Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 34:7
And Moses [was] a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
7. an hundred and twenty years ] Dates, we have seen, are characteristic of P; this one is a round number = three full generations (see on Deu 2:7); cp. Exo 7:7.
nor his natural force abated ] Lit. nor had his sap fled or ebbed. The phrase cannot be assigned to one source more than another.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 7. His eye was not dim] Even at the advanced age of a hundred and twenty; nor his natural force abated – he was a young man even in old age, notwithstanding the unparalleled hardships he had gone through. See the account of his life at the end of this chapter (De 34:10).
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
By a miraculous work of God in mercy to his church and people.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And Moses [was] an hundred and twenty years old when he died,…. Which age of his may be divided into three equal periods, forty years in Pharaoh’s court, forty years in Midian, and forty in the care and government of Israel, in Egypt and in the wilderness; so long he lived, though the common age of man in his time was but threescore years and ten, Ps 90:10; and what is most extraordinary is,
his eyes were not dim; as Isaac’s were, and men at such an age, and under, generally be:
nor his natural force abated; neither the rigour of his mind nor the strength of his body; his intellectuals were not decayed, his memory and judgment; nor was his body feeble, and his countenance aged; his “moisture” was not “fled” m, as it may be rendered, his radical moisture; he did not look withered and wrinkled, but plump and sleek, as if he was a young man in the prime of his days: this may denote the continued use of the ceremonial law then to direct to Christ, and the force of the moral law as in the hands of Christ, requiring obedience and conformity to it, as a rule of walk and conversation, 1Co 9:21.
m So Ainsworth.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Though he died at the age of one hundred and twenty (see at Deu 31:2), Moses’ eyes had not become dim, and his freshness had not abated ( . . , connected with in Gen 30:37, signifies freshness). Thus had the Lord preserved the full vital energy of His servant, even till the time of his death. The mourning of the people lasted thirty days, as in the case of Aaron (Num 20:29).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
7 And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old. Again he celebrates a special favor of God, viz., that all the senses of Moses remained unimpaired to extreme old age, in order that he might be fit for the performance of his duties: for thus it was manifested how dear to God was the welfare of the people, for which He so carefully provided. Some, indeed, though very few, are found, who are capable of public government, even to their hundredth year. Already, however, at that period, the rigor of the whole human race had so diminished that, after their seventieth year, they dragged on their life in “labor and sorrow,” as Moses himself bears witness. (Psa 90:10.) It was, consequently a conspicuous sign of the paternal favour wherewith God regarded His people, that Moses should have been thus unusually preserved in rigor and strength. If the powers of Moses had failed him long before their entrance of the promised land, his debility would have been very inconvenient to the people: yet naturally he would not have been so long sufficient for the performance of his onerous duties. It follows, then, that when God did not suffer him to fail, He showed wonderful consideration for the people’s welfare. Mention is specially made of his eyes, by synecdoche, yet the sum of the matter is this, that he was neither imbecile nor feeble, for neither were the faculties of his mind exhausted, nor his body dried up.
It needs not that I expound at any length, what is added respecting the solemn mourning, because I have elsewhere shown, (330) that the ancients were particular in their attention to the performance of funeral rites, on account of their faith not being as yet so elevated from the measure of revelation they had received, as to be easily able to forego those external aids to it, for which there is not the same necessity under the Gospel. It is natural to man to mourn for the dead; and, besides, this mourning was justly instituted in consequence of the loss which the Church had sustained; but a ceremony is here recorded, which was brought to an end with the fulfillment of the shadows of the Law. Our dead are, therefore, now to be buried in such a manner as that our grief may be restrained by the hope of resurrection so clearly revealed by the coming of Christ.
(330) See on Lev 21:1, vol. 2 p. 228.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
7. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died What an eventful life he has led since he lay “a weeping boy” in the ark by the river’s brink! Forty years pass, and he is in the prime of manhood, a prince taught in all the learning of the most cultured nation of remote antiquity. Then forty years he spends in the quiet pastoral life of Midian, and forty years in the varied experience of the wilderness wandering. Since he led the people out of Egypt a whole generation has passed away. Of those who crossed the Red Sea how many have left their bones in the desert! How few of those who heard the song of triumph, “I will sing unto Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously,” (Exodus 15,) listened to the “blessing wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death!”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 7. Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died, &c. The sum of the verse is this: that though Moses lived the full length of human life, and to an age which, in others who attain it, is accompanied with many infirmities, no alteration was made in him; whom, for the support of the great charge committed to him, a special providence preserved in full vigour of every faculty, both of body and mind, to his dying hour. Houbigant, instead of nor his natural force abated, reads, nor had his cheeks lost their floridity. Of these one hundred and twenty years, he had employed a third part, excepting a month, in the government of Israel, as Josephus remarks in his fourth book of the Jewish Antiquities. The Scripture does not precisely point out the day or the month of Moses’s death; but the Jews, following Josephus, fix it to the seventh day of the month Adar, which was the last of the fortieth year after the departure from Egypt: however, they are mistaken; for, as Torniel has shewn, Moses was dead at the end of the eleventh, or upon the first day of the twelfth month; and it is to this last date that the learned and exact Archbishop Usher has fixed it. The ideas which the Jews have given us of the dispositions wherewith Moses died, are pleasing. “Acquainted with the time, place, and manner of his death, he was neither surprised when it happened, nor taken from life involuntarily. It was neither age, nor decay, nor any external accident, that determined the moment of his decease; but the mere will of God: that will, in which he acquiesced with a soul tranquil, submissive, and full of ardent desire to possess Him, whom, above all things, it loved.” See Huet. Demonst. Evan. prop. iv. c. 1. sect. 57.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
The promise, Thou shalt go down to the grave in a good old age, was remarkably fulfilled, in the instance of Moses. If the Reader will consult the genealogy of Moses he will discover, that his Maker, grandfather, and great grandfather, were all older when they died than himself. Amram his father was 137 years at his death. Kohath his grandfather 133, and Levi his great grandfather 137. See Exo 6:16-20 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Deu 34:7 And Moses [was] an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
Ver. 7. Nor his natural force a abated.] Jerome reads it, Nor his teeth loosed. And the use of manna might be some reason, it being an exquisitely pure kind of food, of an aerial, and not very corruptible substance.
a gena, maxilla.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
an hundred: Deu 31:2, Act 7:23, Act 7:30, Act 7:36
his eye: Gen 27:1, Gen 48:10, Jos 14:10, Jos 14:11
natural force abated: Heb. moisture fled
Reciprocal: Gen 47:9 – have not Exo 7:7 – General 2Sa 19:32 – fourscore 1Ki 14:4 – for his eyes Job 33:25 – return Job 42:16 – an Psa 90:10 – The days
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
AN HUNDRED AND TWENTY YEARS OLD
Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died.
Deu 34:7
I. The story of the death of Moses is one of the most pathetic in the Bible.A life that had been spent in the service of others, that had been extended far beyond mans allotted span, was approaching its end, although, physically, he was as vigorous as ever. Moses had served his generation; he had brought the people to the very borders of the Land of Promise, but he himself was not permitted to see the fulfilment of his hopes. His sin in taking to himself at Meribah the glory due to God was the reason of his exclusion from Canaan, a solemn warning that sin and punishment are inevitably linked together. Like St. Paul, who besought the Lord that his stake in the flesh might be removed, Moses prayed for the remission of his punishment. And as St. Paul, though his petition was denied, received the loving answer, My grace is sufficient for thee, so Moses, while his prayer remained unanswered, had the comforting assurance that underneath are the Everlasting Arms. Jehovah was with him, and he feared no evil. After blessing the people he loved in the triumphant psalm which forms the thirty-third chapter, Moses set out on his solitary journey up the mountain-side. His life had been to a large extent spent in solitude, and in solitude the end was to come. Before he passed away, he was granted a view of the land which the people were soon to possess. The mountain peak on which he stood, now known as Neba, commands a fine view of the country, and in the clear atmosphere of that land it might not require a miracle to enable him to see this. Thus the departing patriarch looked down upon the land promised nearly five hundred years to Abraham, and so soon to be their own possession. Then came the end. Moses gave himself into the hands of God. The man who, like Enoch, had walked with God, was not, for God took him. It was a beautiful end to a life that had been lived solely and entirely for others. Not after the cruel torture of the cross, as was the case with Jesus, nor at the sword of the executioner, as Paul, but at the kiss of God (so the Jewish tradition), his pure spirit stepped over the narrow line that separates the temporal from the eternal, and he entered into the immediate Presence of God, to Whom he had lived in conscious nearness all his days. Where I am, there shall also My servant be.
And He buried him. Jesus made His grave with the wicked; to Moses alone belongs the honour of being buried by the hands of Jehovah Himself.
It was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth.
So died the man who had the highest possible title conferred upon him: Moses, the servant of Jehovah, and who was one of the greatest heroes in the history of the world.
II. God buries the worker, but carries on His work.For thirty days the people mourned in deep sorrow the loss of their leader, though they had so often murmured against him during his lifetime. Before his death, Moses had nominated as his successor, and publicly commended to the people, his servant Joshua, one of the two faithful spies. Joshua knew the country they were about to enter, and he had the best of all qualifications for the workhe was full of the spirit of wisdom. He was a leader rather than a law-giver. Under Moses, the nation had been consolidated, the law had been tabulated, and now the people were fitted to march on to their promised possession under the guidance of Joshua. But as a lawgiver Moses had no real successor until, in the fulness of time, Jesus appeared to be the perfect fulfilment of the Divine law.
Illustration
(1) When Daniel OConnell, on account of his health, was ordered to leave England, he started for Rome, having had for many years a desire to see that city. In the city of Genoa he was seized with paralysis, so was unable to proceed further, and died there, never having looked upon the longed-for sight.
(2) Moses yields to Joshua, and Joshua finally to another. No man is indispensable to the divine plan. But to every man is assigned his place and allotted his work. None can afford to be indifferent or neglectful. Let each soul then take care so to live that when its time comes to die, what we call death may bring the Pisgah vision and conduct to the Canaan celestial.
(3) To the eye of the superficial beholder the good and faithful servant is often summoned to cease from his labours at a time when his work is still incomplete, and when his services seem to be most required. A Tin-dale devotes the whole energies of his mind and body to the noble end of translating Gods Word into his native tongue; and just as his life-long efforts were about to be crowned with success, a cruel death snatches him away from a yet unfinished work. A Henry Martyn, intent on the accomplishment of a similar task, is permitted to breathe out, in solitude and in suffering, his last earthly aspirations for the dawn of the new heaven and the new earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. A Patteson, endowed in a marvellous manner with the highest qualifications for the same work, is severed from it by a violent death, inflicted by the hands of those to the benefit of whose souls and bodies he had so cheerfully and ungrudgingly devoted his life. But in each and in all of these cases, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. It matters little for such whether their death-bed be surrounded by living friends and relatives, and their resting-place be the peaceful churchyard of their native parishes, or whether amidst the solitude of the desert they breathe their souls into the hands of their Redeemer, or in the depths of the ocean their bodies await the day when the sea shall give up its dead. Alike, as in the case of Israels prophet and leader, their souls are secure in the guardianship of their Lord, and their bodies are the objects of solicitude to Him who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Deu 34:7. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died But though he lived the full length of human life, and to an age which, in others that live up to it, is accompanied with many diseases and infirmities, yet this had made little or no alteration in him. By a miraculous work of God, in mercy to his church, and for the support of the great cause committed to him, it appears the full vigour of every faculty, both of body and mind, was preserved to him to his dying hour.