Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 241 · August 29
The Unmarked Grave
“And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”
The last thing Moses saw was the whole country, named piece by piece from the top of Pisgah, with a sentence attached: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. Then he died up there, with nobody. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. Down on the plains a nation wept thirty days for a man none of them could visit.
He was not failing at the end. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. He was stopped, and the reason is given without softening: because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel.
Lord, we would like the graves marked. We want to know where people are and to go and stand there, and this chapter hands us a hidden one, dug by you, for the man who spoke with you face to face. We are not asking you to explain it. We are asking for the honesty to say we do not like it.
Two later notices sit near this grave and neither empties it. Jude records a dispute over that body without saying what it was about. And a long age afterwards, on another mountain, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him, and the man who never crossed the river is standing in the land. Say plainly, Lord, that this does not cancel the burial.
If you have a grave you cannot visit, or a work you were stopped short of for a reason that did not help, the plains of Moab are open ground and you are welcome to stand there and say so. Israel wept thirty days, then went in without him, which was always the arrangement and was never explained to them either.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 241 is Names Written in Heaven (Luke 10:20).