let this thought–
1. Dispel fears for future of Church of God.
2. Abate personal pride.
3. Calm fears for loved ones.
II. The time and manner of each mans removal from earth are fixed by God.
III. When God removes His servants from earth it is that He may take them to heaven.
IV. Until God calls us away, let us be diligent in doing good.
V. God frequently gives intimation to men that He is about to call them to Himself.
VI. God will remove all difficulties in our heavenward journey. (Preachers Monthly.)
The death of Moses
I. The best must die.
II. The best may die in the zenith of their greatness.
III. The best may die when apparently indispensable.
IV. The best may die where they little expect.
V. But all die when and where God decrees. (R. A. Griffin.)
The death of Moses
There is nothing more sublime in the history of Moses than the story of his death. Tried by a worldly standard, it seems a poor and shameful ending of such a life. Who so fit, we might ask, to lead the children of Israel into the promised land as he who had, for their sakes, defied the wrath of Pharaoh, who led them out of Egypt, and shared with them the wanderings of the wilderness? Who is the nobler man? he who rejoices in the fulfilment of his hopes, or he who knows how to endure, and see the fruit of, disappointment?
I. The perils of a call to service.
1. There are perils in its graces. Godly men will transgress just where they seem most secure, will yield to the temptations against which they seem to be best armed. In a moment the old nature flashes up; the sin of a moment startles out of the self-complacency of many years.
2. There are perils belonging to the gifts of a high calling. Those are not to be envied who are most richly endowed, and can do most for men. They have to be constantly warned against pride and self-sufficiency; to be often chastened and humiliated for relying on their gifts instead of on the Giver.
3. There are perils incident to the fulfilment of a high calling.
II. Gods earnestness in the accomplishment of His will. Was Moses startled after he had spoken his rash words to the people, and smitten the rock in his anger? shocked to think that he had been so easily led into sin, and that his sin was great in that he had not sanctified God in the eyes of the children of Israel? If so, the words in which the Lord rebuked him must have fallen blessedly upon his ears. Our first foolish thought is the wish to bide our sin from God; our second wiser thought is to rejoice that He has seen and marked it, for He alone can put our sins away. Our first foolish impulse is to offer our excuses and plead that we be not chastised; our second wiser impulse is that of the spiritual man within us, which welcomes all the fatherly discipline by which we may be purged. Our first foolish thought is to blame the responsibilities of our position, and even to desire to be relieved of them; our second wiser persuasion is that responsibilities are the honours of heaven, and that it is cause of gratitude when God will make us worthy to fulfil them. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)
The death of Moses: what do we think about it
We must needs die. So spake the widow of Tekoah. But why must we needs die? Why is it that after so many years of healthy, vigorous life the signs of feebleness, decay, and coming dissolution show themselves? There is, so far as we know, only one satisfactory answer: it is Gods will. It is appointed unto men once to die. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. But the death of Moses was not the result of decayed powers and the infirmities of old age. He was equal to his work, and if spared, would soon have completed it, for the people, whose leader the Lord had appointed him, were now on the borders of the promised land. There was only the Jordan to cross. Why, then, should God, just at this point, have taken him away?
I. In the death of moses we have witness to the severity of God. God is love. That is His nature, but it is qualified by justice, righteousness, and faithfulness. Behold, says Paul, the goodness and severity of God. He is Father, and in all His ways most fatherly. But He is also King, and is most kingly too. God is not to be trifled with. His laws cannot be disregarded with impunity. Sin ever is, and must be, punished. Bless His name, there is forgiveness with Him. Our sins may not shut us out of heaven. They may not prevent us from enjoying the life to be, with its unsullied glory. But they do hinder the enjoyment of the present. They haunt us like an ugly dream. The scars they have left are ever painful. You cannot sin with impunity. Sin is what clings to a man and curses him. It is not like a coat you can put on and take off at your pleasure. It is poison which, if it dont kill, will pain you for years. Or it will act in the same way in which it acted in relation to Moses. It prevented him from entering Canaan, and so there is many a sweet land, many a happy experience we might enter upon, but our sin–in imprudent act or speech–prevents.
II. In the death of Moses there is witness to Gods desire that men should put their trust, not in man, but in Him. The book from which our text is taken ends as no other does, either in the Old Testament or in the New. It closes with a high eulogium upon Moses. We do not know whose hand wrote the eulogium; but we doubt not it expressed the universal feeling of Israel after his death. If he had been spared to bring them into the land, there might have been the temptation to enthrone the creature in place of the Creator, and to their great peril they might have placed in the man that trust which ought to be put in God and in Him alone. This they could not do without inflicting great self-injury. Let them do it, and they would be sure to reap vexation, disappointment, and misery. But by the removal of Moses just at the very time when they probably felt they could so ill spare him, they were taught the salutary lesson that their trust should not be put in man, but in God. It is only the confidence that clings to God which is, without fail, rewarded. The mind of God is set upon men finding this out for themselves, and as it is for their eternal interest so to do, by many a painful providence He works out His will.
III. In the death of Moses there is witness to the kindness of God. The Lord declared that Moses should not enter the land, and He strictly kept His word. But He tempered His severity with kindness. He would not tread the land, but he would be permitted to see it. How very fatherly this was. Your child forfeits a certain privilege. You wont break your word and give it him. But in your fatherly relentings you substitute some other privilege for it. Thus in His kindness dealt the Lord with Moses. And if we project our minds into the future, his removal seems to be all of kindness. He was now an old man, and his life bad been hard, disappointing, and sad. Surely it was kind to call him home, to rest and to blessedness beyond his utmost hopes, and to joys unspeakable and full of glory. Death was to him not the call to destruction, but to a higher and better life. As his Lord the Most High declared, he must die; as his Father, He gathered him unto his people. There was another thing in connection with his death that expressed the kindness, or the kindliness, of the Lord. We know we must die, and, knowing this, we have the wish to die among our own; to be tended in our last moments by our dearest ones on earth; and when all is over to be laid beside our kindred.
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest.
And whilst this is true, it is also as true we have a wish that, should any of out household be sick unto death, they should die with us. If you should hear of your absent child being dangerously ill, your first thought would be to get him home, and if too ill to be removed, you would then arrange to go to him and nurse him, wherever he might be, until death relieved you of your sad but loved charge. I heard a daughter say, not long since, speaking of her mothers long and fatal illness, I am so thankful I was able to nurse her, and do everything for her with my own hands all the way through to the end. And when she spoke the words it was quite evident the facts she stated gave her the deepest satisfaction and joy. So Moses was well eared for in his death, for God, as a comforting mother, took him into His own care, and laid him down to rest.
IV. In the death of Moses we have witness to the glory of the grace of God. Shakespeare says of one of his characters:–
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it;
and with truth we might say the same of Moses. At the last he was at his best. The forty years in Midian were doubtless all needed to prepare him for his work on earth; the forty years of hard service and discipline in the wilderness were as surely necessary to meeten him for the higher life and service of heaven. But now, when they had come and gone, he was quite ready, through Gods grace, and thus his death, so beautiful in its spirit of entire self-abnegation, was a witness to the glory of that wonder-working grace. This morning I went into my garden. The seeds sown a few weeks ago were showing themselves in new life and form above the ground, This, said I, is the suns doing. How wonderful is the power of the sun! But I looked forward. There should come a day when the plants around me should be ripe and ready for the use of my family. The sun should thus do greater things–by augmented heat and power it should perfect the life it had quickened. So is it with the grace of God. It diminishes not, but increases as it shines upon the heart it has quickened until perfection is reached; and so the end is better than the beginning. (Adam Scott.)
The death of good men
The honourable character here given to Moses is equal to that of angels, the highest order of creatures. As a servant he was faithful in all the house of God (Heb 3:5). Having been faithful to the death, he went to receive the crown of life. The memory of the just is blessed.
I. How the will of God is concerned in our death.
1. The general sentence of mortality is fixed by God (Gen 3:19; Ecc 12:7; Heb 9:27). It is the common lot of all men.
2. Death receives its peculiar commission from God. It cannot strike but by His order or permission. Life and death are in His hand.
3. The time is fixed by His will. All the care and skill of man cannot prolong life for a moment.
4. The place where is fixed by His will. Some die by sea, others on land; everyone in his place according to the will of God.
5. The means of death, natural, violent, or casual, are all under His direction. What appears chance or accident to us is all certain and determined with Him.
6. The manner and circumstances of our death are all determined by the will of God. Some are taken away suddenly, and by surprise, others slowly and by degrees; some with strong pain, others with great ease.
II. What sort of obedience we ought to yield to the will of God in dying.
1. There are many things not inconsistent with this obedience to the will of God.
(1) Everyones life is a charge committed by God to him, and he must account for his care in preserving it. Therefore he is bound by all lawful means to cherish and support it.
(2) Conditional requests for sparing mercy are not inconsistent with obedience to the will of God (Luk 22:42; Psa 39:13).
(3) A due care in settling our worldly affairs before we die is consistent with our obedience to the will of God in taking us away. It was the command of God Himself to Hezekiah (Isa 38:1).
(4) A zealous pursuit of religious concerns to the last well consists with our obedience to the will of God in dying.
(5) The strugglings of nature against the bitterness of death may consist with our obedience in dying.
2. Having seen what is not inconsistent with the obedience here exemplified, let us next consider what it implies–
(1) A quiet expecting and waiting for Gods call. The circumstances of a persons life may be so tormenting that he would be glad to find the grave and seek refuge in death. Here God cuts out work for patience, and this being the last trial patience may here find its perfect work.
(2) An humble bearing of Gods fatherly displeasure, if there should be any tokens of it upon us in our death.
(3) A final farewell to the world, and particularly to those things that render a stay in it most desirable.
(4) A quitting this mortal flesh in hopes of a happy resurrection.
(5) A willing surrender of our soul into His hands from whom it originally came.
(6) An awful and serious preparation to give an account of ourselves unto God.
(7) A thankful entertainment Of our dismission from the body as a real privilege.
(8) A vigorous exercise of faith with respect to an unseen state, when God is leading us on to it (Heb 11:8).
III. Why we ought to yield the obedience that has been explained.
1. God is our supreme and absolute Lord, who hath an indisputable right to our obedience, and we hold our life by no other tenure but His will.
2. Consider we are His servants, and contradict our own profession if we die not according to His will.
3. Consider the example that our Lord hath given us in this. Should a believer in Christ be backward to follow Him, or seek another road to heaven than that which He hath taken?
4. Another reason why we should yield obedience to the will of God in dying is, that Gods time is the fittest and best.
5. This is the finishing act of our obedience to God in this world; it is but holding out a little longer, and then our work goes with us, and our reward is before us (Rev 14:13).
6. Dying with resignation to the good will of God will have the greatest influence on those we leave behind us.
7. This is an act of obedience from which the chiefest favourites of heaven are not exempted. Abraham is dead. Moses and the prophets are dead. We are not better than our fathers who are dead.
Application–
1. If it be our duty to be obedient even unto death, how much more to submit to all those evils that precede it!
2. If dying according to the will of God is so necessary an act of obedience, it is an act of great goodness in God to spare us; to allow time to prepare those who are not ready.
3. Here we may see that they finish a good life with an honourable death who die in obedience to the will of God, and leave a grateful remembrance behind them. Let us then be exhorted–
(1) To make death familiar to our minds by frequent forethought.
(2) To look upon all the enjoyments of life with a holy indifference, and respect them no further than as mere conveniences appointed by God to help us on in our work and way to a better world.
(3) To live upon the death of Christ as the only foundation of our hope. (W. Beat.)
The death of Moses
I. The sovereign of the world can carry on His purposes in it without the help of man. Moses was taken away from Israel just at the time when he seemed most necessary to them. How mysterious was this dispensation! And yet the occurrences of every day are involved in almost equal mystery. Do we ask why He acts thus? To teach us our nothingness and His greatness; to show the world that although He is pleased to employ human instruments, He does not need them; to let His creatures see that, even if the hosts of heaven should cease to obey His word, He could form other hands to do His work, or accomplish His purposes without any instrument at all.
II. Sin is exceedingly hateful in the sight of God, and He will mark it with his displeasure even in His most beloved servants. Remember that one transgression excluded the faithful Moses from Canaan; what then will be your doom, laden as you are with so many sins, and so hardened in guilt?
III. The afflicted servant of God is generally enabled to submit with resignation to the chastisements of his heavenly Father. It is not indeed wrong to feel the smart of afflictions. Insensibility under them is not only unnatural, but sinful, for it subverts the purposes for which they were sent to us. Moses felt sorrow and pain when he was forbidden to enter Canaan; and a greater than Moses had His soul troubled at the thought of approaching suffering. Neither is it wrong to beseech the Almighty to withdraw from us the chastisements with which He has visited us. Moses besought the Lord that he might be allowed to go over Jordan; and what was the language of the suffering Jesus? (Mat 26:39.) We see no insensibility here, no despising of the chastening of the Lord. We see, on the contrary, the liveliest, the deepest feeling. But then this feeling is attended with a spirit of entire submission.
IV. The death of the servants of God, with all the circumstances connected with it, is ordered by the Lord. Our Bibles tell us that He disposes of the meanest and smallest concerns of our life; how much more then of life itself!
V. The people of God may confidently expect from Him support and comfort in the hour of death. In such an hour, flesh and heart must fail; the soul must need support; and they who fear the Lord shall find all the grace and help they need. He who was with Moses will be with them, as the strength of their heart and their portion forever. (C. Bradley, M. A.)
The death of Moses
A cloud of mystery and awe envelops the death of this great prophet and lawgiver. No other death recorded in Scripture approaches it or is parallel to it. Through the mystery we feel that no other death would have been so fitting; and why?
1. All his life Moses had been a solitary man, alone in the world, with no one to share his great thought and responsibilities. He had lived alone with God; it was fitting that he should die alone with God.
2. His had been an utterly humble, unselfish life; he had always sacrificed himself for the good of the people; he left his greatness to join his countrymen in their degrading servitude; he forgot himself to avenge their wrongs.
3. Of every other great leader of Israel we read that he was buried with his fathers–with loving, reverent hands laid in the sepulchre of his fathers–and that a tomb was raised over him which recalled the memory of his greatness through long generations. Moses, the greatest of them all–warrior, statesman, poet–was buried far away from his brethren. No loving human hands laid him in his last abode; the very place of it was unknown.
4. Moses is the noblest example of unselfish religion–of unselfish love to God and man–to be found in the Bible, nay, I believe, in the whole history of man. Such self-forgetfulness and unselfishness is never sad and disappointed. Such a soul does not seek happiness; it finds happiness. It is morbidness, it is self-introspection, which makes men melancholy and disappointed. God and love are heaven. (E. J. Rose, M. A.)
The death of Moses
His thoughts would naturally be of two kinds. One class of them would make him reluctant to die; the other would tend to reconcile him to death.
I. He would be unwilling to die because–
1. He had nearly, but not quite, accomplished a great work. Many a patriot, many a philanthropist, many a leader of thought, has felt that life was of value to him only as it enabled him to carry to completion, or to place on a secure footing, the one work of his life.
2. He was still in the possession of health and vigour. The work he had in hand was of the noblest order. He seemed to be the only man capable of doing it. And he felt himself still adequate to its demands.
3. Think, too, of the prospect that lay stretched out before him, and judge what death must have seemed to him at such a moment. Never had he seen this earth so fair or so glorious. After all the toils and perils of the wilderness, is he not to grasp the prize, the hope of which had so much strengthened him to bear them?
4. Still more unwelcome would the summons be to quit the world thus early, because it was a sign of Gods displeasure with him (Num 20:10-12; Deu 32:48-52). The sting of death is sin. Moses knew that but for the displeasure of God he might have continued to live, and might have died long hence under happier auspices.
5. He had to die alone.
II. Things that would go far to reconcile him to death.
1. He had the favour and presence of God. His fault was forgiven. Moreover, the presence of God was granted him.
2. His work, unfinished as it seemed, was really done. His successor was already named and consecrated.
3. He is leaving all sorrow, especially all sin, behind him. To die was, to him, gain.
4. He is about to enter a brighter world than that which he is leaving. (B. P. Pratten, B. A.)
The death of Moses
I. A lonely death. All death to a great extent must necessarily be so. There is only one Friend who can go through the death valley, and if He is with us we may make it ring with the voice of triumph.
II. A peaceful death. Death always may be encountered without dread when heaven can be anticipated without fear.
III. Probably a sudden death. To the worldly man there is something peculiarly shocking in sudden death; to the Christian it is often the reverse. How much is he spared! Korniloff, the Russian general, who fell at the capture of Sebastopol, said it was a pleasant thing to die when the conscience was quiet. But that can alone be through the blood of Jesus.
IV. A death preceded by pisgah glances. This is often the case with the truly good man. Says Dr. Payson, when approaching the end of life: The celestial city is full in view. Its glories beam upon me; its breezes fan me; its odours are wafted to me; its sounds strike upon my ears; and its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river of death, which now appears as an insignificant rill that may be crossed at a single step when God gives permission. The Sun of Righteousness is gradually drawing nearer, appearing larger and brighter as He approaches; and now He fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory in which I seem to float like an insect in His beams; exulting, yet almost trembling whilst I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wonder with unutterable wonder why God should thus deign to shine on a sinful worm. (G. Short, B. A.)
The death of Moses
I. According to the warning of the Lord.
1. His death was long foreseen. Have not we also had many warnings?
2. It was exceedingly disappointing. Are we ready to say as to our most cherished hope, Thy will be done? Are we holding our lifes dearest purpose with a loose hand? It will be our wisdom so to do.
3. Apparently it was a severe chastisement. God will be sanctified in them that come near to Him.
4. It seemed a great calamity. He had been tutored by a long experience, chastened by a marvellous discipline, and elevated by a sublime intercourse with God; and yet must he die.
5. It was a sentence not to be averted by prayer.
II. According to the Divine appointment.
1. All the details of the death of Moses had been ordered by the Lord.
2. According to an appointment which is very general amongst Gods people. Most men have to sow that others may reap. Let us be content to do our part in laying the foundation.
3. For a deep dispensational reason. The law may bring us to the borders of the promise, but only Joshua or Jesus can bring us into grace and truth. We also shall in life and death answer some gracious purpose of the Lord. Are we not glad to have it so?
III. According to the loving wisdom of the Lord.
1. By so doing he preserved his identity with the people for whom he had cared. For their sakes he had forsaken a princedom in Egypt, and now for their sakes he loses a home in Palestine are not we satisfied to take our lot with the holy men and women who already sleep in Jesus?
2. He was thus released from all further trial. Do you grieve that the battle is fought, and the victory is won forever? We also in our deaths shall find the end of toil and labour, and the rest will be glorious.
3. He was relieved from a fresh strain upon him, which would have been involved in the conquest of Canaan. He would have crossed the Jordan not to enjoy the country but to fight for it: was he not well out of so severe a struggle? You think of the clusters of Eshcol, but I am thinking of the sieges and the battles. Was it so very desirable to be there? Would Moses really have desired that dreadful fray
IV. The way in which he died abundantly displays the grace of God.
1. After Moses had been well assured that he must die, you never hear a complaint of it, nor even a prayer against it.
2. Most fitly the old man called forth all his energies to finish his work. Is not this a fine fruit of grace? Oh, that we may bear it!
3. He did all that remained to be done, and then went willingly to his end. As flowers before they shed their leaves pour out all their perfumes, so let us pour out our souls unto the Lord.
V. According to the divine favour. His death leaves nothing to regret; neither is any desirable thing lacking. Failing to pass over Jordan seems a mere pins prick, in presence of the honours which surrounded his departing hours. He now saw that he had fulfilled his destiny, and was not as a pillar broken short. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The death of Moses
I. Entire resignation to the will of God. We are making the voyage of life like passengers in a ship Sleeping or waking, they are proceeding towards their destined port; and will soon reach it, whether they shall have crossed a calm or a stormy ocean. The zealous servant of his God and Saviour will be occupied in his post of duty, committing the period of his removal to the appointment of that providence which allows not a hair of his head to fall unnoticed to the ground.
II. The full exercise of faith and hope. Sinking nature, indeed, will tremble at the prospect of dissolution, although faith may feel the support of the everlasting arms: as he who stands upon a lofty tower may shudder at the depths below him, although the battlements effectually prevent his fall. But if that God and Saviour, whom by a deliberate act of faith he has chosen as his heritage, be with him, he will feel no evil, though he walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The higher the sun rises above the earth the more perfectly does it scatter the clouds and darkness which have usurped the sky. And the more firmly the hope of the Gospel is established within the soul, the more surely will it be submissive to that decree which comes to remove it into the awful realities of the invisible world–the more effectually will it triumph over the last assault, in that confidence of hope which the grace of faith can alone bestow.
III. A resignation thus arising from faith and hope enabled Moses to ascend Mount Nebo, and to die in peace and comfort. He who passes a life of faith, and usefulness, and holiness, like Hooker, will usually be permitted to adopt his language at the approach of death. I have long been preparing to leave this world, and gathering comfort for the dreadful hour of making my account with God, which I now apprehend to be near, and though I have by His grace loved Him in my youth, and feared Him in my age, and laboured to have a conscience void of offence to Him and to all men, yet, if Thou, O Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? And therefore where I have failed, Lord show mercy unto me; for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merits who died to purchase a pardon for penitent sinners. I am at peace with all men, and God is at peace with me; from which blessed assurance I feel an inward joy which this world can neither give nor take away.
IV. The dying moments of Moses were distinguished by earnest zeal for the welfare of Israel and the glory of God. (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
Loneliness in death
Moses had often been above before, and alone with God; so was prepared for this loneliness in facing eternity. A mountain is at once a natural scene and fit emblem of solitude.
I. His absolute solitude in death. He dies in the very midst of robustness and vigour, and so consciously feels the ties of life all breaking; and, with the sense of separation from all that was seen and familiar, steps consciously into the unseen and the unknown.
II. The real solitariness in every death. In death men are, and ever must be, alone; because of–
1. The senses that are lost. Dim eye, dull car, numbed touch, inarticulate tongue, distance the dying from all around, however faithful and loving.
2. The faculties gained keenness of intuition. There is an elevation in the death of many a Christly one that as much separates them from the living, as does the dimming of the senses by which they were wont to commune with them.
Lessons–
1. Learn in life by occasional solitude to be independent of men. Then, when in dying, human help is gone, there will be no sudden terrible surprise.
2. Seek in life companionship with God in solitude. Then, having often been alone with God before, loneliness with Him in death will be no terrifying experience, but the repetition and consummation of some of the best experiences of life. (U. R. Thomas.)
Saintset on Nebo
We have here a picture of how good men die.
1. They go to death. Not driven or dragged. Feel it to be a call from God to go and meet Him, and, being prepared, go forth willingly and with joy.
2. They go up to death. Not a leap in the dark. They spring up into life and light, holiness and heaven.
3. They go up alone to death. Have to leave nearest and dearest earthly friends behind.
I. What would the closing scene in the life of Moses teach him?
1. That his life, though faulty, had not been a failure. God accepted it, and admitted him to the rest and recompense of the skies.
2. That though he had incurred the Divine displeasure, yet he had not forfeited the Divine favour. We may suffer disadvantage all through life, and loss at close of it by wrong-doing; but if we repent of the wrong, and are restored to Gods favour, and retained in His service, He will still lead us on, and take us by the hand at last, and give us an abundant entrance into His everlasting joy.
3. That amid all his fears and anxieties he need not dread entering upon the solemn and nearing future.
II. What does the closing scene in the life of Moses teach us?
1. The incompleteness of human life.
2. The illusiveness of human life. We go in quest of rest and reward, and we know we shall secure them if we are firm and faithful; but how the goal we are seeking seems frequently to recede from us, and the prize we would secure seems to elude our grasp!
3. The inscrutableness of human life. The unexpected and apparently untimely departure of good and useful men fills us with wonder and dismay. We looked for continuation and completion of service; but lo, we have seen, instead, the deserted post and the vacant chair. (F. W. Brown.)
The last stage era long journey
I. Climbing the mountain. Slowly he ascends the mountain, climbing alone, while the tear-dimmed eyes of Israel watch his ascent. Up! Up! Up! he goes. Every step takes him from those he loves. Every step carries him into a region of divinest mysteries. But what thoughts surge and rush in his mind as he upward toils? He is leaving Israel, the nation whose cradle he has tended, whose ill-humours and impetuosities he has borne. Only God knows what he has suffered for those people through these forty long years. If I ask any mother or father here about the children they have lost, I shall be told that the child for whom they lost most rest–the child for whom they sacrificed the most–was the one that got most about their heart strings. So Moses finds, it is awful to tear himself away at that Divine behest and leave them there, while he goes up yonder to die. He is leaving his life work. It is an awful thing to feel that your life work is done! How does Moses feel as he climbs those slopes? Someone else is stepping into his place that now is his no more. God has superannuated him! Of course, there are people who are not concerned about all this. They belong to the regiment of the lazies! and a tremendously strong regiment it is. They know nothing about these troubles. They know not the agony of leaving a Sunday school class, or of being compelled to abandon preaching. Such people cannot enter into the feelings of Moses at this time.
II. Viewing the land.
III. The opened eyes. Instead of dusky Arabs, he sees a company of white-robed angels, and his ear begins to catch the music of their song. And old Jericho, which had seemed common place enough, now seems larger, brighter than before. Its walls are sparkling with jewels; its gates gleam pearly white; and the amethystine glory comes streaming over its turrets. The land seems full of light, and joy, and bliss. The angel band is swelling in numbers. The distant hills are radiant with eternal light. The glory heightens. God is opening his eyes, and the transient things of earth are giving way to the things which are eternal. There stands the city whose Builder and Maker is God. His soul flutters as a caged bird that struggles to get flee. And God is releasing that noble soul. The physical senses are being supported by the spiritual. Insensibly God carries him over the border. He knows not the moment when he ceases to be mortal, and becomes like the angels of God. All the horror of the thing, which makes the heart sick, he misses. He enters, at Gods bidding, a larger and more satisfying life, by a path that is glorious with the Divine presence. With Him conversing, he forgets that this is death.
IV. In memoriam. Moses has gone, but in every generation God keeps up the succession of His saints, who minister to Him here awhile in our sight, and then pass to the higher ministries of Jerusalem above. (F. Denton.)
The death of Moses
Moses had endured to the full the loneliness which is the penalty of greatness. His lofty spirit, austere and firm, like the granite peak of Sinai, rose solitary, like it, above the lower heights, and was often swathed, like it, in the separating cloud, the symbol of a present God. Now Miriam was gone, and Aaron slept on Her, and all the old familiar faces were memories. The summons to come up to Pisgah and die would not be unwelcome. He had lived alone; alone he climbed the mountain, with natural force unabated, the people watching him as he went up; alone he is to die,–a fitting close to such a life. He had lived on the heights, he shall not die on the plain. He had lived leaning on God only; God only shall be with him at last.
1. Note, then, the vision to the dying leader of the unattained country, which had been his goal in all his work. How wistful and long would be the gaze! The sublime and rigid self-repression of his life would not desert him at the last; and we may well believe that regret at his own exclusion would be swallowed up in thankfulness that the prize was so near and so rich. Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, would be the voice of his heart. God did not show him the land to tantalise him with the vision of what he had missed for himself, but to cheer him with the assurance of what he had won for his people. Moses had his portion when he saw the land, and was satisfied. That Pisgah sight has become the type of the large visions of the future which God often gives to solace His faithful servants at last. There must be wisdom with great death, and when the dust of conflict is laid the prospect widens, and the cleared eye sees the goodly land to which the devious marches have been leading more hopefully and truly than while yet busied in looking to the dangers of the present, and picking firm ground for the next step. All epoch-making men have the fate of Moses. They spend their lives in leading rebellious and reluctant feet towards some fair ideal, and die when apparently on the verge of realising it. In our own little lives the same law holds good. One soweth, and another reapeth. Rarely does any man complete his lifes purpose.
2. Note the solitary death and hidden grave. The lawgiver, whose message was The wages of sin are death, does himself, in the very manner of his own death, exemplify its two characteristics which smite most upon the heart,–its mystery and its solitude. And the same lessons are taught by that hidden grave. As, Thomas Fuller says somewhere, God first buried him, and then buried his grave. Some say that the intention was to prevent idolatrous reverence by the Israelites; but there is no sign that, amid all their aberrations, they ever had any tendency that way. The graves of the patriarchs at Hebron and of the kings at Jerusalem were left undistinguished, and apparently little regarded. Some have thought that the mystery of his sepulchre points to his resurrection, or translation, and have found confirmation in the story of his appearance with Elijah at the transfiguration. But that is pure imagination. Was the hiding of the grave a purpose of Gods, or simply a result of his being laid to rest outside the promised land, which had no further intention? He was not to enter it, not even in death. The bones of Joseph were carried up thither, but Moses was to lie where he died, amid foreigners, of course; then, years passed before Israel could again venture into Moab; and even if any had ever known the spot, the knowledge would not be transmitted. That lonely and forgotten grave among the savage cliffs was in keeping with the whole character and work of him who lay there. Contrast that grave with the sepulchre in the garden where Jesus lay, close by a city wall, guarded by foes, haunted by troops of weeping friends, visited by a great light of angel faces. The one was hidden and solitary, as teaching the loneliness of death; the other revealed light in the darkness, and companionship in the loneliness. The one faded from mens memory because it was nothing to any man; no impulses, nor hopes, nor gifts could come from it. The other forever draws hearts and memories, because in it was wrought out the victory in which all our hopes are rooted.
3. Note how soon the place of the leader is filled. A month finishes the mourning. The new generation could not be expected to feel to him as to men of their own time. To them his death would seem natural, and not difficult to bear. He had lingered long, like some harder peak which survives the weathering that crumbles softer rock around. But, none the less, the young life round him would feel that he belonged to the past. It is the fate of all who outlast their generation. New work called for new men. We cannot fancy the, lawgiver wielding the commanders sword, any more than Joshua grasping Moses rod. Smaller, rougher instruments were best for the fresh phase of service. A plain soldier, true and keen as his own sword, but incapable of the large revelations which the spirit of the legislator had been capacious enough to receive, was the man wanted now. So Moses goes home and takes his wages, and Joshua steps into his place. The smaller man completes the mighty torso which the greater man left half hewn. God has all sorts of tools in His great tool chest. Each is good for one bit of the work, and is put away when that is done, and all are wanted before it is finished. The greatest has his limitations and his period of service. There is but one name which endures forever. Moses dies on Pisgah, and Aaron on Her; but Christ lives forever, and is able to lead all generations, and finish Gods work.
4. Note that, after all, the place of the great leader remains empty. We do not know when the last words of Deuteronomy were written; but the lower down they are brought, the more significant is their witness to the unapproachable superiority of Moses. After-ages looked back to him as the high-water mark of Gods communications to men, and found none in all the long series of kings, priests, psalmists, or even prophets who had stood so close to God, or heard such messages from Him, or wrought such deeds by Him. Others had but developed his teachings or restored his law. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. So Moses – died – according to the word of the Lord.] al pi Yehovah, at the mouth of Jehovah; i. e., by the especial command and authority of the Lord; but it is possible that what is here said refers only to the sentence of his exclusion from the promised land, when he offended at the waters of Meribah.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
i.e. In the land which Israel took from the Amorites, which anciently was the land of Moab.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5. Moses . . . diedAfterhaving governed the Israelites forty years.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab,…. Which formerly belonged to Moab, and was taken from them by Sihon king of the Amorites, and now in the possession of Israel: here on a mountain in this land Moses died; and yet, contrary to the express words of this text, some Jewish writers affirm w that be died not, but was translated to heaven, where he ministers; yea, that he was an angel, and could not die: but it is clear he did die, even though a servant of the Lord, as he was, and a faithful one; but such die as well as others, Zec 1:5; there is a saying of some x Jews,
“Moses died, and who shall not die?”
no man can promise himself immortality here, when such great and good men die: the Targum of Jonathan says, he died on the seventh of Adar or February, on which day he was born; and it is the general opinion of the Jewish writers y, that he died on the seventh of that month, in the middle of the day, and that it was a sabbath day: though, as Aben Ezra observes z, some say he died on the first of Adar; and Josephus a is express for it, that it was at the new moon, or first day of the month; and with this agrees the calculation of Bishop Usher b:
according to the word of the Lord; according to the prophecy of the Lord, and according to a command of his, that he should go up to the above said mountain and die, Nu 27:12; or, as the Targum of Jerusalem, according to the decree of the Lord; as the death of every man is, both with respect to time and place, and manner of it: it is appointed for men once to die, Heb 9:27; because it is in the original text, “according to the mouth of the Lord” c; hence some Jewish writers, as Jarchi particularly, interpret it of his dying by a kiss of his mouth, with strong expressions and intimations of his love to him, So 1:2; and no doubt but he did die satisfied of the love of God to him, enjoying his presence, and having faith and hope of everlasting life and salvation; but the true sense is, he died according to the will of God, not of any disease, or through the infirmities of age, but by the immediate order and call of God out of this life.
w T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 13. 2. Yalkut R. Abraham Seba in Tzeror Hammor in loc. x Seder Tephillot, fol. 213. 1. Ed. Basil. y T. Bab. Kiddushin, fol. 38. 1. Seder Olam Rabba, c. 10. p. 29. Judasin, fol. 10. 1. Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 7. 2. so Patricides apud Hottinger, p. 457. z Pirush in Deut. i. 2. so Midrash Esther, fol. 93. 2. a Ut supra, (De Bello Jud. l. 4. c. 18.) sect. 49. b Annales Vet. Test. p. 37. c “super os”, Montanus “juxta os”, Tigurine version.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
After this favour had been granted him, the aged servant of the Lord was to taste death as the ages of sin. There, i.e., upon Mount Nebo, he died, “ at the mouth,” i.e., according to the commandment, “ of the Lord ” (not “by a kiss of the Lord,” as the Rabbins interpret it), in the land of Moab, not in Canaan (see at Num 27:12-14). “ And He buried him in the land of Moab, over against Beth Peor.” The subject in this sentence is Jehovah. Though the third person singular would allow of the verb being taken as impersonal ( , lxx: they buried him), such a rendering is precluded by the statement which follows, “ no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” “The valley” where the Lord buried Moses was certainly not the Jordan valley, as in Deu 3:29, but most probably “the valley in the field of Moab, upon the top of Pisgah,” mentioned in Num 21:20, near to Nebo; in any case, a valley on the mountain, not far from the top of Nebo. – The Israelites inferred what is related in Deu 34:1-6 respecting the end of Moses’ life, from the promise of God in Deu 32:49, and Num 27:12-13, which was communicated to them by Moses himself (Deu 3:27), and from the fact that Moses went up Mount Nebo, from which he never returned. On his ascending the mountain, the eyes of the people would certainly follow him as far as they possibly could. It is also very possible that there were many parts of the Israelitish camp from which the top of Nebo was visible, so that the eyes of his people could not only accompany him thither, but could also see that when the Lord had shown him the promised land, He went down with him into the neighbouring valley, where Moses was taken for ever out of their sight. There is not a word in the text about God having brought the body of Moses down from the mountain and buried it in the valley. This “romantic idea” is invented by Knobel, for the purpose of throwing suspicion upon the historical truth of a fact which is offensive to him. The fact itself that the Lord buried His servant Moses, and no man knows of his sepulchre, is in perfect keeping with the relation in which Moses stood to the Lord while he was alive. Even if his sin at the water of strife rendered it necessary that he should suffer the punishment of death, as a memorable example of the terrible severity of the holy God against sin, even in the case of His faithful servant; yet after the justice of God had been satisfied by this punishment, he was to be distinguished in death before all the people, and glorified as the servant who had been found faithful in all the house of God, whom the Lord had known face to face (Deu 34:10), and to whom He had spoken mouth to mouth (Num 12:7-8). The burial of Moses by the hand of Jehovah was not intended to conceal his grave, for the purpose of guarding against a superstitious and idolatrous reverence for his grave; for which the opinion held by the Israelites, that corpses and graves defiled, there was but little fear of this; but, as we may infer from the account of the transfiguration of Jesus, the intention was to place him in the same category with Enoch and Elijah. As Kurtz observes, “The purpose of God was to prepare for him a condition, both of body and soul, resembling that of these two men of God. Men bury a corpse that it may pass into corruption. If Jehovah, therefore, would not suffer the body of Moses to be buried by men, it is but natural to seek for the reason in the fact that He did not intend to leave him to corruption, but, when burying it with His own hand, imparted a power to it which preserved it from corruption, and prepared the way for it to pass into the same form of existence to which Enoch and Elijah were taken, without either death or burial.” – There can be no doubt that this truth lies at the foundation of the Jewish theologoumenon mentioned in the Epistle of Judge, concerning the contest between Michael the archangel and the devil for the body of Moses.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Death of Moses. | B. C. 1451. |
5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. 6 And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. 7 And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. 8 And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days: so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.
Here is, I. The death of Moses (v. 5): Moses the servant of the Lord died. God told him he must not go over Jordan, and, though at first he prayed earnestly for the reversing of the sentence yet God’s answer to his prayer sufficed him, and now he spoke no more of that matter, ch. iii. 26. Thus our blessed Saviour prayed that the cup might pass from him, yet, since it might not, he acquiesced with, Father, thy will be done. Moses had reason to desire to live a while longer in the world. He was old, it is true, but he had not yet attained to the years of the life of his fathers; his father Amram lived to be 137; his grandfather Kohath 133; his great grandfather Levi 137; Exod. vi. 16-20. And why must Moses, whose life was more serviceable than any of theirs, die at 120, especially since he felt not the decays of age, but was as fit for service as ever? Israel could ill spare him at this time; his conduct and his converse with God would be as great a happiness to them in the conquest of Canaan as the courage of Joshua. It bore hard upon Moses himself, when he had gone through all the fatigues of the wilderness, to be prevented from enjoying the pleasures of Canaan; when he had borne the burden and heat of the day, to resign the honour of finishing the work to another, and that not his son, but his servant, who must enter into his labours. We may suppose that this was not pleasant to flesh and blood. But the man Moses was very meek; God will have it so, and he cheerfully submits. 1. He is here called the servant of the Lord, not only as a good man (all the saints are God’s servants), but as a useful man, eminently useful, who had served God’s counsels in bringing Israel out of Egypt, and leading them through the wilderness. It was more his honour to be the servant of the Lord. than to be king in Jeshurun. 2. Yet he dies. Neither his piety nor his usefulness would exempt him from the stroke of death. God’s servants must die that they may rest from their labours, receive their recompense, and make room for others. When God’s servants are removed, and must serve him no longer on earth, they go to serve him better, to serve him day and night in his temple. 3. He dies in the land of Moab, short of Canaan, while as yet he and his people were in an unsettled condition and had not entered into their rest. In the heavenly Canaan there will be no more death. 4. He dies according to the word of the Lord. At the mouth of the Lord; so the word is. The Jews say, “with a kiss from the mouth of God.” No doubt, he died very easily (it was an euthanasia—a delightful death), there were no bands in his death; and he had in his death a most pleasing taste of the love of God to him: but that he died at the mouth of the Lord means no more but that he died in compliance with the will of God. Note, The servants of the Lord, when they have done all their other work, must die at last, in obedience to their Master, and be freely willing to go home whenever he sends for them, Acts xxi. 13.
II. His burial, v. 6. It is a groundless conceit of some of the Jews that Moses was translated to heaven as Elijah was, for it is expressly said that he died and was buried; yet probably he was raised to meet Elias, to grace the solemnity of Christ’s transfiguration. 1. God himself buried him, namely, by the ministry of angels, which made this funeral, though very private, yet very magnificent. Note, God takes care of the dead bodies of his servants; as their death is precious, so is their dust, not a grain of it shall be lost, but the covenant with it shall be remembered. When Moses was dead, God buried him; when Christ was dead, God raised him, for the law of Moses was to have an end, but not the gospel of Christ. Believers are dead to the law that they might be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, Rom. vii. 4. It should seem Michael, that is, Christ (as some think), had the burying of Moses, for by him the Mosaical ordinances were abolished and taken out of the way, nailed to his cross, and buried in his grave, Col. ii. 14. 2. He was buried in a valley over against Beth-peor. How easily could the angels that buried him have conveyed him over Jordan and buried him with the patriarchs in the cave of Machpelah! But we must learn not be over-solicitous about the place of our burial. If the soul be at rest with God, the matter is not great where the body rests. One of the Chaldee paraphrasts says, “He was buried over against Beth-peor, that, whenever Baal-peor boasted of the Israelites being joined to him, the grave of Moses over against his temple might be a check to him.” 3. The particular place was not known, lest the children of Israel, who were so very prone to idolatry, should have enshrined and worshipped the dead body of Moses, that great founder and benefactor of their nation. It is true that we read not, among all the instances of their idolatry, that they worshipped relics, the reason of which perhaps was because they were thus prevented from worshipping Moses, and so could not for shame worship any other. Some of the Jewish writers say that the body of Moses was concealed, that necromancers, who enquired of the dead, might not disquiet him, as the witch of Endor did Samuel, to bring him up. God would not have the name and memory of his servant Moses thus abused. Many think this was the contest between Michael and the devil about the body of Moses, mentioned Jude 9. The devil would make the place known that it might be a snare to the people, and Michael would not let him. Those therefore who are for giving divine honours to the relics of departed saints side with the devil against Michael our prince.
III. His age, v. 7. His life was prolonged, 1. To old age. He was 120 years old, which, though far short of the years of the patriarchs, yet much exceeded the years of most of his contemporaries, for the ordinary age of man had been lately reduced to seventy, Ps. xc. 10. The years of the life of Moses were three forties. The first forty he lived a courtier, at ease and in honour in Pharaoh’s court; the second forty he lived a poor desolate shepherd in Midian; the third forty he lived a king in Jeshurun, in honour and power, but encumbered with a great deal of care and toil: so changeable is the world we live in, and alloyed with such mixtures; but the world before us is unmixed and unchangeable. 2. To a good old age: His eye was not dim (as Isaac’s, Gen. xxvii. 1, and Jacob’s, Gen. xlviii. 10), nor was his natural force abated; there was no decay either of the strength of his body or of the vigour and activity of his mind, but he could still speak, and write, and walk as well as ever. His understanding was as clear, and his memory as strong, as ever. “His visage was not wrinkled,” say some of the Jewish writers; “he had lost never a tooth,” say others; and many of them expound it of the shining of his face (Exod. xxxiv. 30), that that continued to the last. This was the general reward of his services; and it was in particular the effect of his extraordinary meekness, for that is a grace which is, as much as any other, health to the navel and marrow to the bones. Of the moral law which was given by Moses, though the condemning power be vacated to true believers, yet the commands are still binding, and will be to the end of the world; the eye of them is not waxen dim, for they shall discern the thoughts and intents of the heart, nor is their natural force or obligation abated but still we are under the law to Christ.
IV. The solemn mourning that there was for him, v. 8. It is a debt owing to the surviving honour of deceased worthies to follow them with our tears, as those who loved and valued them, are sensible of our loss of them, and are truly humbled for those sins which have provoked God to deprive us of them; for penitential tears very fitly mix with these. Observe, 1. Who the mourners were: The children of Israel. They all conformed to the ceremony, whatever it was, though some of them perhaps, who were ill-affected to his government, were but mock-mourners; yet we may suppose there were those among them who had formerly quarrelled with him and his government, and perhaps had been of those who spoke of stoning him, who now were sensible of their loss, and heartily lamented him when he was removed from them, though they knew not how to value him when he was with them. Thus those who had murmured were made to learn doctrine, Isa. xxix. 24. Note, The loss of good men, especially good governors, is to be much lamented and laid to heart: those are stupid who do not consider it. 2. How long they mourned: Thirty days. So long the formality lasted, and we may suppose there were some in whom the mourning continued much longer. Yet the ending of the days of weeping and mourning for Moses is an intimation that, how great soever our losses have been, we must not abandon ourselves to perpetual grief; we must suffer the wound at least to heal up in time. If we hope to go to heaven rejoicing, why should we resolve to go to the grave mourning? The ceremonial law of Moses is dead and buried in the grave of Christ; but the Jews have not yet ended the days of their mourning for it.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Verses 5-7:
After viewing the Land, Moses died, as God had said. The exact site of his death is unknown. It may have been on Mount Nebo, but it was likely in the valley where he was buried.
“According to the word of the Lord,” means “according to the commandment of Jehovah.” Jewish tradition interprets this expression as, “by the kiss of Jehovah.”
Tradition also says that Moses retired to a cavern in a valley of the Nebo range, where he died and where he was buried.
The site of Moses’ grave is unknown. This suggests two thoughts:
(1) God deliberately concealed the grave site, in order to prevent Israel’s making of it a national shrine, and eventually regarding it as a place of idolatrous worship, in the same manner as the Brazen Serpent, see Num 21:8; 2Ki 18:4.
(2) Some believe the body of Moses did not suffer corruption, but was miraculously preserved, perhaps in the same manner as the bodies of Enoch and Elijah. This would account for Moses’ appearance with Elijah at the Mount of Transfiguration, see Mat 17:3. Satan “contended” entered into a hostile dispute with the Archangel Michael, “disputed” concerning the body of Moses, Jud 1:9. “Disputed,” dialogizomai, “to bring together different reasons.” The language implies that Satan set forth various reasons in his hostile dispute with Michael, as to why he should be allowed to destroy Moses’ body with the process of corruption and decay common to death.
Moses’ age at the time of his death was one hundred twenty years. He still retained the natural vigor of life, in spite of his advanced years.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
5. So Moses the servant of the Lord died. Since it was mark of ignominy to die without the borders of the Holy Land, Moses is honored with high eulogy, in order that the Israelites might learn the more to tremble at the judgment of God, who did not spare even his most illustrious servant. And it is expressly added, “according to the word (or mouth) of the Lord,” lest they should despise the threatenings which were accomplished in so memorable a manner. For, if God spared not His own distinguished Prophet, but at length executed upon him what He had threatened, how should the ordinary multitude escape?
What follows, “he buried him,” some render passively, “he was buried;” and others transitively, “he buried himself;” but in both cases improperly; for, whilst they are afraid to assign this office to God, they labor to avoid an absurdity which does not exist; since it may be gathered from the end of the verse, that Moses was buried by divine means, for it is said that his sepulcher is unknown. It is likely that an effort to discover it was not omitted, or neglected to be made by the people; since it would have been barbarous for them not to discharge the last offices of humanity towards such, and so great a man. Since, therefore, no signs of his funeral, nor his body itself, were anywhere to be found, it might be inferred that he was hidden by God’s determinate counsel; whilst it is superfluous to discuss in what manner God buried him, inasmuch as all the elements are under His control. It was enough, therefore, for Him to signify (annuere) to the earth, that it was to receive the body of the holy man into its bosom: nor was there any necessity to call in the assistance of angels, as some think, since the earth would have instantly obeyed the command of its Creator. From the Epistle of Jude (Jud 1:9) we learn that it was a matter of no slight importance that the sepulcher of Moses should be concealed from the eyes of men, for he informs us that a dispute arose respecting it. between Michael the archangel, and Satan: and, although the cause of its concealment is not stated, still it appears to have been God’s intention to prevent superstition; for it was usual with the Jews, and it is a custom for which Christ reproves them, to kill the prophets, and then to pay reverence to their tombs. (Luk 11:47.) It would have, therefore, been probable that, in order to blot out the recollection of their ingratitude, they would have paid superstitious veneration to the holy prophet, and so have carried his corpse into the land, from which the sentence of God had excluded it. Timely precaution, then, was taken, lest in their inconsiderate zeal the people should attempt to subvert the decree of heaven.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(5) So (better, and) Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.Literally, upon the mouth of the Lord, and hence the Jewish interpretation that he died by a kiss! But the language of the sacred narrative is too simple to need even this interpretation. For many years it had been the habit of Moses to do everything at the mouth of the Lord. Only one fatal mistake mars the record of obedience. It was but one last act of obedience to lie down and die at the word of Jehovah. It is extraordinary, when we consider the story of Moses last days, how wholly self is cast aside. There is no anxiety about the unseen world, and no positive expression of hope. St. Paul says far more than Moses about his prospects in the life to come. To Moses, death is a source of anxiety on account of his people, and a source of pain to himself, because he cannot go over Jordan and see the works of Jehovah on the other side. Beyond this, his reticence is absolute, and his calm silence is sublime. But he died in the company of Jehovah, and may well have felt that he would not lose His presence in the other world. Underneath were the everlasting arms, as he had said but just before. Jehovah was with him, and he feared no evil. He was so fearless, that it does not seem to have occurred to him to say that he did not fear.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
5. Moses the servant of the Lord “Observe,” says one of the early Christian writers, “the dignity of this title, ‘the servant of the Lord.’” That man who is able to overcome all things is the servant of the Lord. No one can be called the servant of the Lord who does not conquer the world. This is the moral of the history of Moses, that the end and aim of all our actions is to be called the servant of the Lord. This is the consummation of all earthly existence. “When thou hast overcome thy ghostly enemies, thine Egyptians, thine Amalekites, Edom and Midian; when thou hast crossed the sea and been illumined by the cloud; when thou hast drunk waters sweetened by the wood, and gushing forth from the rock; when thou hast eaten bread from heaven; when thou hast gone up into Horeb by faith and talked with God in the darkness; when thou hast listened to the sound of the trumpet, learned the mysteries of the tabernacle and the dignity of the priesthood, and when thou hast hewn tables out of thine own heart on which God has written his law, and when thou hast broken in pieces the golden idol and foiled the art of Balaam when thou hast been another Moses and drawest near thy end then may it be thy great reward, the crowning of thy whole life, to be called in God’s Book, ‘the servant of the Lord.’” GREGORY NYSSEN, ( De Vita Mosis,) quoted by Wordsworth in Commentary on Deuteronomy.
So Moses died there in the land of Moab Not in the land which Jehovah had promised to the fathers for their children. He has led the people to its border; he has looked over the goodly heritage. Below him in the plain lie the tents of Israel. The armed forces are soon to march for triumphal conquest, but the great leader dies in the land of Moab.
According to the word of the Lord Literally, at the mouth of Jehovah. Some of the rabbins interpret it, By a kiss of Jehovah. The Jerusalem Targum soberly and correctly explains it, according to the sentence of the decree of Jehovah. Moses died here, in the land of Moab, on the threshold of the great victories that were to give his people possession of the Promised Land, not because his vital energies had failed, not because he was worn out and exhausted by the cares of these long years of wandering, but because he sinned against Jehovah “at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin.” Comp. Deu 32:51.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 5. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there This is the highest character which can be given to any man, the servant of Jehovah; and it is given by God himself to Moses after his death, Jos 2:7. It is a remark which naturally offers from these words, that since the most approved servants of God have died, death cannot be an absolute evil, or the God whom they served never would have permitted it to have befallen them. The sacred historian expresses particularly, that Moses died in the land of Moab, to shew the completion of the divine denunciation, that he should not enter into the promised land; and he is said to have died according to the word, or command of the Lord, referring to chap. Deu 32:50. Get thee up into this mount, and die there. The Jews have a far-fetched conceit from these words, that the Lord drew Moses’s soul out of his body with a kiss; i.e. as the more judicious rabbis explain it, He died in an extacy of divine love, overcome with the pleasures he had in the thoughts of God, and future happiness. See Maimon in More Nev. par. iii. c. 51. Houbigant remarks, that by this command, and die in the mount, is signified, that it belonged not to the old law, of which Moses was the promulger, to fulfil the promises made to the fathers; but that this should be the office of Joshua, or of that Saviour whom Joshua prefigured.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Here we arrive to the close of all in Moses. He felt that sentence which passeth upon all men, because all have sinned. Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Gen 3:19 . But Reader! observe his character. He is said to have been the servant of JEHOVAH, the saint of GOD. And we know from the authority of the HOLY GHOST, that precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. Psa 116:15 . The expression of Moses’ death in the original, is, as if Moses had died upon the very mouth of the LORD. The Jews say, that he breathed out his soul from the body, as with a kiss of love from the LORD. Certain it is, that it was according to the word of the LORD. According to the interest and union he had with the uncreated word: precious death!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Deu 34:5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.
Ver. 5. So Moses the servant of the Lord died. ] It was no more between God and Moses, but Go up and die; he changed indeed his place, but not his company; death was to him but the daybreak of eternal brightness.
According to the word of the Lord.
a Maimonid.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Deuteronomy
A DEATH IN THE DESERT
Deu 34:5 – Deu 34:6
A fitting end to such a life! The great law-giver and leader had been all his days a lonely man; and now, surrounded by a new generation, and all the old familiar faces vanished, he is more solitary than ever. He had lived alone with God, and it was fitting that alone with God he should die.
How the silent congregation must have watched, as, alone, with ‘natural strength unabated,’ he breasted the mountain, and went up to be seen no more! With dignified reticence our chapter tells us no details. He ‘died there,’ in that dreary solitude, and in some cleft he was buried, and no man knows where. The lessons of that solitary death and unknown tomb may best be learned by contrast with another death and another grave-those of the Leader of the New Covenant, the Law-giver and Deliverer from a worse bondage, and Guide into a better Canaan, the Son who was faithful over His own house, as Moses was ‘faithful in all his house, as a servant.’ That lonely and forgotten grave among the savage cliffs was in keeping with the whole character and work of him who lay there.
‘Here,-here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects;
Loftily lying,
Leave him-still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.’
I. Note, then, first, as a lesson gathered from this lonely death, the penalty of transgression.
People say, ‘A heavy penalty for a small offence.’ Yes; but an offence of Moses could not be a small offence.’ Noblesse oblige! The higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of mud, that would never be seen on a navvy’s clothes, stains the white satin of a bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.
Nor are we to regard that momentary lapse only from the outside and the surface. One little mark under the armpit of a plague-sufferer tells the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground may tell that, deep below, lurks the root of a poison plant. That little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the responsibilities that the new circumstances brought. So the penalty was not so disproportionate to the fault as it may seem.
And was the penalty such a very great one? Do you think that a man who had been toiling for eighty years at a very thankless task would consider it a very severe punishment to be told, ‘Go home and take your wages’? It did not mean the withdrawal of the divine favour. ‘Moses and Aaron among his priests. . . . Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.’ The penalty of a forgiven sin is never hard to bear, and the penalty of a forgiven sin is very often punctually and mercifully exacted.
But still we are not to ignore the fact that this lonely death, with which we are now concerned, is of the nature of a penal infliction. And so it stands forth in consonance with the whole tone of the Mosaic teaching. I admit, of course, that the mere physical fact of the separation between body and spirit is simply the result of natural law. But that is not the death that you and I know. Death as we know it, the ugly thing that flings its long shadows across all life, and that comes armed with terrors for conscience and spirit, is ‘the wages of sin,’ and is only experienced by men who have transgressed the law of God. So far Moses in his life and in his death carries us-that no transgression escapes the appropriate punishment; that the smallest sin has in it the seeds of mortal consequences; that the loftiest saint does not escape the law of retribution.
And no further does Moses with his Law and his death carry us. But we turn to the other death. And there we find the confirmation, in an eminent degree, of that Law, and yet the repeal of it. It is confirmed and exhausted in Jesus Christ. His death was ‘the wages of sin.’ Whose? Not His. Mine, yours, every man’s. And because He died, surrounded by men, outside the old city wall, pure and sinless in Himself, He therein both said ‘Amen’ to the Law of Moses, and swept it away. For all the sins of the world were laid upon His head, He bore the curse for us all, and has emptied the bitter cup which men’s transgressions have mingled. Therefore the solitary death in the desert proclaims ‘the wages of sin’; that death outside the city wall proclaims ‘the gift of God,’ which is ‘eternal life.’
II. Another of the lessons of our incident is the withdrawal, by a hard fate, of the worker on the very eve of the completion of his work.
It is the lot of all epoch-making men, of all great constructive and reforming geniuses, whether in the Church or in the world, that they should toil at a task, the full issues of which will not be known until their heads are laid low in the dust. But if, on the one hand, that seems hard, on the other hand there is the compensation of ‘the vision of the future and all the wonder that shall be,’ which is granted many a time to the faithful worker ere he closes his eyes. But that is not the fate of epoch-making and great men only; it is the law for our little lives. If these are worth anything, they are constructed on a scale too large to bring out all their results here and now. It is easy for a man to secure immediate consequences of an earthly kind; easy enough for him to make certain that he shall have the fruit of his toil. But quick returns mean small profits; and an unfinished life that succeeds in nothing may be far better than a completed one, that has realised all its shabby purposes and accomplished all its petty desires. Do you, my brother, live for the far-off; and seek not for the immediate issues and fruits that the world can give, but be contented to be of those whose toil waits for eternity to disclose its significance. Better a half-finished temple than a finished pigstye or huckster’s shop. Better a life, the beginning of much and the completion of nothing, than a life directed to and hitting an earthly aim. ‘He that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting,’ and his harvest and garner are beyond the grave.
III. Again, notice here the lesson of the solitude and mystery of death.
Moses’ lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the thirty-second chapter you will find that, when he was summoned to the mountain, God said to him, ‘Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people.’ He was to be buried there, up amongst the rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to visit his sepulchre to drop a tear over it. How, then, was he ‘gathered to his people’? Surely only thus, that, dying in the desert alone, he opened his eyes in ‘the City,’ surrounded by ‘solemn troops and sweet societies’ of those to whom he was kindred. So the solitude of a moment leads on to blessed and eternal companionship.
So far the death of Moses carries us. What does the other death say? Moses had none but God with him when he died. There is a drearier desolation than that, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ That was solitude indeed, and in that hour of mysterious, and to us unfathomable, desertion and misery, the lonely Christ sounded a depth, of which the lawgiver in His death but skimmed the surface. Christ was parted from God in His death, because He bore on Him the sins that separate us from our Father, and in order that none of us may ever need to tread that dark passage alone, but may be able to say, ‘I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me’-Thou, who hast trodden every step in its rough and dreary path, uncheered by the presence which cheers us and millions more. Christ died that we might live. He died alone that, when we come to die, we may hold His hand and the solitude may vanish.
Then, again, our incident teaches us the mystery that wrapped death to that ancient world, of which we may regard that unknown and forgotten sepulchre as the visible symbol. Deep darkness lies over the Old Testament in reference to what is beyond the grave, broken by gleams of light, when the religious consciousness asserted its indestructibility, in spite of all appearance to the contrary; but never growing to the brightness of serene and continuous assurance of immortal life and resurrection. We may conceive that mysteriousness as set forth for us by that grave that was hidden away in the defiles of Moab, unvisited and uncared for by any.
We turn to the other grave, and there, as the stone is rolled away, and the rising sunshine of the Easter morning pours into it, we have a visible symbol of the life and immortality which Jesus Christ then brought to light by His Gospel. The buried grave speaks of the inscrutable mystery that wrapped the future: the open sepulchre proclaims the risen Lord of life, and the sunlight certainty of future blessedness which we owe to Him. Death is solitary no more, though it be lonely as far as human companionship is concerned; and a mystery no more, though what is beyond is hidden from our view, and none but Christ has ever returned to tell the tale, and He has told us little but the fact that we shall live with Him.
We rejoice that we have not to turn to a grave hid amongst the hills where our dead Leader lies, but to an open sepulchre by the city wall in the sunshine, from whence has come forth the ever-living ‘Captain of our salvation.’
IV. The last lesson is the uselessness of a dead leader to a generation with new conflicts.
So we may learn from this how easily the gaps fill. ‘Thirty days’ mourning,’ and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,’ so the days of mourning for Moses were ended.’ A month of it, that was all; and then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and He needs them all before the work is done. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses’ rod than Moses could have wielded Joshua’s sword. The one did his work, and was laid aside. New circumstances required a new type of character-the smaller man better fitted for the rougher work. And so it always is. Each generation, each period, has its own men that do some little part of the work which has to be done, and then drop it and hand over the task to others. The division of labour is the multiplication of joy at the end, and ‘he that soweth and he that reapeth rejoice together.’ But whilst the one grave tells us, ‘This man served his generation by the will of God, and was laid asleep and saw corruption,’ the other grave proclaims One whom all generations need, whose work is comprehensive and complete, who dies never. ‘He liveth and was dead, and is alive for evermore.’ Christ, and Christ alone, can never be antiquated. This day requires Him, and has in Him as complete an answer to all its necessities as if no other generation had ever possessed Him. He liveth for ever, and for ever is the Shepherd of men.
So Aaron dies and is buried on Hor, and Moses dies and is buried on Pisgah, and Joshua steps into his place, and, in turn, he disappears. The one eternal Word of God worked through them all, and came at last Himself in human flesh to be the Everlasting Deliverer, Redeemer, Founder of the Covenant, Lawgiver, Guide through the wilderness, Captain of the warfare, and all that the world or a single soul can need until the last generation has crossed the flood, and the wandering pilgrims are gathered in the land of their inheritance. The dead Moses pre-supposes and points to the living Christ. Let us take Him for our all-sufficing and eternal Guide.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Moses the servant of the LORD. First occurrence. Occurs eighteen times. See Jos 1:1, Jos 1:13, Jos 1:15; Jos 8:31, Jos 8:33; Jos 11:12; Jos 12:6, Jos 12:6; Jos 13:8; Jos 14:7; Jos 18:7; Jos 22:2, Jos 22:4, Jos 22:5; 2Ki 18:12. 2Ch 1:3; 2Ch 24:6; and compare Heb 3:1-6. Compare for other variations of Moses as a servant, Exo 14:31. Num 12:7. 1Ki 8:53.
word. Hebrew mouth. Figure of speech Metonymy (of Cause), App-6, put for what is spoken by it.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Death and Burial of Moses
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.Deu 34:5-6.
The more carefully we study the Old Testament, the more we shall be convinced that it contains a development of truth, not merely by spoken revelations, but through events and incidents divinely arranged, and made the subjects of thought to those ancient believers, under the teaching of Gods Spirit. These incidents are planted like seeds in the popular heart, and grow up slowly into leaf and flower in recognized doctrines. This was Christs own method of instruction in His miracles and parables, and we may expect to find it in the Divine history throughout. No one can close the Old Testament and open the New without seeing that, during the interval, immense progress had been made in the unfolding of religious truth. The expectation of a Redeemer and a redemption had become clear and concentrated, and the belief in an eternal life, and in the resurrection, was held by many. There is, we believe, no satisfactory way of accounting for this but by the work of Gods own Spirit, in the heart of thoughtful men, using for His instrument the revelation which had already been given. Let us take the account of the death and burial of Moses, and seek to show how it was fitted to be such a source of fruitful reflection to the Old Testament Church.
The text is in three parts
I. The death of Moses was at Gods command: So Moses died according to the word of the Lord.
II. His death took place before Israel entered the land of promise: Moses died there in the land of Moab.
III. He was buried by God and his sepulchre is unknown: He buried him in the valley, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre.
I
Death at the Command of God
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. The Hebrew is according to the mouth of Jehovah; the meaning is according to the command of Jehovah. The same expression is translated in the case of Aarons death at the commandment of the Lord (Num 33:38).
Mouth in the sense of command is a common Hebrew idiom; nevertheless the Jews understood it here literally, and from the paraphrase in the Targum arose the Rabbinic legend that Moses died by the kiss of God.
i. The Common Destiny
We live to die. When or where, it is vain to inquire; but that we must pass through the gates of death, no room is left for us to doubt. It is the common lot. Death is lifes shadow. It is not coeval with life, but it is coexistent with it. Wherever you find the one in this world of ours, you find the other. There is not a tree that grows, not a bird that sings, not a flower that blooms, not a child that laughs, not a man that toils, not anything that lives, but is destined to die. So Moses, the servant of the Lord died.
There is no pause in the succession. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever,that is, throughout these successive generations of men. It abides, but they are gone. The mount from whose flaming summit the voice of God came forth still looks down upon the depths around it, and the dreary wilderness beyond it; but Moses, the tribes, and the tents of Israel have disappeared. The Sea of Tiberias still lies embedded, bright and blue, amid the hills of Galilee; but the men who crowded its shores to listen to the voice of One who spake as never man spake are nowhere to be foundall are gathered to their fathers.
Leaves, leaves, dead leaves of autumn everywhere!
They reddened all the floor of Fontainebleau
And rustled under every heedless foot.
They choked the gutters of the streets and filled
The carts of scavengers. They danced before
My steps, an eerie ghostly dance, and touched
My cheek and wailed about my ears. Brief life
Is theirs, said one who, passing, deemed he knew
My thought. Brief life? I captured one and read
A long, long story on its rusty face,
An age-long tale of life upon the tree
Alternating with death upon the ground.
I saw the forest dropping wintry tears
On leaves slow lapsing back to formlessness.
I saw the little sun, the little frost
Of verdant life, the fall, the death again.
The myriads and myriads of leaves
That make the forest mould cried out to me:
Infinity, eternity we taste
Who have not breath enough to die, but what
Of man? The roadway echoed to my steps:
Infinity, eternity, but what
Of man? And when I had attained the town
Each foot that hurried through the falling night
Beat oat the words: To-day the little sun
The little frost of life, but yesterday
We were not, and to-morrow shall not be
Infinity, eternity, but what
Of man?1 [Note: Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 3.]
In the old times, before the settlements in the great north-west, when the fur companies would establish here and there a great trading post and send out their trappers to all parts of the country, trails were made in every direction, but they all ended at the post. North, south, east, west, for hundreds of miles in every direction, along large rivers, following small streams into the mountains, crossing lakes, searching through deep canyons, the trails would wind, but you could begin a hundred miles away, on any one of them, and however devious its course might be, it would end at the traders camp. The grave is the end of the trail of this worlds life. A man may start where he will. He may climb the heights of wealth or traverse the deep canyons of poverty. He may follow up the mountains of hard struggle or paddle his canoe on a stream of idleness. But when you get to the end of the trail, it is all the same. It is an open grave. Whether he brings many pelts there or few, however great or small have been the spoils of his life chase is of no account, for the grave is too narrow to hold any of them. We brought nothing with us into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. God help us that we may learn over again the old, old lesson that we learn so often and forget so soonthat we are with rapid feet following the trail to the grave. As we go over the trail but once, we never know how near the end is. It may be a long way off. It may be just over the hill.1 [Note: L. A. Banks.]
ii. At the Word of God
All life in the universe, our existence now and for ever, depends upon the Divine will. No one ever died a moment sooner than God designed, or lived a moment longer. We are entirely in His hands. He gave us birth. He willed our being. He placed us here, according to His wisdom, as was best for us. He takes us hence when it is best for us. We talk of accidental deaths, and premature graves. The language has really no meaning; it expresses notions, not truths. What are chances to us are purposes with God. Our course, from first to last, is ordered by Him. We not only come but go at His bidding. He gives life when He pleases, and when He chooses He takes it away. All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.
From out what Silent Land
I came, on Earth to stand
And learn lifes little art,
Is not in me to say:
I know I did not stray,
Was sent; to come, my part.
And down what Silent Shore
Beyond yon little door
I pass, I cannot tell;
I know I shall not stray,
Nor ever lose the way,
Am sent; and all is well.2 [Note: William Channing Gannett.]
There is an inscription on the tombstone of a little child in one of our country churchyards, as follows:
Who plucked that flower? cried the gardener, as he walked through the garden. His fellow-servant answered, The Master and the gardener held his peace.
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.1 [Note: J. Davies.]
iii. The Death to die
Moses came to his death with courage and confidence. The reason for this is an open secret. Many years before, he had made the supreme choice of his life. He had chosen rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy for a season the pleasures of sin. And all the years of his experience since had but confirmed that great choice. He had given himself over to be guided by the Spirit of God. He had communed with God in joy and in sorrow, in hours of glorious victory and amid the gloom of stinging defeat; he had come to trust God with all his heart and soul; with every drop of his blood he was sure that God meant him good. Now, though his strength was unabated and his eye not dim and he must have had many natural desires to complete the work on which he had laboured so long, and to see his people safely housed in the Promised Land, he went without a word of complaint or of doubt to lay his body in the grave.
My own feeling now is that everything which has hitherto happened to me, and been done by me, whether well or ill, has been fitting me to take greater fortune more prudently, and to do better work more thoroughly. And just when I seem to be coming out of schoolvery sorry to have been such a foolish boy, yet having taken a prize or two, expecting now to enter upon some more serious business than cricket, I am dismissed by the Master I hoped to serve, with aThats all I want of you, sir.2 [Note: A. C. Benson, Ruskin: A Study in Personality, 156.]
I was sitting in my study one Saturday evening, when a message came to me that one of the godliest among the shepherds who tended their flocks upon our Highland hills was dying, and wanted to see his minister. Without loss of time I crossed the wide heath to his comfortable little cottage. When I entered the low room I found the old shepherd propped up with pillows and breathing with such difficulty that it was apparent he was near his end. As soon as the door was closed he turned his grey eyes upon me and said, in a voice shaken with emotion: Minister, Im dying, andIm afraid! I began at once to repeat the strongest promises with which Gods Word furnishes us, but in the midst of them he stopped me. I ken them a, he said mournfully; I ken them a, but somehow, they dinna gie me comfort. I took up the well-worn Bible which lay on his bed and turned to the twenty-third Psalm. I slowly repeated the verse, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me. You have been a shepherd all your life, and you have watched the heavy shadows pass over the valleys and over the hills, hiding for a little while all the light of the sun. Did these shadows ever frighten you? He looked at me with curious eyes. I continued, The shadow of death is over you, and it hides for a little the Sun of Righteousness, which shines all the same behind it; but its only a shadow. Remember, that is what the Psalmist calls ita shadow that will pass; and when it has passed, you will see the everlasting hills in their unclouded glory! The old shepherd covered his face with his trembling hands, and for a few minutes maintained an unbroken silence; then, turning upon me a face now bright with an almost supernatural radiance, he exclaimed, lifting his hands reverently to heaven: Ay, ay! I see it a now. Death is only a shadow, with Christ behind ita shadow that will pass.
When death is coming near,
When thy heart shrinks in fear
And thy limbs fail,
Then raise thy hands and pray
To Him who smooths thy way
Through the dark vale.
Seest thou the eastern dawn,
Hearst thou in the red morn
The angels song?
Oh, lift thy drooping head,
Thou who in gloom and dread
Hast lain so long.
Death comes to set thee free;
Oh, meet him cheerily
As thy true friend,
And all thy fears shall cease,
And in eternal peace
Thy penance end.1 [Note: De la Motte Fouqu.]
iv. Death less than Life
1. Scripture speaks much of life and little of the manner of dying. Men imagine that the hour of death is the greatest test of faith in God, and thus they are not satisfied unless they know that in the last hours of a great and good man that faith shone out with unusual splendour. The Bible speaks of the battle of life as the real test of faith; and having told us that its heroes fought that battle faithfully, it does not stay to tell us whether their faith flashed out brightly in the end. Men think of death as a dark and awful mystery to be undergone with all possible heroism, and thus they inquire eagerly after death-bed experiences, and delight to dwell on triumphant departures. The Bible speaks of the death of the good as of the entrance into the blessed presence of Him whom they had served here; and having told us that His servants served Him, having spoken of their Divine heroism in living and doing, it seldom describes the close of their course, leaving us to feel that God took care of them then. Thus we have no long description of the death of Moses. The book, indeed, does record his last words to the people, but in them he speaks not of his own feelings, but of God; he does not attract their attention to his experience, but shows them how God had guided every step of their way. And thus, in speaking of a man whom it describes as one of the greatest prophets of all time, Gods Book says with sublime simplicity, So Moses died, and the Lord buried him.
Jewish, Mussulman, and Christian traditions crowd in to fill up the blank. Amidst the tears of the people, the women beating their breasts and the children giving way to uncontrolled wailing, he withdrew. At a certain point in his ascent he made a sign to the weeping multitude to advance no farther, taking with him only the elders, the high priest Eliezer, and the general Joshua. At the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was embracing Eliezer and Joshua, and still speaking to them, a cloud suddenly stood over him, and he vanished in a deep valley. So spoke the tradition as preserved in the language, here unusually pathetic, of Josephus. Other wilder stories told of the Divine kiss which drew forth his expiring spirit; others of the Ascension of Moses amidst the contention of good and evil spirits over his body. The Mussulmans, regardless of the actual scene of his death, have raised to him a tomb on the western side of the Jordan, frequented by thousands of Mussulman devotees. But the silence of the sacred narrative refuses to be broken. In that strange land, the land of Moab, Moses the servant of the Lord died, according to the word of the Lord. He buried him in a ravine in the land of Moab, over against the idol temple of Peor. Apart from his countrymen, honoured by no funeral obsequies, visited by no grateful pilgrimages, no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, i. 178.]
The Bible is the book of life. Its pages teem with biography; they contain but scant memorials of death. The only death they describe at length is that of Him who in dying slew death. The very minuteness of the description there shows how unique and all-important it was. Men make more of death than of life as a gauge of character. A few pious sentences spoken then will go far to efface the memory of years of inconsistency. God makes most of life.2 [Note: F. B. Meyer.]
Are saints
Enskied, I asked, so linked with living men?
The brightest lily of the Lenten woods,
He said arrayed in livery of the sun,
Depends upon a buried bulb; the bulb
Depends on mediating leaves that bring
The breath of Heaven to the dust of earth;
And so the Church in glory, rest and war
Has triune life or none. Can clouds exist
Without the sun or sea? Would light and sound
Survive if air were dead? All things that are
Interdepend eternally. Herein
Consists the awfulness of human life,
That no man knows the confines of a sin,
The generations of a virtuous deed;
And hence the obligation to entreat
All men with tender charity, since al.
Are victims if offenders too; and oft
The fractures of the wicked are derived
From flaws of saints. And since one perfect Life
Can leaven all, perhaps one sinning soul
Can stay the bliss of all the Church of God.3 [Note: Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 32.]
2. But was Moses life so profound a failure? The history before us gives us the answer. The purpose that Moses might not carry out was to be accomplished by Joshua, his successor. His life, therefore, had not failed; the hope he had thought to realize was yet to be realized in another wayfor his labour had inspired a man who had caught his spirit, and was to finish the work he had begun. In that knowledge Moses might rest.
There is a spiritual connexion between men. One race is united by spiritual ties of influence to the succeeding race; age is joined by bonds of influence to age. Man is this bond for ever to future generations. He dies, and the spirit of his life is caught by his successorsso even here he fulfils his course. Therefore no life is ever lost, no holy purpose ever really fails. The life of Stephen, the first martyr, seemed like a hurried dream; he had just entered Gods army when in the first conflict he died. Men might say he died before his time. The Church made great lamentation over him. Its strongest soldier had gone. His life seemed vain. But his spirit entered the soul of St. Paul! So with the martyrs of the first ages. Their spirit lives yet. The mantles of departing prophets fall on other men, and clothe these with power to accomplish the work they had to leave unfinished.
To labour and not to see the end of our labours; to sow and not to reap; to be removed from this earthly scene before our work has been appreciated, and when it will be carried on not by ourselves, but by othersis a law so common in the highest characters of history, that none can be said to be altogether exempt from its operation. It is true in intellectual matters as well as in spiritual; and one of the finest applications of any passage in the Mosaic history is that first made by Cowley, and enlarged by Lord Macaulay, to the great English philosopher, who
Did on the very border stand
Of the blessed Promised Land;
And from the mountains top of his exalted wit
Saw it himself, and showd us it;
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds and conquer too.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley.]
Each generation, however much it may seem to be absorbed in its own interests, works, not really for itself, but for a generation to come. That sense of incompleteness, of disappointment, which so often hangs like a cloud over the best workwork which has conscience, enthusiasm, and duty in itis not final, it is only the veil which hides the land of promise from the gaze of the tired worker. Moses had to lay down his lifes work and forgo his own reward just as it seemed within his grasp, but yet he found his vindication in the greatness of a people whom, more than anyone, he had striven to make. He had to let go all the vital interests with which his life was bound up, as it were before his time, and yet time proved that he was right.
When we have done, as Moses did, what we have power and wisdom for, God, in the order of the world, takes the work out of our hands and gives it to another who will do the rest better than we could do it. If we lived on, the work would then be unfinished. It is by our death that it comes to a finish, in the hands of another. A porcelain cup passes, in a great manufactory, from hand to hand till it is completed. A young hand, seeing the cup taken from him without the handle, might think, Alas, why may I not finish? My work is spoiled. He does not know that another man in the next room will put on the handle better than Hebrews 1 [Note: S. A. Brooke.]
We are to die; but even I perceive
Tis not a very hard thing so to die.
My cousin of the pale-blue tearful eyes,
Poor Cesca, suffers more from one days life
With the stern husband; Tisbes heart goes forth
Each evening after that wild son of hers,
To track his thoughtless footstep through the streets:
How easy for them both to die like this!
I am not sure that I could live as they.2 [Note: Browning, A Souls Tragedy.]
II
Death in the Desert
Moses time had come. But he was none the less with God. And when he felt the time draw near, he went to the top of a high mountain whence he could see the land of Israels heritage. Many have wishedit is especially a prophets wishto be alone in death, alone in the silence of nature, high up, nearer the stars, where one may be able, in the absence of the noise of earth, to realize the nearness of the invisible Spirit. So he was carried to the top of Pisgah, and left in solitude on that peak of Pisgah which is called Nebo; and from thence he saw the country promised to his fathers. It is a mighty landscape, and there is scarcely a point in it which did not afterwards become a memory in the history of the Jewish people, scarcely a name which has not some significance in the spiritual history of mankind. There, to the north, lay Gilead and the mountain plateau divided by the ford of Jabbok, rocky plains, hill pastures, forests of oak and pine; and beyond, Gennesaret and Merom, all the wild land on either side of Jordan, crowned by the eternal snows of Hermon; and Lebanon spread its cedars far away; and towards the Great Sea, he saw the cornfields of Esdraelon, the mount of Carmel, Gilboa, and the broken highlands where Ephraim was soon to couch like a lion in his den. Nearer at hand, more to the west, was the plain of Judah, and nearer still the dry limestone rocks of Judah, where, years afterwards, Israels Jerusalem uprose, even more than Rome, the centre of the imagination of the world. And below, right at his feet, lay the Dead Sea, in its crater-cup of hills, and Jericho in its pastures, and the mountain pass that led to the hill that men afterwards called Zion.
This was the land which the Lord had promised to the fathers, for which he had been yearning, and to which all his work had been directed all these years; and now he is to die, as the text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, there in Moab, and to have no part in the fair inheritance.
To Moses, so far as we know, the charm of that viewpronounced by the few modern travellers who have seen it to be unequalled of its kindlay in the assurance that this was the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and to their seed, the inheritancewith all its varied features of rock and pasture, and forest and desertfor the sake of which he had borne so many years of toil and danger, in the midst of which the fortunes of his people would be unfolded worthily of that great beginning. To us, as we place ourselves by his side, the view swells into colossal proportions as we think how the proud city of palm-trees is to fall before the hosts of Israel; how the spear of Joshua is to be planted on height after height of those hostile mountains; what series of events, wonderful beyond any that had been witnessed in Egypt or in Sinai, would in after ages be enacted on the narrow crest of Bethlehem, in the deep basin of the Galilean lake, beneath the walls of Jebus which is Jerusalem.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley.]
As Moses looked upon the scene that met his eyes, he thought, This is the promised land. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saw it before me. They were but pilgrims in it. I have worked for it; I have come to the edge of it; I may not enter into it. And as he lay there in the deep silence, his first thought was, no doubt, regret. Why, having done all I could have done, may I not see the end? Would that I could go with my people and share their glory and their conquest! Does God do right to take me away now? I have borne the burden and heat of the day; why should I not taste of the grapes of Eshcol?
It is the lot of all epoch-making men, of all great constructive and reforming geniuses, whether in the Church or in the world, that they should toil at a task, the full issues of which will not be known until their heads are laid low in the dust. But if, on the one hand, that seems hard, on the other hand there is the compensation of the vision of the future and all the wonder that shall be which is granted many a time to the faithful worker ere he closes his eyes. But it is not the fate of epoch-making and great men only; it is the law for our little lives. If these are worth anything, they are constructed on a scale too large to bring out all their results here and now. It is easy for a man to secure immediate consequences of an earthly kind; easy enough for him to make certain that he shall have the fruit of his toil. But quick returns mean small profits; and an unfinished life that succeeds in nothing may be far better than a completed one that has realised all its shabby purposes and accomplished all its petty desires.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundreds soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world hereshould he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find Him.1 [Note: Browning, A Grammarians Funeral.]
What is the meaning, then, of unfulfilled purposes in life? It is evident that Moses felt this as one of the saddest aspects of his departure. The earnest prayer that the Divine sentence should be recalled, and that he should lead his people into their own land, shows how keenly this thought pressed upon him. The answer to that prayerthe permission to behold the land he might not entershows this still more powerfully, for it exhibits Gods sympathy with the sorrow that filled his heart. And, indeed, if we reflect on his circumstances at that time, we shall find that they must all have brought before him the mysterious fact that the grand purpose of his life was never to be realized. One thought had given meaning to his history for eighty yearsthe thought of guiding the nation into the land promised to his forefathers. That must have cheered him through many a desolate day in the wilderness, and it must have helped him to be calm when the peoples murmurings grew loud. The difficulties of their progress, and the apparent disappointment of their hopes would react on him in new power. For difficulties have two effects on man. On the man of feeble purpose they act with a withering might that renders him undecided and desponding; on the man of strong faith and powerful purpose they act like the rocks that, by limiting the space of a torrent, give it greater forcethey nerve him to stronger effort, and brace him for more strenuous toil; and every difficulty must thus have inspired the one aim of Moses with fuller energy. His feelings towards the people, too, would exert on that purpose a higher and a holier power. Their welfare had become part of his life. His sympathy with their weakness, their ignorance, their sorrow, must have kindled into burning ardour the desire to bring them to their home. But on the very verge of its accomplishmenton the very border of the land, with its hills in sightthat purpose must be surrendered and he must die.
What was the meaning of his death at that time? The question might have but a feeble interest for us if it were not that the facts of life force it upon us daily. Is it not a mystery by which we all are baffleda mystery which in some hours we strive to confront because of its deep sadness, and which at other times seems to darken before us through our useless questioningsthat the greatest and holiest purposes men cherish seem never to be attained? The common phrase that speaks of men dying before their time is the confession of a riddle which cannot be solved. It met the old heathen who, without the light of Christianity, said, in his simplicity, Whom the gods love die young. And he has thought but little who has not asked in perplexity, Why should such men die, as if the greatness of their aim had shattered the chain of their earthly life, while those who have no God-given purpose so often live on till a useless old age creeps over them? The truest servants of the Lord come to lifes end with one common confession that they have attained but a fragment of their purposes. The Christian Church repeats from age to age the story that its most earnest men are too frequently the first to die; and no Christian ever awoke to the deep conviction that life was not to be spent in selfishness, but in Christ like effort for man, without discovering that his aim, in this world, is never fulfilled; and that is the world-wide mystery.
His father had several friends, wont to spend an evening hour or two in his study, to which John was now admitted on equal terms. Amongst these was a young advocate, a tall and energetic man, full of vitality, brimming over with good spirits and laughter. He went into the country on some business connected with his profession, slept at a little inn in damp sheets, took a chill, and died of rapid consumption, disappearing from his accustomed place with a suddenness which startled John as if a miracle had taken place before his eyes. The man had been the very embodiment of overflowing health. There had been no natural mounting up to full maturity and gradual decadence to death. In the bloom and vigour of early manhood death smote him and laid him low. That old men should die seemed plain enough; that weakly children should fade from life was grievous, but not mysterious; but that, after all the preparation which youth must undergo to fit the man for lifethat, so fitted and equipped, on the very threshold of usefulness and experience, death might leap from an ambuscade and lay him lowthat pulled him up from all easy-going acceptance of what to-day and to-morrow had to offer, since the third day might find him face to face with the same dread experience.1 [Note: A. M. Stoddart, John Stuart Blackie, i. 22.]
A famous historian died, leaving incomplete his one master-work to which he had given all his strength and all his love. He was not afraid of death. He set his affairs in order with great thoughtfulness. He said good-bye to his friends with unbroken courage. But one thing broke his heart. He had not finished his book. The long years spent in gathering knowledge and in solving problems; the patient labour to which he had sacrificed pleasures, and riches, and bodily health; they were never to bear their expected fruit. The bitterness of the thought was too much for his fortitude, and his dying cry was a cry of regret: My book, my unfinished book!
The English statesman, Pitt, who gave his life to the task of bringing his country through the great struggle with Napoleon, died of the task at forty-seven years of age. His closing moments were made dark and sad by the thought that he must leave the work undone. They brought to him the news of Napoleons last victory. He turned his face to the wall, murmuring, My country! how I leave my country!
Go home content, the evening falls,
Days tired sinews are unbent;
No more the thrush or linnet calls,
The twilight fades, go home content.
Father, the field is but half-turned,
And yet the spring is well-nigh spent.
My son, the hour of rest is earned,
The days work done, go home content.
1. The first answer is that the desire of Moses was unfulfilled because of his sin. One of the great truths which the old law and ordinances given by Moses were intended to burn in on the conscience of the Jew, and through him on the conscience of the world, was that indissoluble connexion between evil done and evil suffered, which reaches its highest exemplification in the death which is the wages of sin. And just as some men that have invented instruments for capital punishment have themselves had to prove the sharpness of their own axe, so the lawgiver, whose message it had been to declare, the soul that sinneth, it shall die, had himself to go up alone to the mountain-top to receive in his own person the exemplification of the law that had been spoken by his own lips. He sinned when, in a moment of passion (with many palliations and excuses), he smote the rock that he was bidden to address, and forgot therein, and in his angry words to the rebels, that he was only an instrument in the Divine hand. It was a momentary wavering in a hundred and twenty years of obedience. It was one failure in a life of self-abnegation and suppression. The stern sentence came.
It is pathetic to find him among that great company of martyrs for the public good, those who in order to serve their people have neglected their own characters. Under the stress of public work and the pressure of the stupidity and greed of those whom they have sought to guide, many leaders of men have been tempted, and have yielded to the temptation, to forget the demands of their better nature. But whatever their services to the world, such unfaithfulness does not pass unpunished. They have to bear the penalty, whosoever they be; and Moses was no more an exception than Cromwell or Savonarola was, to mention only some of the nobler examples.1 [Note: A. Harper.]
(1) If we ask why that single and apparently trifling disobedience unfitted him to lead the people into the land, while men far more rebellious and with less temptation afterwards became their rulers, I do not know that we can find an adequate reply. It may be that God would show how one act may darken the whole of mans earthly hopes; how the subtle influence of one act of disobediencebecause in disobedience lies the germ of all sinmay pervade with its gloom the whole of a mans history, and cause his holiest efforts to fail just at the moment they seem about to succeed. In that we have the hidden source of lifes incompleteness unveiled. It may not be true to say that some special and definite sin ever prevents the man who has a great purpose from accomplishing it, but this history points out that the presence of sin has destroyed all the completeness of life, and accounts for all that failure of the holiest aims which saddens and perplexes us.
One little mark under the arm-pit of a plague-sufferer tells the physician that the fatal disease is there. A tiny leaf above ground may reveal deep below the root of a poison-plant. That little deflection, coming as it did at the beginning of the resumption of his functions by the Lawgiver after seven-and-thirty years of comparative abeyance, and on his first encounter with the new generation that he had to lead, was a very significant indication that his character had begun to yield and suffer from the strain that had been put upon it; and that, in fact, he was scarcely fit for the responsibilities that the new circumstances brought.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
(2) People say, A heavy penalty for a small offence. Yes! But an offence of Moses could not be a small offence. Noblesse oblige! The higher a man rises in communion with God, and the more glorious the message and office which are put into his hands, the more intolerable in him is the slightest deflection from the loftiest level. A splash of mud that would never be seen on a navvys clothes stains the white satin of a bride or the embroidered garment of a noble. And so a little sin done by a loftily endowed and inspired man ceases to be small.
It is one of the laws of the Divine government of the world, that with those to whom God specially draws near He is more rigorous than with others. Amos clearly saw and proclaimed this principle. Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, he says; you only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities (Amo 3:1-2).
(3) We cannot suppose that the sudden outburst of impetuous temper at Meribahwhen his spirit was agitated by a fierce whirlwind of wrath, as a storm sweeping down some mountain-rent on an inland lakecould remain long unforgiven. As far as the east is from the west, so far had that transgression been removed. But though the remission was complete, yet the result lingered in his life, and shut him out from an experience which should have been the crown of his career. The Lord hath put away thy sin, said Nathan to the royal transgressor; but thy child shall die, and the sword shall not depart out of thy house.
(4) But there is more. Moses was one with Israel. When they sinned he interceded as for himself. When Jehovah made him the offer that He would make of him a great nation, he declined it solely from his love to Israel. He lived for the nation, and for the nation he died. Remember how once he went so far as to say, If not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. In every way he was of the people, bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; Israel was hidden in his heart; and out of that master-passion of sympathy with the people came the weakness which at last made him speak unadvisedly with his lips. They strove with God; and though Moses never yielded a point to them in that wicked contest, yet their unbelief so far influenced him that he spake in anger, and said, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? Then the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them (Num 20:10; Num 20:12). Three times in the Book of Deuteronomy Moses tells the people that the Lord was angry with him for their sakes. It was not so much what Moses did personally that involved him in judgment; but he suffered because of his being mixed up with Israel. As the Lord had spared the people aforetime for Moses sake, it became necessary that, when he in any measure shared in their great sin of unbelief, he should be chastened for their sake as well as his own. His faith had saved them, and now his unbelief, being backed by theirs, secures for him the sentence of exclusion from the land.
Were not the Israelites much more guilty? Why were they allowed to enter the land from which he was shut out? We are called by Christs name; we believe the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; and we ought to be able to see the answer in the Psalmists words: They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes. For their sakes. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; by one mans endurance of the curse we are all redeemed to God. The Christian doctrine of Atonement is neither an evasion of the law affixing penalty to sin, nor an after-thought supplying the deficiencies of that law; it is the doctrine of human life; it is part of the very constitution of society, that we bear the sins of one another, and are helped by one anothers endurance of penalty. If we find it hard to believe that God is, righteously and graciously, thus visiting the sins of Israel on Moses, is it not because we have not rightly apprehended the righteousness and grace of God in our own redemption? The constitution of society which makes it inevitable that a man shall share in the transgression of his fellows is an integral part of the law which God magnified and made honourable in the Cross; it is this that made possible Christs sacrifice and mediation.
2. There is sometimes success in failure, sublimity in defeat. If we will consider it, there is nothing more sublime in the history of Moses than the story of his death. Tried by a worldly standard, it seems a poor and shameful ending to such a life. Who so fit, we might ask, to lead the children of Israel into the promised land as he who had, for their sakes, defied the wrath of Pharaoh; who had led them out of Egypt, and shared with them the wanderings of the wilderness; endured their perversity, and often interceded with God on their behalf? But when we speak thus, the poverty and shame are in our way of judging character and its rewards. Whether is better?honour, or a resolute and chastened spirit? Who is the nobler man?he who rejoices in the fulfilment of his hopes, or he who knows how to endure, and see the fruit of disappointment?
If we believe to be a meek and humble man is better than any blare of trumpets or pompous triumph, we shall see that God had provided some better thing for Moses than to lead the tribes into the promised land. To me it seems that the man Moses, with eye undimmed and natural force not abated, resigning to another the office he was still fit to bear, quietly accepting the decree which took his leadership from him, is surrounded with a purer lustre than had ever before rested on him; the ascent of Nebo is more glorious than the descent of Sinai.1 [Note: A. Mackennal.]
Moses, the patriot fierce, became
The meekest man on earth,
To show us how loves quickning flame
Can give our souls new birth.
Moses, the man of meekest heart,
Lost Canaan by self-will,
To show, where Grace has done its part,
How sin defiles us still.
Thou, who hast taught me in Thy fear,
Yet seest me frail at best,
O grant me loss with Moses here,
To gain his future rest!2 [Note: J. H. Newman.]
There is little that is wise or noble about Ruskin hitherto. It had been a career of unbroken success of a small and self-centred kind; his genius had showed itself in his incredible laboriousness, and in a vitality of immense elasticity and toughness. But not by these things is the world changed! And now he was to be given a new heart. He was to see and to feel; he was to be mocked and derided; he was to wrestle with hateful thoughts; he was to torment himself over the evils of society: he was to build up an elaborate scheme for its amelioration. His scheme was to fail, and not even to fail nobly; it was to be viewed not only with indifference, but with open ridicule and contempt. Yet he was to become, without knowing it, in his humiliation and pain, more august, more pathetic, more noble, more Divine, till he was to appear in the minds of all who cared for purity and goodness and beauty, like a seamed and scarred mountain peak, above the peaceful valleys, cold and lonely and isolated, and yet looking out across the fields of life to some awful sunrise of truth, climbing and glimmering over shining tracts and unknown seas.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Ruskin: A Study in Personality, 88.]
Although you seem to till a thankless soil,
Your prayers are never vain, nor vain your toil;
Some fruit you yet may have to cheer your heart,
In some new epoch you may bear a part;
But evn if now, through your short span of years
Your work be weary, and no fruit appears,
Though, in humility, you look within,
Deeming your failure the result of sin,
It is not so; for still our Father knows
What each requireson each He still bestows
The discipline most needed; still He weighs
Our work with heavenly scales; our purblind gaze
Finds failure often where He knows success.2 [Note: Mackenzie Bell.]
3. One thought remains. The desires of Moses, unfulfilled here, were fulfilled in a higher sense elsewhere. The history before us may be silent, but we cannot be silent. By looking at the death of Moses in the light of the revelation brought by Christ we can speak with confidence. Christ redeemed all lifeHe glorified it alltherefore we may believe that no earnest efforts of this life are ever, for the man himself, really unfulfilled. And if that does not seem to prove their actual fulfilment, we may get some light on the subject by referring to a great law that pervades all the government of God. God leaves none of His works unfinished. In the world of nature no atom is lost, although we may not see the fulfilment of every existence because of our blindness. In the world of souls we perceive glimpses of the same law. Every act of the Spirit has an end which it completes, for every act has had its share in making us what we are. We are linked to our past. We find it out unmistakably now and then. If that be true, do you think that the holy purposes God has inspired us with have no fulfilment somewhere and somehow within our own experience? Can you believe that they are doomed to perish except in the possible effect they may have on other men? Does God inspire men to work through the turmoil and the doubtthrough the mystery and sorrow of lifeand leave those high desires to fade, having no consummation in the blessed life of Heaven? No! we must believe that, though in a different way, they are fulfilled there. We must believe that the spirit is everlasting, although the outward actions may die. We must believe that Moses, though he might not himself accomplish the purpose of his life and lead the people into rest, yet found that the great hope which had burned through storm and darkness upon earth, was consummated in nobler service and in a grander scene when he joined the companies who sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.
When men die in the fulness of their powers, as Moses died, we think that there is a waste of power. So there might be, if the power of those who die were really extinguished. But that is not our belief. Our belief is that it is expanded, ennobled, set at once to work, that it can do its work better, that its energies are more developed, that the range and objects of its work are tenfold greater and more numerous than they are on earth. Waste! when God and His work are everywhere. Waste! when the whole universe of humanity in the other world is open to him whom we have lost on earth. Waste of power! It is a thought impossible to the Christian man as he looks upon his dead.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
(1) The Israelites themselves would discern, if dimly, this truth. The great truths of life and immortality must surely have begun to stir in the hearts of thoughtful men when they knew that the Lord buried him. Shall God, then, pay such regard to the perishable frame, and neglect the nobler part which dwelt in it? The outward shape and fashioning of clay, made of the dust and returning to it, was this then Moses, and not rather the living soul, breathed into it by God, as Moses himself records? And can the Maker put so disproportionate an estimate upon His own handiwork, as carefully to store up the casket and throw away the precious jewel which it held? Could we cherish the portrait of one beloved and leave himself to perish, when we might save him by stretching out the hand? Can this be the kindness of God to His friends?for either He must wish to preserve the souls of His servants and want the power, or He must possess the power but want the wish; and where, in the one case, would be a God worthy of reverence, or where, in the other, a God who could attract our love?
When men become assured of His power, that He is the Father of spirits, and when He proves His regard for the frail and fading form, the burial of Moses might become Gods way of leading reflective men out to hopeful thoughts of the spirit that had given such brightness to the now darkened face. When such questionings arose, Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? (Psa 88:10); then a record like this might lead to the conviction, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Psa 116:15). Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope. Thou wilt shew me the path of life (Psa 16:9; Psa 16:11).1 [Note: John Ker.]
(2) Moses sin was blotted out, and he knew it, although the earthly effect of it remained. But if compensation is to be complete it must include the removal of the earthly penalty. The perfect idea of Gods forgiveness is that He should take away not merely the inward pain of sin but the outward stigma of it, and that He should make all life what it would have been without that sin, or still richer and higher for the very fall and rising. The spiritual Physician should not only heal the wound but obliterate the scar, and give beauty instead of burning. In the case of Moses this does not at first appear. The Lord buried him, but not in Canaan; and He showed him the land, but did not permit him to tread it. To an ancient Jew this must for a while have seemed strange almost to harshness,to think that the meanest in all their tribes should enter and look on it, and eat of its plenty and drink of its sweet, and that he who had toiled and agonized for this lifelong end, so faithful to God and so self-sacrificing, should be excluded! No Israelite could look round on that noble home and the rejoicing family which dwelt in it without thinking of the great leader who stumbled at the door and lay buried by the threshold. Is Canaan then all, and is the whole life of Moses shut up in wanderings through a wilderness? Slowly but irresistibly the thought of another land must have risen, must have dawned upon the minds eyea land of which this earthly one was only the symbol, and which must have given Moses perfect compensation for all he lost in death. It could not be otherwise. They were attracted and compelled to it by all they knew of God and of His servant. It was Gods very purpose in these events to educate them to a belief in another world, and to give them some faint conception of ita world where the things and ties of earth are carried up to a heavenly temper and perfection. When a prophet came in after ages with the promise, Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off (Isa 33:17), it must have been felt by many to be suitable to this death of Moses, and may have had its origin in his last look, which took in the precious things of heaven, as well as the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof.
(3) And to Moses himself this vision would not be wholly denied. We may well imagine as the evening deepened on the mountain-top, and the land below grew dim in mist, and Moses felt God draw nearer in the twilight, that the same thoughts entered into the soul of Moses, and his regret for not entering the land passed finally away. Nothing was left but death and God. Why should he ever have regretted that? There, only wars, fresh cares, new pain, day after day, of weary battle would await him. Here, in death, there was another Canaan, the substance of the shadow he had pursued so long. In it there were green pastures and still waters, and the Shepherd of the soul.
To dying men still comes the vision of the goodly land beyond the Jordan. It is not far awayonly just across the river. On fair days of vision, when some strong wind parts the veils of mist and smoke that too often dominate our spiritual atmosphere, it is clearly visible. But the vision is most often reserved for those who are waiting on the confines of the Land, ready for the signal to enter. They tell us that on that borderland they hear voices, and discern visions of beauty and splendour of which heart had not conceived. Dr. Payson said, shortly before he died, The Celestial City is full in my view. Its glories have been upon me; its breezes fan me; its odours are wafted to me; its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart.1 [Note: F. B. Meyer.]
On one occasion Dr. Kidd was alluding to the unwillingness which even good people sometimes had to die. It just reminds me, he said, of what happened when I left the auld hoose. When a the furniture was oot, and a the rest had gane to the new ane, I couldna leave; I paced up and doon the room in which my children were born; I gazed upon the was of the chamber where I studied and wrestled with God, and I couldna tear myself away. But Betty, the servant, came, and she said, Come awa, sir, come awa; the times up, and the ither hoose is far better than this.2 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 141.]
III
An Undiscovered Grave
There is something strange and altogether singular in this, that Moses, the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets, should find a resting-place in the earth and no man be able to point it out. The sepulchres of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are known among the groves of Hebron; the bones of Joseph, after many wanderings, rest in Shechem, in that parcel of ground which his father gave to him, the best beloved son. Rachels tomb, watered by many a tear, stands on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem; for there her strength failed her, and she sank, as did all the ancient saints on the way to that birthplace of hope. The sepulchre of David is by Jerusalem, the home of his heart. But the last abode of Moses, the servant of God and the lawgiver of Israel, is claimed by no city in the wide land.
1. The first thing to notice is that the grave is not unknown to God. As it is in death, so is it in the gravealone yet not alone. Moses dies alone, with no hand to clasp his, none to close his eyes; but Gods finger does it. The outward form of his death is but putting into symbol and visibility the awful characteristics of that last moment for us all. However closely we have been twined with others, each of us has to unclasp all hands, and make that journey through the narrow, dark tunnel by ourselves. We even live alone in a real sense, but we each have to die as if there were not another human being in the whole universe but ourselves. But the solitude may be a solitude with God. Up there alone, with the stars and the sky and the everlasting rocks and menacing death, Moses had for companion the supporting God. That awful path is not too desolate and lonely to be trodden if we tread it with Him. Moses lonely death leads to a society yonder. If you refer to the 32nd chapter you will find that when he was summoned to the mountain God said to him, Die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people. He was to be buried there, up amongst the rocks of Moab, and no man was ever to visit his sepulchre to drop a tear over it. How was he gathered unto his people? Surely only thus, that, dying in the desert alone, he opened his eyes in the city, surrounded by solemn troops and sweet societies of those to whom he was kindred. So the solitude of a moment leads on to blessed and eternal companionship.
As we trust God to supply the needs of the body in life, so let us trust Him for its burial in death. He marks where the dust of each of His children mingles with its mother earth. When a grave is opened, His eye rests on it; and though no foot may ever tread its soil, no hand keep it decked with flowers, He never forgets it; and none will be overlooked when the archangel blows his trumpet over land and sea.1 [Note: F. B. Meyer.]
Into the silent, starless Night before us,
Naked we glide;
No hand has mapped the constellations oer us,
No comrade at our side,
No chart, no guide.
Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hollow,
Our footsteps fare:
The beckoning of a Fathers hand we follow
His love alone is there,
No curse, no care.2 [Note: Edward Rowland Sill.]
2. Again, no man must take from God the honour which belongs to Him alone, or stand between Him and the worship of His people. The first great lesson which the Jewish people were to be taught was the supremacy of the one true God. This was the indispensable basis of every other revelation,the one God, alone, supreme,and then His attributes, His law, His way to man. They were taken from among the nations, and reclaimed from idolatry to carry this truth to the world; and then, when sovereignty was established, mercy could be fully proclaimed. It was the lifelong work of Moses to fix this truth of Gods sovereignty. The word given him to bear was, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. All his labours and his trials arose from the difficulty of impressing this on their deep and constant conviction, and his death would have brought him no regret had he felt assured that his work was done. How solemn and pathetic his warnings to cleave to the true God, and wander to no other, as if he felt already the misgivings of their defection. And yet what he had done for them made it not unlikely that their reverence for him might prove their snare, and that they might be tempted to give him the place he desired to secure for God. Death, which lifts every great man higher, might have raised Moses above the lesson of his lifethe unapproachable supremacy of God Himself. The deification of their heroes was the manner of the nations round them; it was the atmosphere of the age; and in this event we can surely see a means taken to guard the Israelites from the temptation. Had Moses himself obtained his choice, it would have been that, in death, he might carry out the lesson of his life, and here he gains it. He dies apart, and is buried in secret, where his grave can be dishonoured by no pilgrimage, and where no false veneration can rear altars to his memory. And this first lesson did not fail. The nation worshipped many strange deities, but it never gave the place of God to His prophets. If any life could have tempted them to such a course it would have been that of Moses, and when God removes him from their sight, and leaves no relic for sense or imagination to build its worship on, there is no successor of Moses who can assume the place.
How constantly the heroes of other nations have become their gods; how naturally the tomb becomes an altar, and the shrine a temple. Never was there hero that might more readily receive the idolatrous regard of a nation than he whose memory was so immediately associated with their religion, to whom they owed their national existence, their very liberties, their lives, their hopes. How easily would the burial-place of such a saint and hero become a place of pilgrimage and an object of worship. Seven hundred years afterwards Hezekiah is distinguished as the bold reformer who broke in pieces the serpent of brass which Moses had made. Unto those days, we are told, the children of Israel did burn incense to it. Thus is it that for Israels sake Moses is led up the mountain-height away into that utter loneliness; and there he dies, and God buries him, and no man knoweth the place of his sepulchre unto this day.1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]
3. In the history of the greatest and the best, the tomb is often remembered and the life forgotten. It is an easier thing to revere the dust than to follow the example. There is an admonition in the Bible, Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation (Heb 13:7); and here, at the commencement of the lengthened roll, God inscribes it on an emphatic act. He takes away the grave of Moses that they may have before them, in full and undisturbed relief, the man himself. His words, living and dying, his walk with God till God took him, all that he was to God and to them, in self-devotion and affection, these survive him and can never die. If they came to his grave, they approached the creature and its fleeting part; but in coming to his words and his life they come to Moses himself and to God.
Men are liable to underrate the great and good in their lifetime, but after their departure they discover their goodness, and seek to compensate for their own neglect by extolling their memory. This is often true regarding men of genius. During their lives they have been misunderstood by those who cared not for their aims; but when they have passed away, the world has discovered its loss, and sought by posthumous praise to atone for its neglect. Many a gifted spirit, in uttering the truth by which he has been inspired, has met with mockery and malicious misrepresentation, but when death has stilled the restless heart of the thinker, the men who reap the results of his work attempt by laudation to obliterate their opposition; and many a servant of God has worn out life and hope in self-sacrificing labour, and been opposed by those he was trying to help; and it has not been until God has taken His servant home that they have discovered the true nature of his work.
The sepulchre of the greater Prophet than Moses is equally unknown, and may we not wonder that Christians, under a system of spirit and life, have been more slow than Jews to learn the lesson? Once, and once only, were men invited to see the place where the Lord lay, that they might be assured it was empty, and refrain from seeking any more the living among the dead. If research the most patient has hitherto done aught, it has been to show that the spot has left no trace upon our earth. God has made the march of armies and the desolation of centuries do for the sepulchre of Christ what His own hand did for the grave of Moses.1 [Note: John Ker.]
4. The lonely death and the lost grave are signs of honour.
(1) Notice the title given to Moses: So Moses the servant of the Lord died. It is a title given to him by Jehovah Himself: My servant Moses (Num 12:7). What an honourable title it is! And Moses was this of choice, for he willed to be the servant of God, rather than to be great in the land of the Pharaohs. Such he was most perseveringly throughout the whole of his life. Such he was most intensely; for he waited upon God for his directions, as a servant waits upon his master; and he endeavoured to do all things according to the pattern which was shown him in the holy mount. Though he was king in Jeshurun, he never acted on his own authority, but was the lowly instrument of the Divine will. Moses was faithful to God in all his house, as a servant. You neither see him overstepping his office nor neglecting it. His reverence for the Lords name was deep, his devotion to the Lords cause was complete, and his confidence in the Lords word was constant. He was a true servant of God from the time when he was appointed at the burning bush until the hour when he surrendered his keys of office to his successor, and climbed the appointed mount to die.
As Abraham received in Scripture, as his special designation, the title of the Friend of God (2Ch 20:7; Isa 41:8; Jam 2:23), so Moses bears the title of the Servant of the Lord (Exo 14:31; Num 12:7; Deu 34:5; Jos 1:1; Heb 3:5). The special quality which this epithet marks is his unswerving faithfulnessthat absolutely unshaken fidelity to God which characterized him throughout his entire career, alike at Heliopolis, where he worshipped God daily outside the walls of the city, turning towards the sun-rising; in Midian, where he proclaimed by the name of his son that God was his help (Exo 18:4); in his dealings with Pharaoh, wherein from first to last he followed exactly all the directions that God gave him; and in his leadership of the people, which was little less than a constant pleading to them of Gods claims, Gods will to bless, Gods power to punish. Moses was faithful to God in all his house (Heb 3:5); i.e. in the entire government and administration which he exercised for forty years over Israel, Gods house or household. He was ever witnessing to them for God. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord (Exo 14:13); the Lord shall fight for you (Exo 14:14); at even, then ye shall know that the Lord hath brought you out (Exo 16:6).1 [Note: G. Rawlinson, Moses, 200.]
(2) The people of Israel must be taught, in the beginning of their history, that the messengers of truth do not come from their midst, but from a Master above. Mans philosophy is the offspring of the soil of this earth. It appeals to mans reason and finds there its reward. But Gods law descends from Gods throne, and while it meets the requirements of mans nature, it is not responsible to them. Every true bearer of it has his errand from God, gives his account to Him, and finds his reward in God at last.
How faithfully to men, and also how kindly, would all our work be done, if we had our account not to them, but to God, ever in our eye! Moses ascends the mount to learn Gods will, and, when he has finished his work, he goes to Him to die, and to find from Him his sepulchre. He, whose servant he is, takes him back into His keeping, in the spirit of that grand old psalm which comes down to us as A prayer of Moses, the man of God (Psalms 90); Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
(3) There is another point in connexion with his death that expresses the kindness of the Lord. We know we must die, and, knowing this, we have the wish to die among our own; to be tended in our last moments by our dearest ones on earth; and when all is over (is it not also true of most people?) to be laid beside our kindred.
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest.
And whilst this is true, it is also true that, should any of our household be sick unto death, our desire is that they should die at home. If we should hear of our absent child being dangerously ill, our first thought would be to get him home; and if he were too ill to be removed, we would then arrange to go to him, and nurse him wherever he might be, until death relieved us of our sad but loved charge. So Moses was well cared for in his death; for God, like a comforting mother, took him into His own care, and laid him down to rest. He loved him, and so brought him up into one of His upper chambers, where, tended by Himself, the good man remained until he died, and then the Friend, who had been with him in his dying, laid his body in its unknown grave. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
I heard a daughter say, not long since, speaking of her mothers long and fatal illness, I am so thankful I was able to nurse her, and do everything for her with my own hands all the way through to the end. And when she spoke the words it was quite evident that the facts she stated gave her the deepest satisfaction and joy.1 [Note: A. Scott.]
What a marvellous coming forth of the Lord God out of the thick darkness is here! Moses must die; but no human friend may wait upon that hallowed death-bed, no human eye may watch the ebbing of that preternatural strength, no human hands may lay that flesh, which had shone with the reflection of the uncreated glory, in the dust. God will be all in all to His servant; about him to protect him, above him to draw him upwards, beside him to uphold, beneath him to sustain. Comfort and help in the dark hour must come to Moses direct from God. The utterances which hang around that solitary departure are the Divine words, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.2 [Note: Bishop Woodford.]
Is not this the manner in which all saints die? Their death is precious to the Lord, and after the troubled day of lifeagitated in its early morning by the trumpet calling to battle; fretted through an overcast noon by the pressure of its responsibilities and cares; lit in the evening by the rays of a stormy sunset, piercing through the cloud-drift, the tired spirit sinks down upon the couch, which the hands of God had spread, and He bends over it to give it its good-night kiss, as in earliest days the mother had done to the wearied child. That embrace, however, is the threshold, not of a long night of insensibility, but of an awakening in the supernal light of the everlasting morning.1 [Note: F. B. Meyer.]
When all my lessons have been learned,
And the last year at school is done,
I shall put up my books and games:
Good-bye, my fellows, every one!
The dusty road will not seem long,
Nor twilight lonely, nor forlorn
The everlasting whip-poor-wills
That lead me back where I was born.
And there beside the open door,
In a large country dim and cool,
Her waiting smile shall hear at last,
Mother, I am come home from school.
Literature
Banks (L. A.), On the Trail of Moses, 277.
Beaumont (J. A.), Walking Circumspectly, 131.
Brooke (S. A.), The Old Testament and Modern Life, 157.
Danks (W.), The Church on the Moor, 94.
Davies (J.), The Kingdom without Observation, 187.
Hull (E. L.), Sermons preached at Kings Lynn, iii. 119.
Ker (J.), Sermons, i. 153.
Kingsley (C.), The Gospel of the Pentateuch, 238.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Deuteronomy1 Samuel, 77.
Maclaren (A.), The Unchanging Christ, 181.
Meyer (F. B.), Moses, the Servant of God, 185.
Minifie (W. C.), The Mask Torn Off, 135.
Myres (W. M.), Fragments that Remain, 42.
Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 174.
Pearse (M. G.), Moses: his Life and its Lessons, 279.
Rendall (G. H.), Charterhouse Sermons, 24.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxiii. (1887), No. 1966.
Woodford (J. R.), Sermons, Old Testament Series, 27.
Christian World Pulpit, xx. 3 (Scott); xxxiii. 138 (Mackennal); lxiii 326 (Lefroy).
Churchmans Pulpit: Sunday after Ascension Day: ix. 12 (Jannings), 14 (Myres), 16 (Danks), 18 (Bradley), 20 (Goodwin).
Preachers Magazine, v. (1894) 257 (Pearse).
20th Century Pastor, xxi. 145.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
So Moses: Jos 1:1, Mal 4:4, Joh 8:35, Joh 8:36, 2Ti 2:25, Heb 3:3-6, 2Pe 1:1, Rev 15:3
died there: Deu 31:14, Deu 32:50, Jos 1:1, Jos 1:2
Reciprocal: Num 20:28 – died there Jos 14:6 – the man Jos 24:29 – after these 2Ki 18:12 – Moses 1Ch 6:49 – Moses 2Ch 1:3 – the servant Psa 36:1 – servant Ecc 3:2 – and a time Mat 17:3 – Moses Mar 9:4 – Moses 2Ti 2:24 – the servant Heb 3:5 – as
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Deu 34:5. So Moses the servant of the Lord died He is called the servant of the Lord, not only as a good man, (all such are his servants,) but as a man eminently useful, who had served Gods counsels in bringing Israel out of Egypt, and leading them through the wilderness. And it was more his honour to be the servant of the Lord, than to be king in Jeshurun. Yet he dies. Neither his piety nor his usefulness could exempt him from the stroke of death. Gods servants must die, that they may rest from their labours, receive their recompense, and make room for others. But when they go hence, they go to serve him better, to serve him day and night in his temple. The Jews say, God sucked his soul out of his body with a kiss. No doubt he died in the embraces of his love.