Bible Commentaries

An interesting historic incident is here recorded during the wilderness wanderings. One Zelophehad had died, leaving no sons but five daughters. These now petitioned that they might have an inheritance in the land and their petition was granted.

The time for the passing of Moses had now come. In the plan of God it was necessary that the people should pass into the land from which they had been so long excluded. Moses could not enter with them. There is a great tenderness in all God's dealings with him in those closing scenes. The final account of his death is found at the close of Deuteronomy. Here we see him permitted publicly to appoint his successor.

When the call of God came to him to ascend the mountain and view the land and be gathered to his people, the final passion of his heart was that which had so long sustained him in the midst of all the trying circumstance of his work as leader. He thought of the great congregation and of them as the "congregation of Jehovah." He knew, as no other man, their weakness and the necessity for one to succeed him who would lead them according to the will of God. They were indeed but a flock of sheep, and to the mind of Moses, sheep without a shepherd, as they were to the mind of Jesus so long after-men helpless and hopeless.

Moses' last prayer, then, was that Jehovah would appoint his successor.

The prayer was immediately answered and he had not only the satisfaction already referred to of appointing his successor, but, what was far more important to him, that of knowing that the one so appointed was the man of God's own choice.