“The time for Israel…approached.” It is written: “There is no person who rules the spirit to retain the spirit, and there is no dominion on the day of death” (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin in the name of Rabbi Levi: The trumpets that Moses crafted in the wilderness, when he was tending toward death, the Holy One blessed be He sequestered them so that another would not sound it, and they would come to him, as it is written: “Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes” (Deuteronomy 31:28).6Moses asked that the elders be assembled; he did not merely have someone blow the trumpets, as he would have done in the past, because they had been sequestered.
This was to realize what is written: “There is no dominion on the day of death.” Another matter, “there is no dominion on the day of death” – when Zimri performed that action,7He brought a Midyanite woman into his tent. what is written there? “He went after the man of Israel into the tent” (Numbers 25:8).8This is stated about Pinḥas. Where was Moses?
And would Pinḥas speak before Moses? Rather, it is to realize: “There is no dominion on the day of death.” Death is nothing other than an expression of lowering. Salvation was given to Pinḥas, and Moses was lowered.9Moses’s death was drawing near, and so others began to assert authority.
Of David, too, it is written: “King David was old” (I Kings 1:1). When he was about to die, what is written in his regard? “The time for King David [to die] approached” is not written here, but, rather, “the time for David [to die] approached” (I Kings 2:1). Jacob, too, when he was about to die, he began lowering himself before Joseph, and he said to him: “Please, if I have found favor in your eyes.” When? It was when he approached death, as it is stated: “The time for Israel to die approached.”