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THE GRAVE OF MOSES

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 44.

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THE GRAVE OF MOSES.

By Interior (Presbyterian)

In the account of the death and burial of Moses, it is said that "no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day." The speculations have been endless as to why it was desired that the grave of the great law-giver and prophet should remain unknown. The suggestion is commonly made that it was to preserve it from superstitious or idolatrous worship. This hardly seems to be a sufficient or a reasonable explanation. The worship of relics was not a form of superstition to which the Jews manifested any inclination. They cherished the graves of the patriarchs. They had their tomb of Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, were buried, and where the bones of Joseph were laid; but there is no evidence that any idolatrous homage was paid to these remains, or any superstitious ideas connected with them. The worship of relics was the development of a far later age, and was wholly foreign to Hebrew modes of thought. There was no more likelihood that the people would worship the bones of Moses than the bones of the patriarchs. The true reason, probably, why the sepulcher of Moses was to be unknown, was that it was not to be long tenanted by his body; it was soon to be an empty tomb. God laid the lifeless form for a little while in its mother earth, and then sent and raised it from the dead; and Moses is now in Heaven, with Enoch and Elijah, the representatives of a redeemed humanity; they three the first fruits, with Jesus, of the resurrection. There are two arguments for this view. One is that Moses appeared with Elijah upon the mount of transfiguration in bodily form. The other is an obscure reference in the epistle of Jude to a dispute between the archangel Michael and Satan "about the body of Moses." Just what this refers to is uncertain, but it is commonly supposed to indicate a bodily resurrection of Israel's great leader and prophet.