Deuteronomy 32:48-52
Thou shalt see the land before thee
The order to climb and the sentence of death arrive in the same paragraph, and so does the reason, which is Meribah decades earlier.
Places of the Bible
Mount Nebo
The one place in Scripture where a man is shown everything he worked for and told he will not have it.
The instruction is given in the middle of a song. Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession, and die in the mount whither thou goest up. The reason is stated without softening: because you trespassed against me at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, because you sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Mount Nebo
- 01
- 02
Deuteronomy 34:1-3
The LORD shewed him all the land
The view is given region by region in the order a man would turn. It is the promise itself, in full, at arm’s length.
- 03
Deuteronomy 34:4
But thou shalt not go over thither
The last clause of the last conversation. The promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is named in the same breath as the refusal.
- 04
Deuteronomy 34:5-7
His eye was not dim
He does not die of age or failure. A hundred and twenty years old, with his sight and strength intact, which makes the ending a decision rather than a decline.
- 05
Deuteronomy 34:10-12
There arose not a prophet since like unto Moses
The book closes with a comparison nobody else meets, whom the LORD knew face to face, and the mountain keeps its secret.
Why it matters
What he is given instead of entry is sight, and the account spends four verses on the view, naming the regions in order like a man turning slowly on a summit: Gilead unto Dan, all Naphtali, Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea, the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho unto Zoar. Then one sentence: so Moses the servant of the LORD died there, his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated, and he was buried in a valley, and no man knows of his sepulchre unto this day.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
