Deuteronomy 34:5

5. Moses the servant of the Lord “Observe,” says one of the early Christian writers, “the dignity of this title, ‘the servant of the Lord.’” That man who is able to overcome all things is the servant of the Lord. No one can be called the servant of the Lord who does not conquer the world. This is the moral of the history of Moses, that the end and aim of all our actions is to be called the servant of the Lord. This is the consummation of all earthly existence. “When thou hast overcome thy ghostly enemies, thine Egyptians, thine Amalekites, Edom and Midian; when thou hast crossed the sea and been illumined by the cloud; when thou hast drunk waters sweetened by the wood, and gushing forth from the rock; when thou hast eaten bread from heaven; when thou hast gone up into Horeb by faith and talked with God in the darkness; when thou hast listened to the sound of the trumpet, learned the mysteries of the tabernacle and the dignity of the priesthood, and when thou hast hewn tables out of thine own heart on which God has written his law, and when thou hast broken in pieces the golden idol and foiled the art of Balaam when thou hast been another Moses and drawest near thy end then may it be thy great reward, the crowning of thy whole life, to be called in God’s Book, ‘the servant of the Lord.’” GREGORY NYSSEN, ( De Vita Mosis,) quoted by Wordsworth in Commentary on Deuteronomy.

So Moses… died there in the land of Moab Not in the land which Jehovah had promised to the fathers for their children. He has led the people to its border; he has looked over the goodly heritage. Below him in the plain lie the tents of Israel. The armed forces are soon to march for triumphal conquest, but the great leader dies in the land of Moab.

According to the word of the Lord Literally, at the mouth of Jehovah. Some of the rabbins interpret it, By a kiss of Jehovah. The Jerusalem Targum soberly and correctly explains it, according to the sentence of the decree of Jehovah. Moses died here, in the land of Moab, on the threshold of the great victories that were to give his people possession of the Promised Land, not because his vital energies had failed, not because he was worn out and exhausted by the cares of these long years of wandering, but because he sinned against Jehovah “at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin.” Comp. Deuteronomy 32:51.