DEUT. xxxiv. 5, 6. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
Some might regret that the last three chapters of Deuteronomy are not read among our Sunday lessons. There was not, however, room for them; and I do not doubt that those who chose our lessons knew better than I what chapters they ought to choose. We may, however, read them for ourselves, not only in the daily lessons, but as often as we choose. And well worth reading they are.
For I know of no stronger proof of the truth of the book of Deuteronomy, and of the whole Pentateuch, than its ending so differently from what we should have expected, or indeed wished. If things went in this world, as they do in novels and fables, according to man’s notion of what is right and good, then Moses and his history would have had a very different ending.
And if the story of Moses had been of man’s invention, we should have heard—I think, from what we know of the fables, ‘myths’ as they call them now, which nations have invented about themselves, and their own early history, we may guess fairly what we should have heard—how Moses brought the Jews into the land of Canaan, and established his laws, and reigned over them, and died in honour and great glory—if he died at all, and was not taken up into the skies, and changed into a star, or into a god; and how he was buried with great pomp; and how his sepulchre did remain among the Jews until that day; and probably how men worshipped at it, and miracles were worked at it, and so forth.
Also, we should have heard how, as soon as the Israelites came into the land of Canaan, they began forthwith to serve the Lord with all their heart and soul, as they never did afterwards, and to keep Moses’ law, while it was yet fresh in their minds, more exactly than ever they did afterwards; and in short, we should have had one of those stories of a ‘golden age,’ a ‘good old time,’ a pattern-time of early purity and devotion, of which nations and Churches, of all tongues and all creeds, have been so ready to dream in their own case; and which they have used, not altogether ill, to rebuke vice in their own day, by saying, ‘Look how perfect your forefathers were. Look how you, their unworthy children, have fallen from their faith and their virtue.’
This, I think, is what we should have been told if the Pentateuch had been the invention of man. This is exactly what we are not told; but, on the contrary, the very opposite.
What we are told is disappointing, sad, gloomy, full of dark fears and warnings about what the Jews will be and what they will have to endure. But it is far more true to human nature, and to the facts which we see in the world about us, than any story of a good old time would have been.
They are still wandering in the land of Moab, when the time draws near when Moses must die. He is a hundred and twenty years old, but hale and vigorous still. His eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated. But the Lord has told him that his death is near. He gives the command of the army of Israel to Joshua the son of Nun, and then he speaks his last words.
Songs they are, dark and rugged, like all the higher Hebrew poetry; but, like it, full of the very Spirit of God—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of faith and of the fear of the Lord.
There are three of these songs which seem to belong to those last days of his.