Deuteronomy34chapter 34

a.So Moses the servant of the LORD died there: The title the servant of the Lord falls here for the first time in Scripture, and it is given to Moses in the sentence that records his death. Joshua's book then carries it as a fixed name for him and lays the same title on Joshua at his own death in Joshua 24:29. The valley over against Beth-peor is where 3:29 and 4:46 place Israel's camp through the whole book, and Numbers 25:3 records the people joining themselves to Baal-peor in that country. Jude 9 is the only place in the New Testament that touches the burial, where Michael contends with the devil about the body of Moses, and Adam Clarke reads the concealed grave as a guard against Israel turning the body into an object of worship.

a.His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated, so the text declines to explain the death by age and verse 5 has already explained it another way, according to the word of the Lord. At 31:2 Moses told the people he could no more go out and come in, and readers take that of the prohibition on his crossing rather than of failing strength, since this verse says the strength had not failed. Israel weeps thirty days in the plains of Moab, the same count given to Aaron at Numbers 20:29. The mourning ends by a fixed number of days and the next verse is already about Joshua.

a.The laying on of hands is Numbers 27:18-23, where the Lord tells Moses to take Joshua, a man in whom is the spirit, so the spirit was in him before any hand was laid on him. Moses was told there to put some of his honour upon him, some and not all, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the office narrowly, as the general for the war and the division of the land rather than a successor in the prophetic office. What the verse reports of the people is obedience, that the children of Israel hearkened unto him and did as the Lord commanded Moses, so the last word the Torah says about Israel is that they listened.

a.18:15 promised a Prophet like unto Moses from the midst of thy brethren, and this verse reports that none has arisen, so the Torah ends with its own promise standing open. Acts 3:22 and Acts 7:37 both quote that promise and apply it to Christ, and John 1:21 and 6:14 show the question still live in the first century, where the priests ask John the Baptist whether he is that prophet and the crowd at the loaves says Jesus is. Face to face is the phrase used of Moses at Exodus 33:11, and Numbers 12:6-8 separates him from prophets who are met in a vision or a dream by saying God speaks with him mouth to mouth. Verse 11 then measures the office by the signs and the wonders in Egypt rather than by anything he said.

a.The last words of the Torah look back at Egypt. Mighty hand and great terror gather the vocabulary of 4:34 and 26:8, where the same words describe what God did there, so the five books close on the deliverance rather than on the land. The chapter speaks from a later time, at verse 6 with unto this day and at verse 10 with there arose not a prophet since, and readers have long asked who wrote the close of the book, with the Talmud at Bava Batra 15a recording one opinion that Joshua wrote the last verses and another that Moses wrote them at God's dictation. What the five books leave standing is a people camped outside a land they do not hold, the prophet of 18:15 promised and not come, and a grave no man can find.