הנך שוכב עם אבותיך, "here you are going to lie with your fathers, etc.⁠" When Moses had complained that God was using the very instrument to kill him with which he had used to praise the Lord with, God reassured him, calmed him down by assuring him that as opposed to other people who die and whose influence dies with them, his influence would continue to be manifest just as the sun's influence is manifest even after it sets when it shines upon the moon enabling the moon to illuminate the earth with its reflected light.

The verse is used to prove that resurrection is promised in the Torah as the sages in Sanhedrin 90 read the sequence of the words הנך שוכב עם אבותיך וקם as if God were saying: "here you will lie with your fathers and arise.⁠" Similar comments are made about Moses having introduced the famous song after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds with the words אש ישיר instead of אז שר, "then he will sing,⁠" instead of "then he sang" (Exodus 15,1). Concerning the serenity experienced by the souls in the hereafter the sages in Avot 4,22 opined that a single hour of the serenity in that world outweighs all the good experienced in our terrestrial world. If God, as it were, introduced Moses to that world of serenity with the word הן, He did indeed set Moses' mind at rest over the need for him to leave the arena in which he had been so influential. He convinced him that death is the entrance fee one has to pay for attaining that desirable serenity. Considering all this, Moses had no reason to view death as a penalty, on the contrary, he was to view it as an introduction to untold delights. All of this is alluded to in the otherwise extraneous letter ך at the end of the word הנך, seeing Moses had not been accurate (according to the Midrash) in comparing הן and הנך. This final letter was an allusion to the כסא הכבוד, "God's throne of glory in the celestial regions,⁠" the proximity of which Moses would henceforth experience. We have previously mentioned that the inexplicable use of that letter such as in Leviticus chapter 27,2 בערכך נפשות לה', is also an allusion to that כסא הכבוד. All the souls which truly belong to Hashem, לה', are to be found in that celestial region, i.e. are viewed as close to the throne of God's glory in value.
From all of the foregoing you will realise that although God introduced Moses' impending death to him with the word הן, Moses was not correct in complaining that the very instrument he had used to praise the Lord with was now being turned against him.
The fact that the word הן, as distinct from the word הנה, is a plural, indicates that God referred to two kinds of life after death which Moses would attain. The first is the life reserved for the souls while they await the metamorphosis of our universe in the seventh millennium, as we discussed repeatedly; the second is the physical life after the resurrection. Whereas the word הנך may allude to the life of the souls, the words שוכב וקם, "lie down and arise,⁠" are an allusion to this life after the period of the resurrection when both body and soul are reunited.

אלהי נכר הארץ, "after the gods of the foreigners of the land.⁠" The Torah tells us that such gods as had been permitted to the Gentile nations were nonetheless "strangers" in the Holy Land as that land was always under the direct supervision of the Lord, and He had never assigned what goes on there to the supervision of any celestial/planetary forces. This land is God's own "inheritance.⁠" This is also what the sages meant when they said אין מזל לישראל, "the Jewish people are not subject to the horoscopic influences we know as mazal.⁠" They meant that the Jewish people, when in the land of Israel and observing the laws of the Torah, are not subject to such influences. This must be so, as we have a clear statement by these same sages that מזלו גורם, that "his mazal was a causative factor in his fate.⁠" (Yevamot 64, et al) Seeing that the planets, stars, and all other celestial phenomena have been created for the sake of the righteous, how could it possibly be that these same righteous people are suddenly subject to these horoscopic constellations? Each of these horoscopic constellations has been assigned to certain nations, such as the constellation known as scorpion which was assigned to the people of Ishmael, the constellation Sagittarius, the archer, to the people of Persia, etc., etc. This was what the Torah referred to in Deut. 4,19-20 "which He assigned to them, whereas He (personally) took you out of the iron crucible, etc.⁠" Clearly, the supervision of the fates of the other nations by celestial forces has been entrusted to agents of the Lord, i.e. the horoscopic forces, whereas that of the Jewish people is not determined by means of intermediaries. It is noteworthy that nowhere in the Torah does God accuse the Gentile nations of idolatry or describe them as being punished for relating to these forces as gods. Only the Jewish people have been warned again and again not to turn to any form of intermediary, and they are being held responsible for observing this commandment in the strictest possible sense. The only time Gentile nations are described as being punished for the practice of idolatry is if they did so in the Holy Land, the land which God claimed as His share and inheritance. The best proof of this is found in Kings II 17,26 where the prophet tells us about the Kushites who practiced the cults of their fathers after they had been forcibly transplanted to the areas previously inhabited by the Ten Tribes who had been exiled by King Shalmanesser of Assyria.
The reason that the Torah speaks here of אלוהי נכר הארץ, is that these deities are totally alien to the land of Israel, fulfilling neither a function for the local inhabitants nor for the Israelites. All kinds of idolatry is alien to that country, no intermediary force having been assigned to function in that land. Anyone practicing idolatry in that land is seen as if he were trying to expel the king of that country from his palace. This is one of the ways in which the land of Israel is superior to all other countries. This fact is alluded to in the verse in Job 5,10: הנותן מטר על פני ארץ ושולח מים על פני חוצות, "Who gives rain to the earth, and sends water over the fields.⁠" This verse teaches that God's benevolent supervision of what goes on earth concentrates on the land of Israel and spreads from there to other parts of the globe. These parts are referred to in the verse in Job as חוצות, "outlying areas.⁠" The manner in which this proliferation has been described is שולח, "dispatches,⁠" whereas the rain which falls in the Holy Land is described in this verses as the result of נתינה, "something given directly.⁠" David refers to the areas described as חוצות in Job as אהלי רשע, "the tents of the wicked.⁠" (Psalms 84,11) The whole verse there reads: "Better one day in Your courts than a thousand anywhere else; I would rather stand on the threshold of God's House than dwell in the tents of wickedness.⁠" When compared to Jerusalem, the city of righteousness, other locations do not qualify for a better description than "tents of wickedness.⁠" Our paragraph refers to the period of the first Temple when idolatry was rampant.

אשר הוא בא שמה בקרבו, "in whose midst it is coming.⁠" the reference is not to the people but to the land. This is not the first time that the word ארץ appears as masculine; we have a similar masculine description of the land of Israel in Genesis 13,6.
It is also possible that the word בקרבו is an allusion to the Sanctuary in the land, which is viewed as being in its center. This would be analogous to a statement by our sages in Petichta Rabbah to Lamentations 22: "How long (did they relentlessly introduce more and more idolatry)? Until they introduced idolatry into the Sanctuary itself.⁠" [The Midrash refers to a verse in Jeremiah 11,6 in which the proliferation of idolatry in the towns of Yehudah is described and the word חוצות describes the innermost part of Jerusalem. It adds a verse from Ezekiel 8,5 describing penetration by idolatry of the Sanctuary itself as the ultimate act of rebellion against the Lord. Ed.]