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1. In these calm, almost cold, words, is told all that man is to know of an event full of interest, mystery, and awe. In that year 1452 (as chronologers say) before the Christian era, a life is brought to its close, which, but for one other life beside it, would have been unique in wonder. 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 the soul, until He should at last come, who is the End of all Revelation and the Antitype of all Priesthood.

2. Aaron is shut out from Canaan for a fault, for a sin. Judged as man judges, it was a little sin. It was not the greatest of the sins even of this one life. But with God "great" and "little" have no place in the estimate of transgression.

3. The lesson of severity lies on the surface of the record.

4. There is here also the lesson of love. See how God chastens without disowning.

5. There is also the lesson of death. It is the fashion to say that the language of the Old Testament is cheerless about death. I cannot see it. These deaths for small sins seem to be eloquent as to the insignificance of death. They seem to say, "The life that is seen is but a fragment of the whole life."

6. Nothing is more pathetic in Holy Scripture than that selflessness which God requires in His servants; that absorption of natural feeling in the One higher, which is the perfection of self-control and the self-forgetfulness. Aaron himself had been enabled to rise to it, when he saw his two sons cut off before him, forbidden to mourn, forbidden to bury them. And now it is his brother's turn to take his part in bearing the burden which God's ministry lays upon them that are privileged to exercise it. Now he must strip his dying brother of the beautiful and costly vestments of his priesthood. He must array in them a new priest, who is to carry on God's work before a younger generation. And when the sad and solemn office is ended, he must turn back, with that other, to the thoughts and acts of the living, till he also shall have finished his course, and be ready to rejoin his brother in the Paradise of the just made perfect.

7. There are some forms of ministration which suggest succession. Those garments which are emblematical of office — the judge's ermine, worn only on the judgment-seat; the bishop's lawn, put on with prayer and benediction, in the midst of the ceremony of his consecration — speak for themselves as to the disrobing. The wearer had a predecessor, shall have a successor in that ministry. He is but the life-holder: less than the life-holder, for decay of strength may further abridge the tenure of that charge, towards God and man, which the vestment of office typifies. There must be that stripping of which the text speaks; that putting off that another may put on. Let him live in the foreview of that day.

8. Behold in one view the littleness and the greatness of man. The littleness in space and time. One generation goeth, and another cometh. Earth is a speck, and time a moment. But, view life as a trust — view office, view work, view character, view being, as a priesthood — and all is ennobled, all consecrated. Say to yourself, I am God's priest — I wear His ephod and His crown, and the inscription on that crown is, "Holiness unto the Lord" — then you are great; great above kings, who know not a hereafter; great above hierarchies which would shine in God's stead; your light is God's light, and the world shall be the brighter for it.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto mount Hor:

WEB: Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up to Mount Hor;