1. After the message was dispatched to Edom, the people advanced as far as the frontier, and halted near Mount Hor, in the neighbourhood of the great fortress of Petra, to await the reply of the Edomites. Here Moses, by Jehovah's command, took Aaron and his son Eleazar up the mountain, and after Eleazar had been invested with the insignia of the priesthood, Aaron “died there in the top of the mount,” and was mourned by Israel for thirty days.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Times of Retirement, 71.]
“And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount” (Num_20:28). In these calm, almost cold, words is told all that man is to know of an event full of interest, full of mystery, full of awe. That old man who has gone up into Mount Hor, under Divine direction, to die, is God's High Priest; the first of a long line, the only line that God ever consecrated, to stand between Himself and His chosen people, in the things of religion and of the soul, until He should at last come, who is the End of all Revelation and the Antitype of all Priesthood.2 [Note: C. J. Vaughan, The Presence of God in His Temple, 127.]
Severe simplicity characterizes the authors of the Bible; they rarely add any observations of their own, and narrate the most pathetic and weighty events without stating their private impressions. Their conciseness often disappoints our natural curiosity. The historical facts are recited without high rhetorical finish, and usually without betraying the bias of the writer. The account of the death of Aaron is a case in point. It was a scene of impressive solemnity, yet it is given in a cool, unimpassioned manner, and shows no effort to rouse feeling or make a dramatic exhibition.3 [Note: J. S. Jones, The Invisible Things, 204.]
2. What are the lessons for us in the death of Aaron?
(1) The nearness of God.-The record attributes Aaron's death to the error of Moses in smiting the rock at Meribah for the thirsty Israelites, instead of simply speaking, as the order ran. True, Aaron was only accessory to that transaction, and not the chief actor. It was Moses who evinced some quite natural ill-temper at the peevish discontent of the people; but Aaron was present and doubtless sympathized with his brother's impatience and disgust over the situation; at any rate, this is the reason assigned for his exclusion from Canaan. Everywhere the Old Testament insists upon the idea of a presiding God, and now and then the curtain is lifted and His voice is heard; He thunders out of heaven upon the chosen people, He discloses Himself in some act or occurrence of a miraculous kind, He becomes the author of a sudden calamity or of a universal blessing. Here in this narrative touching Aaron, God is brought actively and audibly upon the scene; He says to Moses, “Aaron shall be gathered unto his people: for he shall not enter the land which I have given unto the children of Israel.”
(2) The solidarity of men.-There is a unity or community of interests and suffering among men, so that often they stand or fall together. Human beings are like tourists climbing the Alps, roped one to the other. If one falls, he imperils others; if one slips and goes down the abyss, he may drag the rest with him. So in life at large; whatever we may think of the equities of the case, it is unquestionably true that, owing to proximity, contact, kinship, we bear one another's burdens and inherit either advantage or trouble. As the world is arranged, the innocent often suffer with the guilty, and the mere accident of relationship sometimes leads to inconvenient consequences. Conversely, a person is often advantaged by what looks like blind luck or the force of favouring circumstances without active co-operation on his part, or any special virtue or merit in him. This is among the standing paradoxes-no new thing, but old as human society. The Hebrews murmured at Meribah, and Aaron was numbered among them and lost the Promised Land.
(3) The survival of service.-What each human generation holds is only a life trust. As when Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them upon Eleazar his son-taking the pure linen, his official dress, and enfolding Eleazar with it, decking his brow with the mitre, transferring to him all the insignia of the high priesthood-so is it in the larger history of mankind. Life is not a stagnant pool; it is a running river, into which new men, new measures, new methods, new manners, new hopes and energies, evermore flow. It is an overwhelming thought, that of the future and its developments. Who would not like to see the map of the world and know its opinions and customs one hundred years hence? How will it handle the perennial problems that have vexed all centuries? We cannot guess. This only is certain, that Aaron will make way for Eleazar. Your son will take your place. It would not answer that men should live for ever under the present order, they would grow obstinate, obstructive; and hence when habit becomes fixed and character formed, and opinion matured, the individual lingers a little longer to do his work and add his mite to the world's sum, and then is retired. His influence lives and widens like a ripple; it is not utterly effaced, but tells upon the future in unsuspected ways, and so the total impression made by one's character is silently propagated. There is such a thing undoubtedly as the transmission of influence and of the fruits of a great example. Thus Moses' Decalogue lies at the base of subsequent legislation-he has not perished; and the Levitical priesthood has furnished the type for elaborate, hierarchical churches. Aaron dies, but not his work. The past with its populations is asleep, but the truths it held and its relation to the larger life of the world still survive.
