'Wilderness' in the Bible

“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord,“I remember [earnestly] the lovingkindness and devotion of your youth,Your time of betrothal [like that of a bride during the early years in Egypt and again at Sinai],When you followed Me in the wilderness,Through a land not sown.

“They did not say, ‘Where is the LordWho brought us up from the land of Egypt,Who led us through the wilderness,Through a land of deserts and of pits,Through a land of drought and of the deep darkness [of the shadow of death],Through a land that no man passed throughAnd where no man lived?’

“O generation [that you are], consider and regard carefully the word of the Lord.Have I been a wilderness to Israel [like a land without food],A land of thick and deep darkness [like a path without light]?Why do My people say, ‘We [have broken loose and we] are free to roam [at will];We will no longer come to You’?

“Lift up your eyes to the barren heights and see;Where have you not been violated?You sat by the road waiting [eagerly] for them [those man-made gods]Like an Arab [tribesman who waits to attack] in the desert,And you have desecrated the landWith your [vile] prostitution and your wickedness (disobedience to God).

In that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A scorching wind from the barren heights in the wilderness [comes at My command] against the daughter of My people—not [a wind] to winnow and not to cleanse [from chaff, as when threshing, but]

Oh that I had in the wildernessA lodging place (a mere shelter) for wayfaring men,That I might leave my peopleAnd go away from them!For they are all adulterers [worshiping idols instead of the Lord],[They are] an assembly of treacherous men [of weak character, men without integrity].

“I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains,And a [funeral] dirge for the pastures of the wilderness,Because they are burned up and desolated so that no one passes through [them];Nor can anyone hear the lowing of cattle.Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they are gone.

Who is the wise man who may understand this [without any doubt]? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, so that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined, laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?

“Many shepherds (invaders) have destroyed My vineyard (Judah),They have trampled My field underfoot;They have made My pleasant fieldA desolate wilderness.

“For he will be like a shrub in the [parched] desert;And shall not see prosperity when it comes,But shall live in the rocky places of the wilderness,In an uninhabited salt land.

For thus says the Lord in regard to the house of the king of Judah:“You are [as valuable] to Me as [the green pastures of] Gilead [east of the Jordan]Or as the [plentiful] summit of Lebanon [west of the Jordan],Yet most certainly [if you will not listen to Me] I will make you a wilderness,And uninhabited cities.

For the land is full of adulterers (unfaithful to God);The land mourns because of the curse [of God upon it].The pastures of the wilderness have dried up.The course of action [of the false prophets] is evil and they rush into wickedness;And their power is not right.

Thus says the Lord,“The people who survived the swordFound grace in the wilderness [of exile]—Israel (the Northern Kingdom), when it went to find its rest.”

“Run! Save your lives,That you may be like a juniper in the wilderness.

Your mother [Babylon] shall be greatly shamed;She who gave you birth will be ashamed.Behold, she will be the least of the nations,A wilderness, a parched land and a desert.

“Her cities have become an astonishing desolation and an object of horror,A parched land and a desert,A land in which no one lives,And through which no son of man passes.