What does it mean that someone was gathered to his people?

If the Scriptures be read without prejudice it will be perceived that the term "sleep" is always used in connection with the body, never in connection with the soul. Thus after our Lord's resurrection "many BODIES of the saints which SLEPT arose" (Matt. 27:52). The expressions so frequently used in the Old Testament that such and such a person "slept with his fathers" and "was buried with his fathers" have reference to the body only; and follow each other in natural sequence. The SLEEPING body was BURIED. The expression "gathered to his people" may possibly have a larger meaning, perhaps indicating that the departed one had joined his forefathers in the unseen world.

Apart and distinct from every adaptive application of the word, stands out clearly enough throughout Scripture its true and proper sense, as the seat not only of personality in man, but, of the affections, emotions, desires, will, and conscience. Its immortality or imperishable existence, though, like the existence of God Himself, nowhere expressly affirmed in so many words, is assumed throughout, and interwoven into the very texture of the word. Witness Job 19:25-27, where not only immortality is counted on, but resurrection is anticipated; the story of Saul and Samuel at En-dor (1 Sam. 28), where not only is the prophet found as a living being, long after his departure from this life, but where also he announces to wicked Saul that to-morrow he and his sons should be with him, and such announcements as that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Moses, were gathered to their people (Gen. 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:29, 33; Num. 20:24, 26; 27:13; 31:2; Deut. 32:50), or that Josiah was gathered to his fathers, beside being gathered to his grave (2 Kings 22:20); or that the entire generation of Israelites which entered Canaan were "gathered to their fathers." (Judges 2:10.) The interpretation given by our blessed Lord to the phrase "God of Abraham," &c., that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him" (Luke 20:38), lends equally its full weight to such expressions as the above, especially when it is borne in mind that "life and incorruptibility are brought to light" through the gospel, but not before. True it is that in the absence of revelation as to the nature of eternal life, as a distinct and new thing introduced into the soul, the only sense attached to a future existence, as steadily held by the Pharisees in common with the mass of the Jewish people, and contested only by the Sadducees, must have been that of an everlasting existence in a resurrection state of blessedness, in contrast with a resurrection state of "shame and everlasting contempt," as expressed by Daniel (Dan. 12:1); for, though in the mind of the Spirit who inspired the prophet, the expression "eternal life" had of course its full import, it may not have been so to the penman more than to those by whom it was read, before the doctrine had been brought to light. Even throughout the pages of the first three Evangelists, a definition of life as "a condition of existence," would apply; but the moment we open John, whose special line of truth "life" is, it ceases to suffice: hitherto there has been only a state of existence in which the person is or may be; now there is the revelation of the springs of life in the person, and that, at the very outset, as in its fountain-head, the Word Himself: "In Him was life."

In this life of faith and hope, the fathers of the Book of Genesis are seen to be one. Happy to know this. They illustrate different mysteries, and read us different moral lessons; but in this life of faith and hope they are one; and each in his day, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is alike gathered to his people (Gen. 25, Gen. 35, Gen. 49) — each is "a handful of sacred dust" in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, laid up there in sure and certain hope of a resurrection unto life and to the inheritance.

And Isaac is seen above all these. He still dwelt at Lahai-roi. He alone is the heir and the others received only gifts. So Christ is the Heir of God and His church will be with him far above all the earthly blessings of the age to come. Abraham died 175 years old, which means, he lived till Jacob and Esau were 15 years old. The phrase "gathered to his people" is used only of six persons. Of Abraham (25:8); Ishmael (verse 17); Isaac (35:29); Jacob (49:29-33); Aaron (Num. 20:24); and Moses (Deut. 32:50). Here we add a few words translated from the German and written by Dr. Kurtz, late professor of the University of Dorpat:

This is the bright side of the subject. There is also a dark side. For the bodies of the ungodly are to be raised. This John saw in vision. "I saw the dead," he writes, "small and great, stand before the throne; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hades delivered up the dead which were in them." (Rev. 20:12-13.) What is in the sea, and in death, as distinct from hades, but the bodies of those which have died, those unburied and those buried. Why does John say of death and hades, "the dead which were in them?" Let the reader compare these words, the last statement in the New Testament on this subject, with those in Matthew 10:28, spoken by the Lord, these last explaining how what He says is to be fulfilled.

The ancient creeds, then, and modern confessions of faith, which assert the resurrection of the body, are in that respect correct. The body which dies will be raised up, to share with its owner his condition for ever and ever. The attempts to set this truth aside, whether by means of suggested translations, or supposed scriptural authority, are futile in the extreme, and on no better ground does the statement rest, that it is the person who sleeps, and not his body. On this point the author has been misled by a statement in Dr. J. Fuerst's Hebrew Dictionary, according to which the Hebrew phrase, "he slept with his fathers," is said to be equivalent to the phrase, "he was gathered to his fathers". Thereupon we are told that to sleep with his fathers is a statement descriptive of the person apart from his body. On this supposition a great deal of the author's argument is made to rest. (p. 28.) But is it true? A little examination will demonstrate that the statement cannot be relied on. For, first, "gathering to one's fathers," mentioned in Judges 2:10; 2 Kings 22:20; 2 Chronicles 34:28, will, on examination, decide nothing about the point in question, but the phrase more commonly employed, "gathered unto his people," may help in the matter. For, comparing that with the one in question, "he lay with his fathers," we see that the notice of the person's death nearly always precedes the statement of his being gathered to his people. (Gen. 35:8, 17; Gen. 25:29; Gen. 49:33; Deut. 32:50.) Once only does it follow it. (Num. 20:26.) Whereas the only occasion on which the person's death is mentioned with the phrase, "he lay or slept with his fathers," the notice of his death follows that well-known statement. (2 Chron. 16:13.) This fact would suggest the possibility, not to say probability, that sleeping with one's fathers is not equivalent to being gathered unto them, or to one's people.

He had, we may say, seen the land, but he was not to go over and possess it. He was the Moses of an earlier generation; like him, a heavenly man, a man of the wilderness and not of the inheritance — a man of the tent — a child of resurrection. He was gathered to his people, ere the land was entered by the Israel of God according to promise. As in the glass of God's purpose, and by the light of faith, he sees the land; but he goes not over to possess it. He dies as on Mount Pisgah, on the wilderness-side of the Jordan, destined, with Enoch before him and with Moses after him, to shine on the top of the hill in the heavenly glory of the Son of man.

With Machpelah and his burial, Jacob then ends these dying intercourses with his sons, as he had begun them. Gen. 47:29; Gen. 49:29. He had Joseph's word and oath already on this matter, and now he must put all of them under the same engagements to him about it. Death was more important to him than life. Life kept him in Egypt, death would restore him to Canaan. Death linked him with the God and the promise of his fathers. The hopes of faith lay beyond life, and outside Egypt. In spirit he was saying Absent from the body, present with the Lord; "Confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." As far as patriarchal faith could utter this, Jacob was uttering it. And at the very last we read, "When Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people."

Deut. 32: 48-52. "And the Lord spake unto Moses that selfsame day, saying, Get thee up into this mountain Abiram, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother did in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people: because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel." We see here the way in which the Lord is able to tell of the sins of the saints - to record the failures of the saints. Let man narrate the life of his fellow man, he seeks to hide his failures, and why? Because he wishes to exalt the man. Let the Holy Ghost write the life of a saint, He records the sins and failures of that saint, and why? Because he exalts the grace of God. It is a blessed thing too, beloved, when we can use even our failures to exalt the grace of God. The Lord says of Moses, "Ye rebelled," "Ye transgressed;" and yet, we find, after all this, Moses speaking face to face with God in confidence, and in intimate intercourse. He tells Moses the reason why he cannot go over the Jordan; the desire to see the good land that is beyond is pleasing in His eyes, and He gives him a Pisgah view of it. God is able to tell us how wisely He disciplines us. Nothing shall hinder the purpose of His grace concerning us. He is determined that nothing shall alter the thing that has gone out of His lips - "Whom he justified, them he also glorified;" but then, it is between justification and glorification that there comes in all this discipline.

Gen. 27:12-14. "And the Lord said unto Moses, Get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel. And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered. For ye rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water before their eyes: that is the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin." Moses loses Canaan, through speaking unadvisedly with his lips; but, beloved, does that alter God's intention of blessing him everlastingly? or is it not rather the occasion of proving that "his mercy is from everlasting to everlasting toward them that fear him." However necessary it maybe to chasten Moses, and to hold him up as an instance of a rebellious saint, this cannot cause God to "alter the thing that has gone out of his lips." We afterwards see Moses on the mount of glory, with the Lord, in the transfiguration. (Matt. 17:3; Mark 9:4; Luke 9:30.) When there he could, doubtless, look back and see the path by which the goodness of the Lord had led him, and the links of the chain which we cannot see, and how that God had made all things "work together for good." It is an exceedingly establishing thing for us to see, that "whom he loveth (he loves unto the end) he chasteneth." It is His saints whom He chastens; He hates sin, and He will show, in His dealings with His children about it, what a fearful thing it is. We must not expect, because we are made the righteousness of God in Christ, and because we are heirs of glory, that He does not mark our sins; this, on the contrary, is the very reason that He does, in order that we may be made to, see that "it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God the Lord."

Hear too the cry that came forth from the inmost soul of the Lawgiver, when God had said to him "Get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel. And when thou hast seen it, thou also shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy brother was gathered." (Numbers 27:12-13.) "Let the Lord," said he, "the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the Lord, be not as sheep which have no shepherd." (verses 16, 17).