After he had served his own generation. — Literally, ministered to his own generation. There is, perhaps, a suggested contrast between the limits within which the work of service to mankind done by any mere man, however great and powerful, is necessarily confined, and the wide, far-reaching, endless ministry to the whole human family which belongs to the Son of Man.
By the will of God. — The words are, perhaps, better connected with the verb that follows. It was by the will (literally, counsel) of God that David fell asleep when his life’s work was accomplished.
Fell on sleep. — It is not without interest to not that St. Paul uses the same word for death as had been used by the historian in the case of Stephen (Acts 7:36). It agreed with the then current language of mankind that death was as a sleep. It differed from it in thinking of that sleep not as “eternal” (the frequently recurring epithet in Greek and Roman epitaphs), but as the prelude to an awakening.