The Prayer of Moses the man of God—which is our 90th Psalm, our burial Psalm. We all know the sadness of that Psalm; its weariness, as of one who had laboured long, and would fain be at rest; its confession of man’s frailty—fading away suddenly like the grass; its confession of God’s strength, God from everlasting, before the mountains were brought forth; its eternal gospel of hope and comfort, that the strength of God takes pity on the weakness of man, ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.’
Then comes the Song of the Rock—the song of which (it seems) the Lord said to him, ‘Write this song, and teach it the children of Israel, that it may be a witness for me against them.’
And so Moses writes; and seemingly before all the congregation of Israel, according to the custom of those times, he chants his death-song, the Song of the Rock. It is such a song as we should expect from him. God is the Rock. He was thinking, it may be, of the everlasting rocks of Sinai, where God had appeared to him of old. But God is the true, everlasting Rock, on which all things rest; the Eternal, the Self-existent, the I Am, whom he was sent to preach to men. But he is a good and righteous God likewise. His work is perfect. ‘A God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he.’
In him Moses can trust, but not in the children of Israel; they are a perverse and crooked generation, who have waxen fat and kicked. God has done all for them, but they will not obey him. Even in the wilderness they have worshipped strange gods, and sacrificed to devils, not to God; and so they will do after Moses is gone; and then on them will come all the curses of which he has so often warned them. ‘The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand; and two put ten thousand to flight?’ What a people they might be, and what a future there is before them, if they would but be true to God! But they will not. And so Moses’ death-song, like his life’s wish, ends in disappointment and sadness, and dread of the evils which are coming upon his beloved countrymen.
Lastly, he blesses them, tribe by tribe, in strange and grand words, such as dying men utter, who, looking earnestly across the dark river of death, see further than they ever saw amid the cares and temptations of life. And he blesses them. He will say nothing of them but good. He will speak not of what they will be, but of what they ought to be and can be. But not in their own strength—only in the strength of God. Man is to be nothing to the last; and God is all in all.
‘There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
‘Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.’
Those are the last words of Moses. Then he goes up into the mountain top, never to return; and the children of Israel are left alone with God and their own souls, to obey and prosper, or disobey and die.
The time of their schooling is past, and their schoolmaster is gone for ever. They are no more to be under a human tutor. They are come to man’s estate and man’s responsibility, and they are to work out their own fortunes by their own deeds, like every other soul of man.
For Moses himself must not enter into the promised land. In spite of all his faith, his courage, his endurance, his patriotism, he has sinned against God, and he must be punished; and punished, too, in kind—in the very thing which he will feel most deeply, in being shut out from the very happiness on which he has set his heart all along.