But oral delivery was not deemed sufficient. He, therefore, wrote out the Law, with its blessings and its curses, and gave it to the priests, charging them to place it beside the Ark in the Holy of Holies, and to read it, in the hearing of all the people, once every seven years, at the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. xxxi. 9, 26). Then turning to Joshua, whom he had already nominated as his successor, he bade him _Be strong and of a good courage_, assuring him that Jehovah would be with him, and would make all he did to prosper. But as if to deepen the gloomy forebodings past experience must have suggested, the Lord Himself not only announced in the clearest terms the future apostasy of the people (Deut. xxxi. 16–18), but directed Moses to compose a Song, which the people were to learn and teach their children, as a testimony against themselves in the days to come, when they should have turned unto other gods, and served them, and provoked the Lord, and broken His covenant (Deut. xxxi. 18, 21; xxxii. 1–43). Having composed this Song of Witness[141], and pronounced his last solemn blessing, not like Jacob upon twelve men gathered round his deathbed, but on a mighty nation, on _the ten thousands of Ephraim, and the thousands of Manasseh_, the aged Prophet, _whose eye was not dim nor his natural force abated_, was warned that his hour was come. From the plains of Moab he went up the mountain of Nebo, to the highest point in the long eastern range over against Jericho, and there He who called him to his high mission at the Burning Bush showed him that land, which had been so long sworn to the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Eastward and westward, southward and northward, he surveyed that goodly Land; he saw it all with his eyes though he was not to set his foot thereon. “Beneath him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march; and ‘over against’ them, distinctly visible in its grove of palm-trees, the stately Jericho, key of the Land of Promise. Beyond was spread out the whole range of the mountains of Palestine, in its fourfold masses; ‘all Gilead’ with Hermon and Lebanon in the east and north; the hills of Galilee, overhanging the lake of Gennesareth; the wide opening where lay the plain of Esdraelon, the future battle-field of the nations; the rounded summits of Ebal and Gerizim; immediately in front of him the hills of Judæa, and, amidst them, seen distinctly through the rents in their rocky walls, Bethlehem on its narrow ridge, and the invincible fortress of Jebus[142].” Such was his Pisgah-view, and then all was over. The great Prophet had served his day and his generation, he had reached his 120th year, and his work was ended. There, _in the land of Moab_, he died, and He whom he had served faithfully in all His house, buried him in a valley or ravine in the land of Moab, over against the idol-sanctuary of Beth-Peor (Deut. xxxiv. 6), but _no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day_. NOTE.