'Desolate' in the Bible

When the earth was as yet unformed and desolate, with the surface of the ocean depths shrouded in darkness, and while the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters,

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.

Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

A Davidic psalm. When he was in the Wilderness of Judah.God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You.I thirst for You;my body faints for Youin a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.

Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

“Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?”

Lo, I am doing a new thing, now it springeth up, Do ye not know it? Yea, I put in a wilderness a way, In a desolate place -- floods.

How desolate the city sits [that] was full of people! She has become like a widow, [once] great among the nations! Like a woman of nobility in the provinces, she has become a forced laborer.

Open thy mouth for the dumb, for the cause of all those that are left desolate.

And the hand of Jehovah is heavy on the Ashdodites, and He maketh them desolate, and smiteth them with emerods, Ashdod and its borders.

I'll weep and mourn for the mountains, and lament for the desert pastures, because they are desolate and no one passes through them. They don't hear the lowing of the cattle. Both the birds of the sky and the animals have fled. They're gone!

And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.

And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.

The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

And they rise and go to Ziph before Saul, and David and his men are in the wilderness of Maon, in the plain, at the south of the desolate place.

The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered.

They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.

I said to the king, “Let the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?”

How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

“You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?” declares the Lord of hosts, “Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house.

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.

Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake.

In mine ears said the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.

Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.

The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant.

I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.

“Moreover, their wealth will become plunderAnd their houses desolate;Yes, they will build houses but not inhabit them,And plant vineyards but not drink their wine.”

Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.

From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day.

For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts:

But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.

Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.

and I have made your cities a waste, and have made desolate your sanctuaries, and I smell not at your sweet fragrances;

And made desolate her vine and her fig-tree, Of which she said, A gift they are to me, That my lovers have given to me, And I have made them for a forest, And consumed them hath a beast of the field.

He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.

Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke: among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be.

And Absalom her brother said unto her, Hath Amnon thy brother been with thee? but hold now thy peace, my sister: he is thy brother; regard not this thing. So Tamar remained desolate in her brother Absalom's house.

And we shoot them, Perished hath Heshbon unto Dibon, And we make desolate unto Nophah, Which is unto Medeba.'

Though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate.

And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.

Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.

Therefore, as surely as I live," says the Lord who commands armies, the God of Israel, "be certain that Moab will become like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah. They will be overrun by weeds, filled with salt pits, and permanently desolate. Those of my people who are left will plunder their belongings; those who are left in Judah will take possession of their land."

Here is why this will be so: Before the child knows how to reject evil and choose what is right, the land whose two kings you fear will be desolate.

Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land.

With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

The goat will carry on it all their wrongdoings into a desolate land, and he will release it there.

I go -- I turn back unto My place, Till that they are desolate, and have sought My face. In their distress they do seek Me speedily!'

Then the lambs will graze [among the ruins] as in their own pasture,And strangers will eat in the desolate places of the [exiled] wealthy.

But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant land desolate.

The statutes of Omriand all the practices of Ahab’s househave been observed;you have followed their policies.Therefore, I will make you a desolate placeand the city’s residents an object of contempt;you will bear the scorn of My people.”

Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.

The young lions roared against him, they gave forth their voice, and they made his land desolate: his cities are burned, without inhabitant.

He will also stretch out His hand against the northand destroy Assyria;He will make Nineveh a desolate ruin,dry as the desert.

Be not over-righteous, nor show thyself too wise, why art thou desolate?

Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation desolate.

And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.

Nineveh is devastated, deserted, and desolate. Her heart melts, her knees knock. Every stomach is upset, every face grows pale.

And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD.

And say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord GOD of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein.

Later I told them, "You all are watching the predicament we're in, how Jerusalem lies desolate, with its gates burned by fire. Let's rebuild the Jerusalem wall so we're no longer a disgrace."

The enemy are come to an end, they are desolate for ever; And the cities which thou hast overthrown, The very remembrance of them is perished.

Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.

I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

The desolate cities will be filled with flocks of human beings, just like Jerusalem used to be filled with flocks of sheep during the times of the appointed festivals. Then they will know that I am the LORD.'"

And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart.

Then shalt thou say, O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever.

And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.

And you, O desolate one, what will you do?Although you dress in scarlet,Although you decorate yourself with ornaments of gold,Although you enlarge your eyes with paint,In vain you make yourself beautiful.Your lovers despise you;They seek your life.

Joshua burned Ai and left it a permanent ruin, desolate to this day.

So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath, in all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.

"I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by.

Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.

And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

And I have turned back to the captivity of My people Israel, And they have built desolate cities, and inhabited, And have planted vineyards, and drunk their wine, And made gardens, and eaten their fruit.

I'll make the land so desolate that your enemies who live in it will be astonished."

Look, the Lord is stripping the earth bareand making it desolate.He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants:

And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.

In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the speaker, “How long will the events of this vision last—the daily sacrifice, the rebellion that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and of the host to be trampled?”

He found him in a desolate land,in a barren, howling wilderness;He surrounded him, cared for him,and protected him as the pupil of His eye.

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.

Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.

Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.

God makes a home for the lonely;He leads the prisoners into prosperity,Only the stubborn and rebellious dwell in a parched land.

This whole land will become a desolate ruin, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for 70 years.

Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

However, reports from the east and the north will alarm him, and he'll march out in great anger, intending to destroy and to desolate many.

He brought me up from a desolate pit,out of the muddy clay,and set my feet on a rock,making my steps secure.

And desolate cities they cause to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou art not ashamed, Nor blush, for thou art not confounded, For the shame of thy youth thou forgettest, And the reproach of thy widowhood Thou dost not remember any more.