'Wilderness' in the Bible

“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn bush.

This man led them out [of Egypt] after performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years.

This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness together with the Angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and who was with our fathers; and he received living oracles [divine words that still live] to be handed down to you.

But God turned away [from them] and handed them over to serve the host of heaven. As it is written and forever remains written in the book of the prophets, ‘It was not [really] to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel?

“Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as God directed Moses to make it according to the pattern which he had seen.

For a period of about forty years He put up with their behavior in the wilderness.

Then you are not [as I assumed] the Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a rebellion and led those 4,000 men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?”