And Moses the servant of Jehovah died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of Jehovah.
Moses died on a mountain outside the promised land, and the record of it is short and calm. Two questions press on the reader. Why did God keep His servant out of the land? And why does Scripture still call him the servant of the LORD?
His death was the settled outcome of one failure at the waters of Meribah.
Here Moses seems to fail at the very points where he had once been strongest. He speaks "rashly with his lips." He fails to honour the Lord as holy in the eyes of the people — that Lord whose glory was so dear to his heart. So he disqualifies himself from planting the people in their inheritance, when they were right on its borders. Moses is not at that moment in fellowship with the mind and ways of the Lord. He has failed in his mission and he must forfeit his leadership.
The sin was small. The loss was not.
Let us remember that it was a small thing, one rash word, that cost Moses Canaan. And let us remember, too, that the New Testament presses the control of the tongue on us more than almost anything else. "By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Seeking to exalt ourselves is rebellion against God.
Underneath the personal failure lies a reason built into Moses' office.
Look at this loved and honoured man in his official role. It was plainly not his part to bring the people of Israel into the promised land. The wilderness was his sphere of action. It was not for him to lead the people across the river of death into their appointed inheritance. His ministry belonged to man's responsibility under law and to the government of God. So it could never bring the people into the enjoyment of the promise.
The man who did lead them in carried a name that says why.
Moses' disobedience was not the deepest reason he did not enter the land. He was the lawgiver, and law cannot bring the people of God into their inheritance. Joshua led them into the land of promise. His name in Hebrew is the same as the Greek name Jesus — Jehovah Saviour. He speaks of the grace that is in Christ Jesus, in contrast to law.
The verse does not call him "Moses the excluded." It calls him "Moses the servant of the LORD." That title survived his failure, and later Scripture says more.
Moses failed so that he was not allowed to enter Canaan. Yet isn't it wonderful that centuries later the testimony of the Spirit about the man is "faithful in all His house"? Such is the reckoning of grace.
The God who kept him out of Canaan dug his grave.
If the solemn decree of the throne at Meribah awes our spirit, the matchless grace on the top of Pisgah thrills our heart. God's government kept Moses out of Canaan. God's grace dug a grave for Moses in the plains of Moab. Was there ever such a burial? May we not say that the grace that dug Moses' grave is only outshone by the grace that filled the grave of Christ?
One writer takes up who recorded Moses' death, and why the grave stayed unknown.
There is no need at all to take Deuteronomy 34 as written by Moses before his death. Others followed, inspired like him. But as to the contents: God buried the dead lawgiver, and Jude tells us what no one had revealed until then. Satan would have turned a willing people to idolise him dead, whom they had fought against while he lived. No one knows the place of his burial to this day.
The story does not end at the grave in Moab.
It is the Lord who buries Moses. After a time He brings him out in the glory of the Lord Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. We find there not Joshua, the one who led Israel into the land, but Moses, the one to whom this was denied.
- The word that shut him out. One rash sentence at Meribah cost Moses the land. God's discipline of His servants is real, and it often starts with the tongue.
- The word that could not bring in. The failure was also official. The lawgiver's ministry belonged to the wilderness. Only Joshua, whose name means Saviour, could lead the people in.
- The word that still honoured him. He dies as "servant of the LORD." Centuries later the Spirit still calls him faithful. That is the reckoning of grace.
- The hand that buried him. God's government kept him out of Canaan; God's grace dug his grave in Moab. The place stayed secret, so no one could idolise the man.
- The mountain that answered Pisgah. Moses never entered Canaan, yet God later brought him out in glory with Christ. Exclusion was not the last word.
And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-Peor; and no man knows his sepulchre to this day.
Deuteronomy ends with a burial that no one attended. Israel's leader is laid in a valley in Moab, at a place God never revealed. Two questions press on every reader: why did God bury him personally, and why did He hide the grave?
Moses died alone on the mountain. The verse never names who buried him. The same "he" who told him to climb laid him in the ground. One writer shows how far this is from an ordinary funeral:
But did he die the death of all men? Did Moses die as a fool dies? No, it was the Lord Himself who put him to sleep; the dead may bury the dead, but the Lord buried Moses... He showed His care in another way, but He cared for the body of Moses as much as He had cared for the body of Enoch. They were to be equally children of the resurrection... The Lord Himself buried that body with the sure and certain purpose of raising it to glory.
A known tomb would have drawn crowds. One writer gives a reason for hiding it, and marks it as his own thought rather than something Scripture states:
Well, I suppose it was so that it should not become an object of superstition to the Jews, like the bronze serpent. We do not find that in the word, it is just my own mind about it. The Jews might have made pilgrimages to it. The Lord buried him, and "no man," etc.
The irony is sharp: the people who fought Moses while he lived would have worshipped him once he died.
As soon as he was dead, the same devil that stirred them up against Moses when he was alive — oh, what would he not have given for that dead body! The dead body would have been made a relic... So we can easily understand why it was that the Lord buried the body Himself.
Something happened at this grave before the burial, and only the New Testament records it:
Before the Lord buried him, there was this contention between Michael the archangel and the devil about Moses' dead body. Even if God allowed Satan to know the place, He stepped in so that Michael should guard that grave and block every effort of the devil to get hold of that dead body. So we have the two facts: what Jude tells us here, and the account in Deuteronomy 34 of the Lord burying Moses — which He never did for any other man.
That is where the record stops. Another writer warns against guessing past it:
We know absolutely nothing about how Michael reasoned with the devil about the body of Moses. Guesses have been endless, especially about the mysterious statement in Deuteronomy 34:6. But it is one of God's secrets, and no one can get inside it.
Moses died outside the land he had led Israel toward. One writer names the reason:
It was the government of God that, with stern decision, kept Moses out of the Promised land, much as he longed to enter it. He spoke rashly with his lips. He failed to glorify God in front of the people at the waters of Meribah.
Yet God's government was not the whole story:
But, as we have said, Moses was the subject of grace, as well as of government; and truly that grace shines with special brightness on the top of Pisgah. There God let His honoured servant stand in his Master's presence and, with clear eye, look out over the land of promise... and see it, not just as land Israel held, but as land God gave.
One writer sees a picture in the fact that God buried him:
Moses was the instrument through whom the law was given, and the Lord buried him. No doubt this hints that one day the Lord would put away the law, with its curse, as we learn in the New Testament.
The hidden valley is not the end of the story:
It is the Lord who buries Moses, and after a time He brings him out (as we have seen) in the glory of the Lord Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. We find there, not Joshua, the one who led Israel into the land, but Moses, the one to whom this was denied.
- Buried by God — the dead may bury the dead, but the Lord Himself laid Moses in the valley.
- Hidden by God — an unknown grave means no shrine, no pilgrimage, no relic to worship.
- Contested by Satan — Michael disputed with the devil over the body, and what happened beyond that stays God's secret.
- Governed by God — one rash word kept Moses out of the land; God's love does not cancel His government.
- Raised by God — the Lord who buried him brought him out again in glory on the mount of transfiguration.