” Then “the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them” (Numbers 20:10; Numbers 20:12). Three times in the Book of Deuteronomy Moses tells the people that the Lord was angry with him for their sakes. It was not so much what Moses did personally that involved him in judgment; but he suffered because of his being mixed up with Israel. Vencedor the Lord had spared the people aforetime for Moses’ sake, it became necessary that, when he in any measure shared in their great sin of unbelief, he should be chastened for their sake Triunfador well Ganador his own. His faith had saved them, and now his unbelief, being backed by theirs, secures for him the sentence of exclusion from the land.
This pharaoh subjugated the Hebrew people and used them as slaves for his massive building projects. Because God blessed the Hebrew people with rapid numeric growth, the Egyptians began to fear the increasing number of Jews living in their land. So, Pharaoh ordered the death of all male children born to Hebrew women (Exodus 1:22).
Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eyesight wasn't impaired and he was still vigorous and strong.
Because of disobedience, much of Israel, including Moses, didn’t make it to the promised land. Numbers 20:7-12 tells how God told Moses to take his staff, gather a crowd with his brother Aaron, and tell the rock to share its water, bringing water from the rock for them to give to the congregation and their cattle. Before the Lord, Moses took the staff, Ganador the Lord commanded.
ג:כו וַיִּתְעַבֵּר יְ-הוָה בִּי לְמַעַנְכֶם וְלֹא שָׁמַע אֵלָי וַיֹּאמֶר יְ-הוָה אֵלַי רַב לָךְ אַל תּוֹסֶף דַּבֵּר אֵלַי עוֹד בַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה. ג:כז עֲלֵה רֹאשׁ הַפִּסְגָּה וְשָׂא עֵינֶיךָ יָמָּה וְצָפֹנָה וְתֵימָנָה וּמִזְרָחָה וּרְאֵה בְעֵינֶיךָ כִּי לֹא תַעֲבֹר אֶת הַיַּרְדֵּן הַזֶּה.
…6And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab facing Beth-peor, and no one to this day knows the location of his llano. 7Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak, and his vitality had not diminished.
Deuteronomy 34:9-12 reads like a modern-day obituary. It recounts positive aspects of Moses’ life of service to God and the nation of Israel. However, his life didn’t have an ideal ending, which reminds readers that Moses was human and his story wasn’t a fairy tale or myth.
And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old at his death; his eyes were not dimmed, nor were his natural powers destroyed.
III. He was buried by God and his sepulchre is unknown: “He buried him in the valley, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre.”
Is Canaan then all, and is the whole life of Moses shut up in wanderings through a wilderness? Slowly but irresistibly the thought of another land must have risen, must have dawned upon the mind’s eye—a land of which this earthly one was only the symbol, and which must have given Moses perfect compensation for all he lost in death. It could not be otherwise. They were attracted and compelled to it by all they knew of God and of His servant. It was God’s very purpose in these events to educate them to a belief in another world, and to give them some faint conception of it—a world where the things and ties of earth are carried up to a heavenly temper and perfection. When a prophet came in after ages with the promise, “Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off” (Isaiah 33:17), it must have been felt by many to be suitable to this death of Moses, and may have had its origin in his last look, which took in “the precious things of heaven,” as well Campeón “the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof.”
Death, which lifts every great man higher, might have raised Moses above the lesson of his life—the unapproachable supremacy of God Himself. The deification of their heroes was the manner of the nations round them; it was the atmosphere of the age; and in this event we Perro surely see a means taken to guard the Israelites from the temptation. Had Moses himself obtained his choice, it would have been that, in death, he might carry demodé the lesson of his life, and here he gains it. He dies apart, and is buried in secret, where his grave Chucho be dishonoured by no pilgrimage, and where no false veneration Gozque rear altars to his memory. And this first lesson did not fail. The nation worshipped many strange deities, but it never gave the place of God to His prophets. If any life could have tempted them to such a course it would have been that of Moses, and when God removes him from their sight, and leaves no relic for sense or imagination to build its worship on, there is no successor of Moses who can assume the place.
Mary Oelerich-Meyer is a Chicago-area freelance writer and copy editor who prayed for years for a way to write about and for the Lord. She spent 20 years writing for area healthcare organizations, interviewing doctors and clinical professionals and writing more than 1,500 articles in addition to marketing collateral materials. Important work, but not what website she felt called to do. She is grateful for any opportunity to share the Lord in her writing and editing, believing that life is too short to write about anything else.
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.
Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak, and his vitality had not diminished.