How Old Was Moses When He Died?

Imagine you have to tell the story of a person you love, whose age is already 120. They may do it with surprise, noting the long life and the long way to reach this day. But where one brings a person who is familiar with the Old Testament up with the fact that Moses lived to be a 120 years old, the reaction would be the opposite—they would consider Moses to have died young.

According to Deuteronomy 34:7, Moses might have lived some more years with good bodily sight and mental longevity lately. In contrast to the heroes, whose eyesight deteriorated with age, like the case of Isaac, whose vision was lost in his old age, Moses kept his vision to the end, insinuating that he likely lived for far more years, perhaps decades. So, what is the reason for God to allow Moses to leave so early? When Moses embarked on his journey, did he attain anything that made his earlier death justifiable?

Lessons from Moses’ Life

Lesson Number	Lesson Title	Description	Application/Reflection
1	Origin of Gifts from God	Recognizing that all talents and gifts come from God.	Reflecting on how pride can hinder the use of God-given gifts.
2	Addressing Hypocrisy	Understanding the problems of hypocrisy and the need for self-reflection.	Examining personal faults before criticizing others.
3	Faithful Obedience in Challenges	Learning from Moses’ devotion to God in difficult situations.	Stepping out of comfort zones to obey divine calling.
4	Divine Blessings	Acknowledging God’s blessings despite Moses’ shortcomings.	Finding encouragement in God’s ability to use us for his plans.

The outline of Moses’ life.

Moses, as it is known, is the person who had an impressive life that started with the imminent death of a newborn. Tthus survived the decree of the Egyptian King to kill Hebrew male babies. But God had his rescue plan ready, and when an Egyptian princess discovered him in the Nile, he was adopted as a child of the king, and his mother also cared for him in secret, as per the story in Exodus 2.

The oldest son of Pharaoh (the Egyptian prince) was Moses, and he spent over 40 years living as one. A secondary incident in which a Hebrew was not treated rightly made him flee to where he is now. He exchanged marriage vows and was away from the spotlight for the next 40 years.

When Moses was 80 years old, God conversed with him on the mountain in a burning bush and asked him to return to Egypt and tell Pharaoh that he must send the Hebrew slaves who were slaves there. Moses acceded, resulting in 10 plagues falling on the Egyptians and their subsequent repentance from their time with the Israelites. But their enthusiasm seized the Israelites, and they found themselves at the edge of the Red Sea.

Settlers of Egypt marched to the Promised Land. During this time, the divine Law of the Ten Commandments was revealed to Moses by God on Mount Sinai, which became the essential rule for their society. However, God, who keeps showing his compassion to them, their disobedience, idol worship, and complaints infuriated him, as it kept many of them, like Moses, from entering the promised land. They then walked in the desert for forty years, as the physique was.

Moses died at 120. In time, he had not accomplished his mission. His life is now a monument to faith, leadership, and the proper interrelationship between human obedience and divine commands.

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The reason why people lived so long in the New Testament.

In the Bible, there are stories in which individuals live for an incredibly long time, e.g., Methuselah, 969 years old and only passed away a year before the flood. While Moses’ life lasted until he reached the hundred and twentieth year, we believe he lived considerably longer. However, Genesis 6: that God sees all the wickedness of people is a reason for the limitation of man’s lifespan at 120 years (3).

Even here, after the flood, the people’s lives were longer than 120. In that case, Abraham lived up to 175 years old, but Isaac lived for 180 years. This disparity raises concerns regarding the continuity of the lifespan restrictions set in Genesis 6:3.

In connection with the fact that humanity is naturally sinful, some academicians think that God just allowed them 120 years of repentance and then the flood. While this hypothesis could not explain people’s lives before and after the flood, He writes about this in his Antiquities, where he thinks God gave life extension to the virtuous to show heavenly favor towards them. The second life-related quality he brought up was the nutrition of their food, which has positive influences on their longevity.

The people belonging to old generations were blessed with strong and solid genetics and a better and quality diet, and they had no adverse effects of sin like excess of it, as in our days. Moses and Methuselah lived in two totally different eras, probably explaining why the life span of Moses was in line with that after the flood, which was one hundred and twenty years, unlike the extreme longevity before the flood.

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How Old Was Moses When He Died?

Moses is a significant personality in Christianity, as he is still prominent in history because of his firm faith, loyalty, courage, and leadership. His God-led liberation of the Israelites from the slavery of the Egyptians shows not only his clear determination but also his unwavering faithfulness to the divine goal.

Besides his exceptional exploits, Moses foresaw Jesus (Deuteronomy 18; Last, Themes in “Oedipus the King” (Lines 24-37), which also remarkably merged history. However, scholars still debate about the age of Moses’ death, although it is considered a source of interest for researchers.

According to Deuteronomy 34:17, as Moses got older, he kept his vitality, his sight, and his strength unweakened. This piece of information is really intriguing and spurs off some questions on whether he was murdered and his vitality, even at that age.

“Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Deuteronomy 31:7-8

Realizing that his death was fast approaching, Moses confessed to the Israelites that he could not continue leading them any further. He gave Joshua leadership, emphasizing courage and faith in God’s guidance for the future (Deuteronomy 31:1–8).

The reference to Moses’ young look at death (Deuteronomy 34:7) evokes questions about the circumstances of his death. Did Moses die early, or did this refer to some spiritual reality?

In order to solve these riddles, we inevitably need to look into Moses’ life path, which is split into three forty-year periods, as it is written in Acts chapter 7. This careful study of the man helps us to understand the importance of Moses’ beliefs, faith, and his final transition and leaves timeless lessons for present-day Christians.

Forty Years in Egypt

The era was sarcastic, as Pharaoh had issued an instruction that all firstborn baby boys of the Hebrews should be murdered. Because of the latter, Pharaoh worried about the Hebrew slaves growing in numbers and power, which then came to him as a major threat to his kingdom.

Pharaoh started by asking the midwives of the Hebrews to do the killing, but the midwives refused, and so the order for every newborn male to be thrown into the Nile River was therefore made. Even under these deadly conditions, with Divine help, Moses was rescued, and the miracle that led to his rescue showed divine intervention.

By luck, the daughter of Pharaoh, who was bathing in the Nile, saw Moses, and Moses was brought up in the palace as if he were one prince. His own royal mother mattered a lot in his childhood; however, later, Moses went back to his little kingdom.

In his first forty years, Moses was enjoying the perks of palace life until one particular event dragged him to connect to his Hebrew traditions to proceed on the path of his destiny. He lived through Pharaoh’s tyranny, only to see his people’s plight. It makes him take action, and he defends a helpless Hebrew who is a man close to the throne, and this means treason, so he had to escape to Midian to avoid the anger of Pharaoh.

“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.”

Acts 7:23

Acts 7:23 depicted these transformations, starting with a remarkable change from the life of luxury to the feeling of accompanying the suffering people. Hence, Pharaoh’s decrees laid the groundwork for Moses’ later leadership and the liberation of the Israelites from slavery.

Forty Years in Midian

The following words describe Moses’ second life, which he spent somewhere in the depths of the desert with Jethro, Moses’ wife’s father, who was a shepherd.

God appeared before Moses as a fiery gin bush when the latter was a man eighty years old. According to Acts 7: Moses’s recollection in his 40s of the revealed book in his aloneness between the mountain peak of Sinai after 40 years: moments when a celestial being was in a very passionate state of burning there.

Between the ages of 80 and 90, God put an enormous mission on Moses’ shoulders: to free the Hebrews from bondage in the Land of Egypt. Indeed, verse 7 demonstrates that Moses was 80 and Aaron was 83 when they experienced face-to-face meetings with Pharaoh: “Moses was eighty, and Aaron was eighty-three.”

Forty Years Leading the Children of Israel

Moses spent his last forty years directing the Israelites from Egypt through the desert to Canaan.

As the Bible describes it, the trip from Egypt to the land of Canaan should have lasted 40 days, but the disobedience and wanderings of the Israelites prolonged that journey for 40 years before they finally arrived at the promised land.

Moses stayed along with them until he died, as they were preparing to cross the Jordan River into the wonderful land of Canaan. The forty years in the desert meant that Moses had ended his earthly life.

The Bible says that Moses was as young as 120 when he died catching no illness or physical decline. His failure can be because of a lack of obedience.

When the Israelites lacked water, God told Moses to talk to the rock to bring out the water. Contrarily, Moses smote the rock and flouted God’s commandment. In fact, God decided that Moses and Aaron wouldn’t be the ones to bring the Israelites into Canaan.

God’s reply is recorded in Numbers 20:12: “And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust me or honor me as holy in the sight of the people of Israel, you will not lead this community into the land that I am about to give them.’”

Some experts believe Moses lived a complete life of 120 years, as stated in Genesis 6: Human lifespans are restricted by three characteristics. Though he was strong, Moses had performed his celestial assignment to set the people of Israel free from the bondage of slavery.

“Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Genesis 6:3

Finally, Moses’ reputation as an excellent leader and a humble servant of God (Numbers 12:3) The personified faith of the man proved long-lasting as he influenced generations.

What can Moses’ death teach us?

Moses’ life is a huge mine of thought-provoking ideas, which are worth thinking about. Even in the times of the biggest troubles, man was constantly dedicated to God, and this shows how it is necessary to follow heavenly calls and go beyond our comfort zone. Moses’ death has many moral lessons for us to learn.

In the first lesson, the focus is on the source of all talents—our Heavenly Father. When pride leads us to withhold our privileges to make the world a better place, we discourage ourselves from the reason God gave these gifts on us.

This second lesson tells us why we should face up to hypocrisy in ourselves and the surrounding people. Moses, pointing out the sins of the Children of Israel, failed to recognize his own trespasses. Jesus kept warning us against hypocrisy, calling us to look into our own shortcomings before condemning others. Even though Moses’ glory was short-lived, God endowed him with great blessings. In addition, not everything on the journey was hoped for, yet it may brighten the lives of people or fulfill God’s divine purposes.

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