The Kiss of the Eternal
Moses is allowed to look upon the Promised Land for the first and last time.
Moses is allowed to look upon the Promised Land for the first and last time.
This post is number 10 in the series The Story of Moses
Moses has brought the Israelites to the very borders of Canaan, the land promised to them by God, but with their prize in sight the Israelites have fallen prey to doubt, disconcerted by the Canaanites’ fortresses and warriors. For that, all Israel has been forced to wait even longer in the wilderness.
FOR forty years Israel wandered the desert; but a day came when Moses turned to the people and told them that he could no longer go into the tent of congregation to speak for them.
Not because of any weakness owing to age, though he was a hundred and twenty;* it was time for the Israelites to enter their inheritance, and as a consequence of all Israel’s grumblings and betrayals, neither Moses nor his brother Aaron, who already lay buried on Mount Hor, would enter with them.
So after committing Israel to Joshua’s charge, Moses left the camp and walked up Mount Nebo, alone.* From its peak, he gazed eagerly across the land of Canaan, where Joshua would now lead the Israelites. There to his left was the Dead Sea; ahead, Jericho and Jerusalem; away right, the green Jordan valley.
Then gently God kissed him,* and gathered Moses to his forefathers. His grave lies east of the Jordan, but no man has ever found it.*
“His eye was not dim,” Deuteronomy 34:7 tells us, “nor his natural force abated.”
Mount Nebo reaches 3,300ft, and stands today in Jordan. See this 360° view from the summit at Google Maps.
A Jewish Midrash says that Moses’s life ended when God gave him a gentle kiss, understanding the Hebrew ‘by the mouth of the Eternal’ (AV: ‘according to the word of the LORD’) in this way. See ‘The Divine Kiss’ at ‘My Jewish Learning’.
According to Deuteronomy 34:6, God himself buried Moses in Moab, opposite Beth-peor, an unknown location somewhere east of the Jordan.