(29) An hundred and ten years old.--The mention in Joshua 24:31 of "elders that prolonged their days after Joshua" seems to suggest that Joshua's death was comparatively an early death.[15] Had he thought and laboured more for himself and less for Israel, he also might have prolonged his days. But, like his Antitype, he pleased not himself, and, like a good and faithful servant, he entered all the sooner into the joy of his Lord.

[15] Yet Brugsch states that the Egyptians "addressed to the host of the holy gods the prayer to preserve and lengthen life, if possible, to the most perfect old age of 110 years." This may be a reminiscence of the life of Joseph, which reached this length (Genesis 50:26).

Verse 29. - The servant of the Lord. The theory of some commentators, that this expression is evidence of a later interpolation because "the title only dates, from the period when Moses, Joshua, and others were raised to the rank of national saints," need only be noticed to be rejected. It is a fair specimen of the inventive criticism which has found favour among modern critics, in which a large amount of imagination is made to supply the want of the smallest modicum of fact. What is wanting here is the slightest evidence of such a "period" having ever existed, except at the time when these saints of the old covenant closed their labours by death. All the facts before us go to prove that Moses, as well as Joshua, was held in as high, if not higher, veneration at the moment of his death as at any other period of Jewish history. Died. His was an end which any man might envy. Honoured and beloved, and full of days, he closed his life amid the regrets of a whole people, and with the full consciousness that he had discharged the duties God had imposed upon trim. The best proof of the estimation in which he was held is contained in ver. 32.

24:29-33 Joseph died in Egypt, but gave commandment concerning his bones, that they should not rest in their grave till Israel had rest in the land of promise. Notice also the death and burial of Joshua, and of Eleazar the chief priest. The most useful men, having served their generation, according to the will of God, one after another, fall asleep and see corruption. But Jesus, having spent and ended his life on earth more effectually than either Joshua or Joseph, rose from the dead, and saw no corruption. And the redeemed of the Lord shall inherit the kingdom he prepared for them from the foundation of the world. They will say in admiration of the grace of Jesus, Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.And it came to pass, after these things,.... Some little time after, very probably the same year:

that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old; he wanted ten years of Moses his predecessor, Deuteronomy 34:7, and just the age of Joseph, Genesis 50:22, from whom he sprung, being of the tribe of Ephraim, Numbers 13:8.