Deuteronomy 34:5

Here is, I. The death of Moses (Deu 34:5): 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, Deu 3:26. 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; Exo 6:16-20. 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, Act 21:13.

II. His burial, Deu 34:6. 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 7:4. 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 2:14. 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 Jde 1:9. 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, Deu 34:7. 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, Psa 90:10. 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 27:1, and Jacob's, Gen 48:10), 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 (Exo 34:30), 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, Deu 34:8. 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 29:24. 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.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.] Heb., Upon the mouth of the Lord. Hence Cornelius a Lapide saith he heard one preach, that Moses died kissed by God. The Jewish doctors so expound this text, as though God did indeed take away his soul with a kiss (the loving mother we have seen kiss the child, and then lay it down to sleep); and so of their 903 kinds of death, this they say is the easiest. {a} God bade Moses go lie down and sleep, {Deu 31:16} and he accordingly went to bed, when his Father bade.

{a} Maimonid.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Deu_34:5

So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died.

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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.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 God’s 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. God’s 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.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.’

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 and mystery of death; the other revealed light in the darkness, and companionship in the loneliness. The one faded from men’s 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. An endured cross, an empty grave, an occupied throne, are as the threefold cord on which all our hopes hang. Moses was solitary as God’s servant in life and death, and oblivion covered his mountain grave. Christ’s ‘delights were with the sons of men.’ He lived among them, and all men ‘know his sepulchre to this day.’

I. Note, then, first, as a lesson gathered from this lonely death, the penalty of transgression.

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 connection 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.

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.

For all these forty years there had gleamed before the fixed and steadfast spirit of the sorely tried leader one hope that he never abandoned, and that was that he might look upon and enter into the blessed land which God had promised. And now he stands on the heights of Moab. Half a dozen miles onwards, as the crow flies, and his feet would tread its soil. He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is. And then his eye falls upon the waterless plateau of the South, and at his feet the fertile valley of Jordan, with Jericho glittering amongst its palm trees like a diamond set in emeralds, and on some spur of the lower hill bounding the plain, the little Zoar. 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 my text puts it, with such pathetic emphasis, ‘there in Moab,’ and to have no part in the fair inheritance.

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 dies alone, with no hand to clasp his, none to close his eyes; but God’s 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 dear hands, and make that journey through the narrow, dark tunnel by himself. We live alone in a very real sense, but we each have to die as if there were not another human being in the whole universe but only 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 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.

Commentators have spent a great deal of ingenuity in trying to assign reasons why God concealed the grave of Moses. The text does not say that God concealed it at all. The ignorance of the place of his sepulchre does not seem to have been part of the divine design, but simply a consequence of the circumstances of his death, and of the fact that he lay in an enemy’s land, and that they had had something else to do than go to look for the grave of a dead commander. They had to conquer the land, and a living Joshua was what they wanted, not a dead Moses.

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.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Moses . . . died--After having governed the Israelites forty years.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 5. So Moses - died - according to the word of the Lord.] על פי יהוה 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.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(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.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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, Zac 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, Num 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, Sol 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.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Died there. This last chapter of Deuteronomy, in which the death of Moses is related, was written by Josue, or by some of the prophets. (Challoner) --- Josephus ([Antiquities iv. 9), Philo, and Origen (contra Cels. ii. p. 95,) believe, however, that Moses wrote the account of his own death. See preface to Deuteronomy. (Haydock) --- Moab, which had formerly belonged to that nation. (Menochius) --- Commandment. Hebrew literally, "the mouth." The Rabbins say God kissed him, and thus released his soul. Some have nevertheless pretended that Moses was translated, like Elias, without dying. (Chaldean; Catharin; &c.) But his death and burial are too clearly mentioned in Scripture. St. Jerome (in Amos viii.) seems, at first view, to countenance the former opinion: but he only speaks of a spiritual translation, and not of the body. (Calmet) --- Josephus thinks that it was to prevent this mistake, that Moses wrote this chapter.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

i.e. In the land which Israel took from the Amorites, which anciently was the land of Moab.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

According to the word of the Lord; literally, at the mouth of the Lord. The rabbins interpret this, "by a kiss of the Lord" ("Baba Bathra," 17 a); i.e. as Maimonides explains it ("More Nevoch.," 3:51), Moses "died in a moment of holiest joy in the knowledge and love of God." The phrase, however, simply means "by or according to the command of". (cf. Gen_45:21; Exo_17:1; Lev_24:12; Num_3:16, etc.)

Vers. 5, 6. Moses" death and burial.

Lessons from it

I GOD WILL HAVE NO ONE, LIVING OR DEAD, TO STAND BETWEEN HIS CREATURES AND HIMSELF. "He dies apart, and is buried in secret, where his grave can be dishonored by no pilgrimage, and where no false veneration can rear altars to his memory.

II GOD WISHES MEN TO SEE SOMETHING MORE LEFT OF HIS SERVANTS THAN THE OUTWARD SHRINE. They had the life and words of Moses, which his shrine might have obscured. It was expedient that even Jesus should go away, that his spiritual presence and the spiritual significance of his work might be fully realized. (Joh_16:7)

III GOD TAKES THE HONOR OF HIS SERVANTS INTO HIS OWN KEEPING.

IV GOD WOULD TEACH MEN THAT HE HAS A RELATION TO HIS SERVANTS WHICH EXTENDS BEYOND DEATH. "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?

V GOD WOULD TEACH MEN THAT HIS REGARD IS NOT CONFINED TO ANY CHOSEN SOIL. "In a valley in the land of Moab." We have one more lesson from the New Testament

VI THAT THE SEEMING FAILURE IN A TRUE LIFE MAY AT LAST HAVE A COMPLETE COMPENSATION. Moses did at last, with Elias, tread the soil of Palestine, and there see "the King in his beauty". (Mat_17:3) (Dr. John Ker.) J.O.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 God's counsels in bringing Israel out of Egypt, and leading them thro' 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 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. 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.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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 (ἔθαψαν αὐτόν, 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.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

וימת שם משה AND MOSES DIED THERE — Is it possible that Moses, died, and then wrote: “And Moses died there”? But, thus far did Moses write, from here and onward Joshua wrote. Rabbi Meir said: But is it possible that the Book of the Torah would be lacking anything at all, and yet it would state before the account of Moses' death was written in it, (Deuteronomy 31:26) “Take this book of the Torah” -? Rather the Holy One, blessed be He, dictated this, and Moses wrote it in tears (Sifrei Devarim 357:28; Bava Batra 15a, Menachot 30a).

על פי ה׳ BY THE COMMAND (lit., MOUTH) OF THE LORD — by the Divine kiss (Moed Katan 28a; cf. Rashi on Numbers 20:1).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.