After the death of Moses, an emperor — some say it was a Roman ruler centuries later — heard rumors that the greatest prophet who ever lived was buried somewhere on Mount Nebo. He wanted to find the grave. He sent his best men to dig.
The soldiers climbed the mountain and began excavating at the base. They dug for hours, shoveling away rock and earth, and then one of them looked up — and there, clearly visible at the summit of the mountain, was the outline of a grave. "It is at the top!" they shouted, and hauled their tools up the slope.
But when they reached the summit and began to dig, something impossible happened. They looked down and saw the grave at the bottom of the mountain, exactly where they had started. They scrambled back down. The grave appeared at the top again. Up they went. Down the grave moved. This went on until the men collapsed from exhaustion.
The emperor's soldiers returned empty-handed, bewildered. No matter where they dug, the grave of Moses was always somewhere else. The sages explained that this was by divine design. God Himself had buried Moses "in the valley in the land of Moab... and no man knows his burial place to this day" (Deuteronomy 34:6). The grave was hidden not because God was ashamed of His servant, but because He knew that if human beings found it, they would turn it into a shrine. They would worship the bones instead of the God who made them. Moses belonged to God alone, and his resting place would remain God's secret forever.