Deuteronomy 34

Published by the Society for Preventive Christian Newsletter. Department of Women, 5th London, 1899. Google

Deuteronomy 34:6

6. And he buried him] The same God, that by the hands of His angels carried up the soul of Moses to His glory, doth also by the hand of His angels carry his body down into the valley of Moab, to his sepulchre. Those hands, which had received the law from Him, those eyes that had seen His presence, those lips that had conferred so often with Him, that face that did so shine with the beams of His glory, may not be neglected when the soul is gone: He, that took charge of his birth and preservation in the reeds, takes charge of his carriage out of the world: the care of God ceaseth not over His own, either in death, or after it. Bp. Hall.

Deuteronomy 34:10

10. And there arose not a prophet — like unto Moses,] Moses was mighty both in words and deeds, Acts vii. 22. He excelled in miracles and prophecies, and still more in legislation. His laws and institutions have been admired and adopted by the wisest sages of antiquity. And upon the closest scrutiny, they breathe a spirit of the most exalted piety, the most extensive benevolence, and the most enlightened policy, worthy indeed of the tutelar God of Israel, by whom they were dictated to this most highly favoured “man of God,” because most “faithful servant of the Lord,” Deut. xxxiii. 1; Numb. xii. 7; Heb. iii. 2; with whom God conversed “face to face,” or familiarly, “as a man speaketh unto his friend,” Exod. xxxiii. 11.

The faculties of this illustrious legislator, both of mind and body, were unimpaired at the age of 120 years, when he died. “His eye was not dim, nor his natural strength abated,” ver. 7. And the noblest of all his compositions was his Song, or the Divine Ode, which Bp. Lowth elegantly styles, “the dying swan’s oration.”

His death took place after the Lord had shewn him from the top of Pisgah a distant view of the promised land, throughout its whole extent: and He then

“buried his body in a valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Moab; but no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day,” observes the sacred historian, who annexed the circumstances of his death to the book of Deuteronomy, ver. 6. From an obscure passage in the New Testament, in which “Michael the archangel is said to have contended with the devil, about the body of Moses,” Jude 9, we may collect, that he was buried by the ministry of angels, near the scene of the idolatry of the Israelites; but that the spot was purposely concealed, lest his tomb might also be converted into an object of idolatrous worship among the Israelites, like the brasen serpent. Beth-peor lay in the lot of the Reubenites, Jos. xiii. 20. His death was announced by the Lord Himself to Joshua, “Moses My servant is dead, &c.” Josh. i. 2. So that there was no human witness of his decease; the account of which was probably added by Joshua from revelation.

The preeminence of his character is briefly described by the sacred historian, Samuel or Ezra: “And there arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.”

The noblest trait in his moral character was his patriotic disinterestedness. He twice refused the tempting offer of the aggrandizement of his own family, when God threatened to reject the Israelites for their rebellions, and make of him “a great nation” in their stead. And he left his sons, without rank or patrimony, as private Levites, to subsist on the national bounty, in common with their brethren!—And, melancholy to relate, his grandson, “Jonathan, the son of Gershom,” and his family, became idolatrous priests to the Danites, until the capture of the ark by the Philistines, Judg. xviii. 30; where the Masorite doctors, to hide the disgrace to his memory, changed “Moses” into “Manasses,” by interpolating the letter N in the present copies of the Hebrew text. The posterity of his son Eleazar were numerous in Solomon’s time, and some of them high in office, 1 Chron. xxiii. 14—17; xxvi. 24, 25. Dr. Hales.

Thus, with the death of this eminent Prophet and Lawgiver, ended the PENTATRICH: containing the sacred history of the world, and of mankind in general, and of the Abrahamic family in particular, for the first two thousand, five hundred, and fifty-three years: namely, from the Creation to the arrival of the Israelites in the land of Canaan. Pyle.