Numbers 20:27-28

THE DEATH OF AARON

‘And Moses did as the Lord commanded: and they went up into Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation,’ etc.

Numbers 20:27

I. The first and most superficial aspect of death is that it is the close of an earthly career. There could be no question as to the prominence of Aaron’s career. (1) In the great work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt to the confines of the Promised Land Aaron is only second to Moses. (2) Aaron was the first high-priest of the chosen people. His consecration was of itself calculated to awe the minds of Israel, and it was followed by high sanctions of his office, which must have done so still more.

II. Aaron was morally a weak man. He had no such grasp of principle as would enable him to hold out against strong pressure. His weakness became conspicuous on the critical occasion of Moses going up to Sinai to receive the sacred law. Aaron was left below in virtual command, in a position of responsibility for which, as the event proved, he was not fitted. The Greeks had a proverb that leadership will show what a man really is, and so it was with Aaron. His weakness is implied in the allusion in the Epistle to the Hebrews: ‘for that he himself also was compassed with infirmity.’

III. Nothing is more noticeable in the account of Aaron’s death than his deliberate preparation for it. He did not let death come on him; he went to meet it. There was a twofold motive in the act of Moses in stripping Aaron of his garments. (1) It showed that the office of the high-priesthood did not depend on the life of any single man, and (2) it reminded Aaron personally of the solemn truth of the utter solitariness of the soul in death.

IV. The phrase of Moses, ‘Aaron was gathered to his people,’ seems to point to a world in which the bygone generations of men still live, a world of the existence of which God’s ancient people were well assured, though they knew much less of it than we.

Canon Liddon.

Illustration

(1) ‘A sad chapter! Brother and sister dying, Moses failing so disastrously, the passage through Edom refused. But Chapter s of this kind only make up a small fraction in the record of our lives; there are more bright ones than sad ones. And there were yet to come songs and counsels and noble outbursts of blessed ascription communicated by the death on Pisgah. “He will not keep His anger for ever. He delighteth in mercy.” The dying priest reminds us of Him who is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him, because He ever liveth.’

(2) ‘With the utmost brevity and grandeur it is recorded that Moses, Aaron, and Eleazar, went up the mount in the sight of all the congregation. Aaron wore his full priestly dress. No word of complaint escaped his lips. As in the day when he saw his two sons stretched in death and held his peace, so now he walked in quiet submission to the scene where he knew he was to die. There is no word of farewell. On the lonely height Moses took off the priestly garments, one by one, from the high priest, and Eleazar was clothed with them. The aged priest, in the quiet dignity which became him, greater in the hour of death than at any time of his life, laid himself down to die. Over that scene of death the veil of silence is drawn, and we know not what passed between the three on the solitary mountain. Moses came down with the new high priest wearing the priestly garments, and once again the people knew that the old things were swiftly passing away. “When all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel” (Numbers 20:29).’

(3)‘He has seen the tombs of old Mizraim’s wonder,

Where the haughty Pharaohs embalmed recline,

But no monarch of Memphis is swathed in splendour,

Great Priest of the desert, like this of thine.’