wandering in the wilderness Summary and Overview

[WILDERNESS OF THE WANDERING]

WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS the region in which the Israelites spent forty years, between Egypt and Canaan. It is called sometimes the "great and terrible wilderness" by way of eminence. Deut 1:1; Zech 8:2; Josh 5:6; Neh 9:19, 2 Chr 11:21; Ps 78:40, 2 Kgs 5:52; Ps 107:4; Jer 2:2. In general, it may be identified with the great peninsula of Sinai, the triangular region between the Gulf of Akabah, Seir, and Edom on the east, and the Gulf of Suez and Egypt on the west. See Sinai. In this region there are several smaller wildernesses, as Etham, Paran, Shir, Zin, which see. What is known distinctively as the "wilderness of the Wandering," Badiet et-Tih, is the great central limestone plateau between the granite region of Sinai on the south, the sandy desert on the north, and the valley of the Arabah on the east. The explorations of travellers and the British Ordnance Survey have made this region quite well known.

The route of the Israelites from Egypt to Kadesh can be traced with reasonable accuracy. Instead of entering the Promised Land immediately from Kadesh, they were driven back into the wilderness for their disobedience, and there wandered for forty years. It need not be supposed that they were continually on the move or that they were unable to find their way. They probably lived a nomad life, as do the Bedouin Arabs of the present day, moving from place to place and pitching their tents wherever they could find pasture for their flocks. Some of the stations named cannot be identified, though the line of march may be traced until they left the wilderness and advanced toward the Promised Land by Mount Seir and Edom. See Map at end of book.

It is said of those composing the British Survey: "Not a single member of the expedition returned home without feeling more firmly convinced than ever of the truth of that sacred history which he found illustrated and confirmed by the natural features of the desert. The mountains and valleys, the very rocks, barren and sun-scorched as they now are, only seem to furnish evidence which none who behold them can gainsay that this was that 'great and terrible wilderness' through which Moses, under God's direction, led his people." - Recovery of Jerusalem, p. 429. (See also Palmer's Desert of the Exodus.) See Sinai, Exodus, Judaea, Wilderness of.