Desert - UPDV Updated Bible Version

The desert in Scripture is an arid region of sparse vegetation, set against the cultivated land where rain falls and people sow. It is the place outside the camp, the road between Egypt and the promise, the refuge of the hunted, and the figure that prophets reach for when they describe both judgment and restoration. The same word covers Sinai's encampments, Judah's thirsty south, the corners David hides in, and the eschatological landscape that Yahweh promises to make like Eden.

A Land Without Water or Sown Seed

The most basic biblical picture of the desert is a place where neither grain nor man can take hold. Yahweh leads Israel "through the great and terrible wilderness, [in which were] fiery serpents and scorpions, and thirsty ground where was no water" (De 8:15). When Jeremiah recalls the same journey, he piles the negations: a "land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a land that a man has not passed through, and where man has not dwelt" (Jer 2:6). Espousal-language follows the same geography: Israel "went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (Jer 2:2).

Even the rituals of Israel send sin out into this country. The scapegoat on the day of atonement carries "all their iniquities to a solitary land," and the priest "will let the goat go into the wilderness" (Le 16:22). The desert is where what cannot live in the camp is sent.

The Itinerary of Israel

The wilderness is also a route. Moses asks Pharaoh that Israel be allowed "three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to Yahweh our God" (Ex 5:3). After the crossing they reach Sinai: "they had come to the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount" (Ex 19:2). The borders Yahweh promises run "from the wilderness to the River" (Ex 23:31). Forty years later Moses can say, "I have led you⁺ forty years in the wilderness: your⁺ clothes are not waxed old on you⁺, and your sandals have not waxed old on your feet" (De 29:5).

The named stages of that route cluster around the wilderness of Zin. The spies go up "from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, to the entrance of Hamath" (Nu 13:21). It is here that Miriam dies: "the sons of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month: and the people remained in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there" (Nu 20:1). It is here that Moses' own forfeiture of the land is anchored — "you⁺ rebelled against my mouth in the wilderness of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the waters before their eyes" (Nu 27:14); "you⁺ trespassed against me in the midst of the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin" (De 32:51). The same wilderness later marks the southern boundary of Judah's allotment, "to the border of Edom, even to the wilderness of Zin to the Negeb" (Jos 15:1), and is fixed in the camp's record at Ezion-geber and Kadesh (Nu 33:36; Nu 34:3).

Refuge and Flight

Outside Israel's organized march, the desert is the place individuals run to. The angel of Yahweh finds Hagar "by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur" (Ge 16:7). David and his men hold out "in the wilderness of Maon, in the Arabah on the south of the desert" (1Sa 23:24); Joab's pursuit of Abner reaches "the way of the wilderness of Gibeon" (2Sa 2:24). When Elijah breaks under Jezebel's threat, "he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper-tree: and he requested for his soul to die" (1Ki 19:4). The psalmist's ache for escape uses the same instinct: "Look, then I would wander far off, I would lodge in the wilderness. Selah" (Ps 55:7).

The Maccabean record extends the pattern into Israel's later trouble. "Then many who sought after righteousness and justice went down into the desert" (1Ma 2:29); the king's men find "that certain men who had broken the king's commandment, had gone away into the secret places in the wilderness" (1Ma 2:31); Jonathan and Simon "fled into the desert of Thecua, and they pitched by the water of the pool of Asphar" (1Ma 9:33). The desert in this register is a sanctuary for the persecuted faithful.

In the Gospels, this same impulse to withdraw is taken up by John and by Jesus. "The word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness" (Lu 3:2). Jesus and the disciples "went away in the boat to a desert place apart" (Mr 6:32); when day comes, "he came out and went into a desert place: and the multitudes sought after him" (Lu 4:42).

Drought and Thirst

The desert's defining absence is water, and Scripture reads that absence both physically and spiritually. From the wilderness of Judah David writes, "O God, you are my God; earnestly I will seek you: My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you, In a dry and weary land, where there is no water" (Ps 63:1). The wicked, by contrast, are left in that landscape as a sentence: "the rebellious stay in a parched land" (Ps 68:6). Isaiah reaches for the same image to describe a fading covenant people: "you⁺ will be as an oak whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water" (Is 1:30); their captivity is announced as thirst — "their multitude are parched with thirst" (Is 5:13). Yet to the same thirsty Yahweh answers, "The poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue fails for thirst; I, Yahweh, will answer them, I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them" (Is 41:17).

Jeremiah turns the figure on the man who trusts in flesh: "he will be like the heath in the desert, and will not see when good comes, but will stay in the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited" (Jer 17:6). The desert here is not a place but a moral diagnosis.

Judgment as De-creation

When prophets pronounce judgment on a city or nation, they reach instinctively for desert language. Jeremiah laments the inhabited country itself: "for the mountains I will lift: a weeping and a wailing; and for the pastures of the wilderness: a lamentation; because they are burned up, so that none passes through; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle" (Jer 9:10). And of Jerusalem: "I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling-place of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant" (Jer 9:11).

The Maccabean witness records the city in just that condition under Antiochus: "Now Jerusalem was not inhabited, But was like a desert. There was none of her children who went in or out, And the sanctuary was trodden down" (1Ma 3:45); "they saw the sanctuary desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burned, and shrubs growing up in the courts as in a forest, or on the mountains" (1Ma 4:38). The desert here is a sign that judgment has fallen and the covenant order has been undone.

The Desert That Will Bloom

Against all of this, the prophets place a counter-image. Isaiah opens the figure: "the wilderness and the dry land will be glad; and the desert will rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Is 35:1). The barren road will be planted: "I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, and the myrtle, and the oil-tree; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, the pine, and the box-tree together" (Is 41:19). Yahweh "says of Jerusalem, She will be inhabited; and of the cities of Judah, They will be built, and I will raise up their waste places" (Is 44:26).

The promise is explicitly reversal: "as for your waste and your desolate places, and your land that has been destroyed, surely now you will be too strait for the inhabitants" (Is 49:19); "Yahweh has comforted Zion; he has comforted all her waste places, and has made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Yahweh; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Is 51:3); "Break forth into joy, sing together, you⁺ waste places of Jerusalem; for Yahweh has comforted his people" (Is 52:9). Those who return inherit the rebuilding: "those who will be of you will build the old waste places; you will raise up the foundations of many generations; and you will be called The repairer of the breach" (Is 58:12); "they will build the old wastes, they will raise up the former desolations, and they will repair the waste cities" (Is 61:4).