Numbers 27:13

Num 27:13 And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered.

Ver. 13. Gathered unto thy people.] To that great panegyris, "the general assembly and church of the firstborn in heaven"; {Heb 12:23} to that glorious amphitheatre, where the saints shall see and say, Iδου ο Pετρος, και ο Pαυλος, &c., as Chrysostom hath it; Look, yonder is Peter, and that is Paul, &c.; we shall "sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"; have communion with them, not only as godly men, but as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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.

Num 27:13. Thou shalt be gathered unto thy people — Moses must die; but death does not cut him off; it only gathers him to his people, brings him to rest with the holy patriarchs that were gone before him. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were his people, the people of his choice, and to them death gathered him.

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

(13) Gathered unto thy people.—See Gen_25:8, and Note. In the case of Moses, as in that of Abraham, the expression cannot be understood in reference to the place of his burial.

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

13. as Aaron thy brother] See Num_20:23-29 (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.

For ye rebelled against my commandment the desert of Zin,.... Both Moses and Aaron, which was the reason why they were not suffered to go into the land of Canaan, but died a little before the children of Israel came into it: what their sin was, called here a rebelling against the commandment of the Lord; See Gill on Num 20:12, and is next suggested:

in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me before their eyes; when the congregation of Israel strove against the Lord for want of water, they did not sanctify the Lord by believing in him; but expressed some degree of diffidence before the congregation about fetching water out of the rock, or questioning whether the Lord would give it to such a rebellious people, though they had his order for it:

that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; so called to distinguish it from another Meribah, or water of strife, at Rephidim, Exo 17:7.

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

People, in limbo. (Menochius) --- He was not buried in the grave of his ancestors, but on some part of Mount Abarim, called Nebo, Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1, 6. (Haydock) --- Moses, hoping that this sentence of exclusion from the promised land might be only a threat, had earnestly besought God to let him enter. But being forbidden to speak of the matter any more, he understood that it was as irrevocable as an oath, Deuteronomy iii. 26., and iv. 21. He turned, therefore, his whole solicitude to obtain of God some one, who might enjoy the honour and happiness of conducting the people, and putting them in possession of God’s promises. He regards not flesh and blood on this occasion, (Philo, de caritate.; Salien,) but sets a noble pattern for all ecclesiastical superiors to imitate. (Du Hamel)

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).

Gathered unto thy people; of which phrase see Gen 15:15; 25:8.

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

13. Thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people — The people of Moses were not the living generation, but the tenants of the grave. This announcement was made, “that he might go forward to his death with the fullest consciousness, and might set his house in order; that is to say, might finish as much as he could while still alive, and provide as much as possible what would make up after his death for the absence of his own person, upon which the whole house of Israel was now so dependent.” — Baumgarten. For the account of his death on the same summit, see Deu_32:48-52; Deu_34:1-8.

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

Thou shalt be gathered unto thy people - Moses must die: but death does not cut him off; it only gathers him to his people, brings him to rest with the holy patriarchs that were gone before him. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were his people, the people of his choice, and to them death gathered him.

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

כאשר נאסף אהרן אחיך [THOU SHALT BE GATHERED TO THY PEOPLE] AS AARON THY BROTHER WAS GATHERED — From this it is evident that Moses longed for a death similar to that of Aaron (cf. Rashi on Numbers 20:26). — Another explanation: you will die as he died (in the wilderness) because you are no better than he (Midrash Tanchuma, Pinchas 9). — Such indeed is suggested by (Deuteronomy 32:50. 51): “[and die … as Aaron thy brother died …] because you sanctified me not”. Thus it follows, if ye (both of you) had sanctified me your time would not have yet come to depart this life and you would not have died in the wilderness (Sifrei Bamidbar 137:1). In every passage where it writes about their death you will find that it writes about their offence. Because a decree had been made against the generation of the wilderness (those who left Egypt) that they should die in the wilderness on account of the sin that they did not have faith in God, therefore Moses requested that the nature of his offence should be stated in the Torah, so that people might not say, “He, too, was one of those “rebels”. A parable: It may be compared to the case of two women who were punished by the Court; one was an immoral woman and one had merely eaten unripe figs of the sabbatical year’s growth. The latter, therefore, requested that the nature of her offence might be made public, and they did so by proclamation. So, too, here: wherever it mentions their death it mentions also their misdeed, in order to make it known that there was only this single sin in them (Tanchuma 4:6:10 on חקת; Yoma 86b; cf. Sifrei Bamidbar 137:2).

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.