At the LORD's command Aaron the priest went up Mount Hor, where he died on the first day of the fifth month of the fortieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt. – Numbers 33:38

Today's Scripture Reading (December 29, 2021): Numbers 33

My grandmother kept a journal when she traveled. I am not sure if she did at other times, but I had traveled with her as a child and would often see her jotting things down in the journal. Most of her notes were mundane things about the trip; it included weather, "We rose to the sun brightly beaming down on us" or "we passed through a horrible storm this afternoon just east of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada." At other times it was beginning and ending information. We started at 8:30 am and stopped at 4:00 pm. Or maybe it was the location of a particularly good, or bad, restaurant, or perhaps a campground where we were able to pick wild blueberries for our evening snack. All of it was contained within grandma's journal, and she would reflect on past trips when planning the next trip.

This section of the book of Number is essentially someone's travel journal. Most of it is just that we started from this place and ended up at that place. And it is easy to skip through the travelogue of places as miss a little message written about two-thirds through the travel journal. When Israel arrived at Mount Hor, Aaron died. People had likely died throughout this list of places; after all, the Book of Numbers is really about the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Everyone from the first generation, except for Joshua and Caleb, would die in the wilderness. But Aaron was special.

First, he was Moses's older brother and right-hand man. And that fact alone would have made Aaron's death hard on Moses. The myth is that because we know death is coming, that somehow makes it easier to accept. But that is just a myth; death is always hard on us emotionally, even when we expect its arrival. And, in the case of Aaron, he was also the first High Priest of the nation. There is some indication that his son, Eleazar, had been acting as the High Priest for some time before this moment of death, but Aaron's death would still have been a significant moment in the nation's history.

According to Numbers, Aaron was not sick. Even at 123, he was healthy and full of life. The proof of Aaron's health was that at God's command, Aaron left the community that he had served for the last four decades climbed up on the mountain, never to return. It was a moment hidden within the notes of the travelogue and, even though Numbers doesn't tell us, it likely shook the emotions of all of Israel.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Numbers 34