Was Moses still strong at 120, or no longer able to go out and come in?

‘To go out and come in’ is a Hebrew way of speaking about leading people, especially in war and public life. Moses uses it himself when he asks God for a successor “which may go out before them, and which may go in before them”, so that Israel would not be like sheep without a shepherd (Numbers 27:16-17). Caleb says at 85 that he is still strong “for war, both to go out, and to come in” (Joshua 14:11), and the young Solomon says he does not know “how to go out or come in” as king (1 Kings 3:7). So in Deuteronomy 31:2 Moses is speaking of his office as Israel’s leader, not of walking in and out of his tent.

The Hebrew for “I can no more” (lo’ ’ukhal ‘od) can also mean ‘I may no longer’. Deuteronomy uses the same verb in this sense more than once: “Thou mayest not eat within thy gates the tithe” (12:17), and “Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates” (16:5). Moses gives the reason in the same breath: “also the Lord hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan.” His leadership was ending because God had set its limit, not because his body had failed. Deuteronomy 34:7 then adds, as a mark of God’s care, that his sight and strength were unimpaired to the end. Gill reads the verse this way.

Feeling his age

Keil and Delitzsch take Moses to mean that he could no longer work for the nation as before, and suggest that he may have felt his strength declining and his death approaching. On their reading Deuteronomy 34:7 says only that he kept his sight and his ability to work to the last, which does not rule out such a feeling.