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The Worst, Best Place to Be in the Bible
00:47:09
The Wilderness E1 — This year, we are looking at themes that play a prominent role in the Exodus story. And today, we’re starting a new series on the theme of the wilderness. The wilderness is a setting that shows up constantly in the Bible, and it mainly represents a hostile, barren place where humans can’t survive. So why does God repeatedly lead his people through it? In this episode, Jon and Tim introduce the theme and discuss how the biblical authors portray the wilderness as a place of testing, character formation, and even an Eden-like refuge.
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to a new study here on the podcast. In these next weeks, we're going to be tracing the theme of the wilderness through the story of the Bible.
- [00:14]
B
Wilderness, as we're going to see, its primary meaning is about the absence of life. It's a dangerous and hostile place. It's where humans don't live and can't really make an existence because both the environment, there's no water, and there's creatures out there that'll kill you.
- [00:32]
A
Famously, Israel wanders through the wilderness for 40 years. But pay attention and you'll notice that almost all the key characters in the Bible go through the wilderness.
- [00:42]
B
Wilderness moments don't appear on every page, but they appear at key moments in the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the story of Israel, very importantly in the story of David.
- [00:54]
A
In fact, we're going to find that the wilderness is the setting from which the entire story of the Bible begins.
- [01:00]
B
The seven day creation narrative and the Eden narrative both begin with a wilderness day.
- [01:06]
A
By the time you get to the New Testament, the importance of the wilderness as a biblical theme is fully baked and it's taken for granted. So we see Jesus baptized in the wilderness. He's tempted in the wilderness, and he feeds crowds in the wilderness.
- [01:21]
B
And then in the letters of the apostles, the author to the Hebrews and Paul both describe the present moment of followers of Jesus as being a time of following the divine presence that is Jesus through the wilderness.
- [01:37]
A
What we learn from all of these stories in the Bible is that while God didn't design humanity for the wilderness, he will meet us there and he can transform the wilderness.
- [01:47]
B
What? What they get in the wilderness is Eden. The wilderness becomes like a little oasis refuge in the land of death.
- [01:56]
A
Today, Tim Mackey and I begin a new themed study on the wilderness. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim.
- [02:06]
B
John Collins. Hello.
- [02:09]
A
Hello.
- [02:09]
B
We're starting a new project today.
- [02:11]
A
Yes. New theme study.
- [02:13]
B
New project.
- [02:13]
A
Within the project, we're doing themes inspired by the scroll of Exodus.
- [02:19]
B
Yes. We've done a handful so far.
- [02:21]
A
Yeah. We did the new Exodus, which is kind of on the nose.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah.
- [02:25]
A
For an Exodus inspired theme.
- [02:26]
B
Yeah. The core Exodus motif that actually begins in Genesis has an important statement of it in Exodus and then gets replayed in creative ways over and over again.
- [02:40]
A
We did a theme study on the concept of redemption, the transfer of ownership.
- [02:46]
B
Yeah.
- [02:46]
A
Back to God from slavery. And that takes root in the story of Exodus, Israel being freed from slavery.
- [02:55]
B
Yeah.
- [02:56]
A
So now we're going to do the wilderness.
- [02:58]
B
Yeah, we're going to focus on the wilderness. Into the wilderness. So we've done a handful of these videos that are like ideas that are events or actions that go throughout the Bible. Redemption, you know, is one of them. We've done theme videos that are on key moments of time, like the seventh day.
- [03:19]
A
Yeah.
- [03:20]
B
We've done theme videos on people or figures, so the Messiah or the royal priest.
- [03:26]
A
Yeah.
- [03:27]
B
Whereas this is a theme video tracing.
- [03:29]
A
A place, a setting.
- [03:31]
B
Yes. We've done Heaven and Earth.
- [03:33]
A
Okay. Those are the big settings. The macro settings.
- [03:35]
B
Yeah, that's right. Our first theme video is Heaven and Earth. Trying to think back here. We've done the Temple.
- [03:40]
A
We've done the Temple.
- [03:41]
B
That's a location.
- [03:43]
A
We did the Water of Life, which is not a place, but it's like a stream that came out of Eden.
- [03:49]
B
Totally. Yes. The river. Yep. That comes out of Eden and man. Going all the way back to our how to Read the Bible series. Places in biblical stories are always full of meaning. Biblical authors don't have to tell us where events take place, and they often don't. They'll just give you the most vague or general setting. So when they do give you information about where an event has taken place, especially in the first stretch of narrative, from Genesis all the way to 2 Kings, there's an accumulating narrative memory of where events take place. And whenever you revisit a certain town or city again in a later story, nine times out of 10, it's building off of the memories from the earlier stories.
- [04:40]
A
I think that's why Water of Life came to mind, because when we went through that, you showed all the stories that take place at, like, Wells.
- [04:47]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [04:48]
A
Or in the Tree of Life. All the stories that take place by trees, Mountain, and then the Mountain series, all the stories that take place on the Right.
- [04:56]
B
So the wilderness is like those.
- [04:58]
A
Okay.
- [04:59]
B
There are key moments that take place in the wilderness, specifically in the first two narratives of Genesis. The seven day creation narrative and the Eden narrative, both begin with a wilderness state echoed by its vocabulary. And then key wilderness moments don't appear on every page, but they appear at key moments in the stories of Abraham, on the story of Jacob, the story of Moses, the story of Israel in the story sporadically through Joshua and Judges, but then very importantly, in the story of David, and then again in the story of Elijah, and then again near the ending of the story of Jerusalem's destruction and the exile to Babylon. So that's just the Torah and prophets. Then when you get into the former prophets, Isaiah, through Malachi, they just work the Wilderness theme. They're constantly hyperlinking back to all the wilderness moments in the Torah and prophets. So when you get to the story of Jesus in the New Testament, John the baptizer.
- [06:09]
A
Yeah, he's from the wilderness.
- [06:11]
B
He's out in the. He makes his base operations. Yeah, out in the wilderness. That's where Jesus gets baptized.
- [06:17]
A
Okay. And then that's where he goes to be tested.
- [06:19]
B
Yes. Super important. I mean, that's absolutely pivotal moment in Matthew, Mark and Luke, their account of Jesus. It's something that happens to him in the wilderness over a period of 40. Like his ancestors wandered in the wilderness for 40 years after the Exodus, Jesus fed the crowds in a wilderness place. It's specifically called a wilderness spot. Yep. With the same biblical vocabulary. And then in the letters of the apostles, the author to the Hebrews and Paul both describe the present moment of followers of Jesus as being a time following the divine presence, that is Jesus, through the wilderness. One way to imagine the present moment following Jesus Messiah is our deliverance from slavery is in the past that happened in through the work of Jesus Messiah. And our full inheritance of the cosmic new creation is yet future in its full realization. But the present moment is one of wilderness, where we get tastes of Eden, little Eden oases as we journey in the wilderness. So what's cool is the meaning of the wilderness, what it means and the types of things that happen in the wilderness. When you get to the New Testament, all that is already baked, like it's fully baked from the Hebrew scriptures. So when John the baptizer chooses the wilderness to go do his thing, that's just loaded with all these layers of meaning that don't need to be explained by the Gospel authors. When Jesus has his testing in the wilderness, when he feeds Israel in the wilderness, all that's layered with meaning. And then what Hebrews and Paul are doing is very similar. And then for me, it's always significant to see for a biblical theme. Does it go from COVID to cover? Does it get picked up in the Revelation? And the wilderness features in specifically two really important moments in the last book of the Christian Bible, the Revelation. There's that bizarre, intense vision with a dragon who's trying to eat and consume a baby boy who's being born from this woman crowned with the stars. And the baby boy who's called, you know, her seed. It's an image of the seed, the snake crusher seed of the woman from Genesis 3:15. Right. When the snake's about to devour the woman and her child, the dragon yeah, the dragon. Yes, sorry. The woman and the child are whisked away into the wilderness, and it becomes like a safe refuge. It's really interesting. And then the last time wilderness appears is where there's this prostitute riding a big red monster, and she's drinking the blood.
- [09:26]
A
Revelation, man.
- [09:29]
B
And she's Babylon. And she's riding the beast around in the wilderness. And that's where Babylon falls and collapses is in the wilderness.
- [09:39]
A
Okay.
- [09:40]
B
So truly, it's a cover to cover the theme. Rich development throughout, and these are just highlights. Lots of events happen in the wilderness. So one interesting thing in biblical studies on the wilderness is there are times when the wilderness seems to have what feel like contradictory meanings. And it makes you wonder, is this a good place to be, or is this the worst place possible to be?
- [10:05]
A
Okay, that's a very real thing. I was feeling that a little bit with those two Revelation comments.
- [10:09]
B
Oh. Oh, yeah, Great. Actually, that's a perfect example. Yeah.
- [10:13]
A
Yeah. It's a place of refuge. Oh, and it's where Babylon Falls.
- [10:15]
B
Exactly. It's like, what makes the. The wilderness the worst place you want to avoid at all costs? And then what makes it one of the best worst things that ever happened to you? Okay, so maybe that's a question going in. Many people feel that tension, and you can see that reflected in biblical scholarship that works on wilderness texts in the Bible. I want to just paint the portrait of the many meanings of wilderness in the Bible. So wilderness, as we're going to see, its primary meaning is about the absence of life. It's the opposite of goodness and life and abundance and flourishing. The primary image for that is garden and lots of water.
- [11:00]
A
Yeah.
- [11:01]
B
Whereas the wilderness is a primary symbol or image for a decline from goodness back into decay and nothingness. Maybe we might say entropy or something like that, but those are the bigger ideas that the biblical authors are wrestling with.
- [11:18]
A
Yeah.
- [11:19]
B
So let's take this in a few steps. One, this will maybe be less helpful for the listening audience, but I want to show you, John, a map, and we'll try and describe it in a helpful way for those of you listening, because the actual geography of the land where the biblical authors live is important to see, or at least see in your mind, to get a sense of why they use the words that they do. So we'll look at a map, we'll do some vocabulary introduction, and then we'll just do a quick survey of the many meanings of wilderness in the Bible that I think will set up some puzzles or questions for us that we'll just explore and unpack in the episodes to follow.
- [12:01]
A
The best, worst place that you could be.
- [12:05]
B
It depends. Depends on. So into the wilderness.
- [12:11]
A
Great.
- [12:31]
B
So I'm just pulling up Google Earth satellite imagery.
- [12:36]
A
All right, we're looking at the.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah.
- [12:39]
A
What, eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.
- [12:41]
B
Yep. Eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. So we can see the top of North Africa, that is Egypt. We can see the bottom half of Turkey. And then the eastern Mediterranean coast, that is Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria. All that goes up the coast of Turkey, Jordan.
- [13:04]
A
Now you're heading east.
- [13:05]
B
Yep.
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A
Into what's very brown.
- [13:08]
B
Yeah, that's right. Iraq. And then until you get over to.
- [13:11]
A
The Euphrates and Tigris River.
- [13:13]
B
That's right.
- [13:14]
A
That come down from the north and then spill back into. What's the sea there?
- [13:20]
B
The Persian Gulf.
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A
Persian Gulf, yeah.
- [13:22]
B
So on this map, what you'll notice is Egypt is entirely brown and tan, except for a strip of green that fans out once it goes north into.
- [13:34]
A
The Mediterranean, a strip of green follows the Nile.
- [13:37]
B
That's the Nile River.
- [13:38]
A
And then when that delta's out into the Mediterranean, it's just a whole bunch of lush land.
- [13:45]
B
Yep. So that's where the Egyptians were enslaving the Israelites.
- [13:50]
A
In the delta?
- [13:51]
B
Yeah, in the delta, yeah, it's somewhere in there. Somewhere in there. Then the Sinai Peninsula is just entirely brown. Yeah, it's a desert brown triangle. And then that opens up basically into the northern tip of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabia desert. And it's just. Dude, it's just a lot of rock and sand, a lot of ground. Yeah. But you go follow the coastline up from Egypt to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, up to then Beirut, on up into Lebanon and then Turkey. What you'll see is that along the coast, there's these strips of green. And those strips of green is the hill country that rises up real sharply up from the coast. And then in Israel in particular, you'll see the Sea of Galilee. So a little blue dot with some green and then a little tiny ribbon, the tiniest ribbon of green. That is the Jordan river going down into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea, man, is just a big.
- [15:00]
A
Surrounded by a tail.
- [15:01]
B
Yeah, yeah, totally. And then you follow the green up north, and then it meets eventually the region where the tigress and they follow, go northeast to the Euphrates. And those are two ribbons of green that flow through what is today Syria and Iraq. And then those become a delta region that goes down into the Persian Gulf. That's where Babylon and Nineveh were.
- [15:27]
A
Okay, so seems like what you're saying here is it's a very dry area. Predominantly.
- [15:33]
B
Predominantly dry.
- [15:34]
A
But along the rivers and especially in the deltas of the rivers, and that's in the Nile and in the Euphrates and Tigris, there's a lot of green. And then there's this strip of green up the eastern coast of the Mediterranean all the way down from below Jerusalem, all the way up to what we would call modern day Turkey, and up and around. But that whole strip is hillside.
- [15:58]
B
That's right.
- [15:59]
A
That is very lush and green. There's no particular river that's making that green. It's just because of the hills.
- [16:06]
B
It's the elevation of the hills and the weather coming in from the Mediterranean Sea.
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A
The weather coming in from the sea.
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B
Drops seasonal rains on the hill country.
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A
Okay, so the green is garden.
- [16:18]
B
The green is garden. That's right, yeah. And from the biblical author's perspective, who inhabited this basic area in and around Jerusalem and the hills of Judea and Israel, it's just a little oasis of green hills. Desert to the south, desert to the east, desert to the northeast, and then a huge sea on the west.
- [16:43]
A
Yeah.
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B
So within visibility, it's like desert on all sides and then the sea on the other side. Desert and sea are the two areas where we can't go. Yeah, I mean, you can go there, but you probably won't last very long. But I would really like form your view of reality.
- [17:02]
A
You wouldn't have a map like this to look at.
- [17:05]
B
No, we don't.
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A
But if you just headed in any direction from Jerusalem, from Jerusalem, you're going to get into wilderness or you're going to hit the chaotic sea.
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B
Quickly, quickly, quickly.
- [17:15]
A
And if you head south, you're not going to hit Egypt until you go through a bunch of wilderness.
- [17:20]
B
That's right. Between Jerusalem and Babylon. As the crow flies, it is many hundreds of miles and it's through a desert wilderness where there's just a lot of rock and. And sand and really sparse vegetation.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah. If you just drew a straight line, it's 560 miles.
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B
There you go.
- [17:43]
A
Yeah, give or take. And that's through the desert.
- [17:46]
B
No one could do that.
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A
You just couldn't do it.
- [17:48]
B
No.
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A
Physically couldn't do it.
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B
500 miles, like there's through the wilderness, virtually no water out there, you know?
- [17:54]
A
Yeah.
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B
I mean, humans can't do it.
- [17:56]
A
Impossible. Now, if you head north, you can follow a stretch of green.
- [18:01]
B
Yeah, that's right.
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A
All the way up to Euphrates.
- [18:03]
B
Yep, that's Right.
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A
So that's the highway. Right.
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B
This was the highway for commerce, for the ancient economy, also for ancient armies. So the main way was to go north from ancient Israel, way up.
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A
So you're doing about a thousand miles going up and around.
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B
There you go. It's about two times the length because you got to go up to the river region and then follow the highways that. So that's the highway that trace the Euphrates.
- [18:32]
A
There's no way through the wilderness. You can't make it through the wilderness.
- [18:35]
B
No. And you can see it. You can literally walk a few miles up over the hills from Jerusalem, and you can just look east.
- [18:44]
A
And I bet just that many people took trips to how far could I go?
- [18:49]
B
Right. Yeah.
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A
And you never find the end of it.
- [18:51]
B
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So that would affect your view of reality. So we can get a sense from. For how these regions felt to the biblical authors by looking at their vocabulary. So the main word that the biblical authors use to describe that desert to the south and to the east is the Hebrew word midbar.
- [19:13]
A
That's the Hebrew word.
- [19:15]
B
Yep. Wilderness. Wilderness or desert. It's used over 250 times in the Hebrew Bible. There's disagreement about the etymology of the word. What's interesting is that midbar, the three root letters of the word are dbr, dalet, beit, resh, which is the same root letters as the Hebrew word for word or thing. And very often, if you want to put the preposition away from out from something, you would put an M on the front and so away from a thing.
- [19:58]
A
Okay, that's a possible etymology.
- [20:00]
B
Well, it's what biblical scholars call a folk etymology.
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A
Away from a thing, away from a word, out into exile.
- [20:07]
B
You got it. So midbar. Here's just some examples. Moses describes the region that Israel crossed when they went out of Egypt, which we call the Sinai Peninsula. He calls that the great and terrible midbar. With fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there is no water.
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A
Yeah.
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B
All right.
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A
The great and terrible midbar.
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B
It's not a good place, not a kind place for humans that want to stay alive.
- [20:40]
A
Yeah.
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B
Because both the environment. There's no water and there's creatures out there that'll kill you, at least make your life really painful. In the speeches that God gives to Job, when God shows up in the whirlwind at the end of the book of Job, God's describing, you know, how he architected all of creation, and he asked, who cut open a channel for the rainstorms? The Torrents of the rainstorm. And who carved a path for thunderbolts. They bring rain on the land where no one lives. The midbar, where no human can live. And he satisfies the desert and the wasteland and causes the ground to spring up with grass. So who did that? Who architected that whole system there?
- [21:32]
A
Yeah, Job.
- [21:34]
B
But notice here again, the presence or absence of water is a key factor. But specifically, the definition of midbar is where no humans live.
- [21:45]
A
Yeah. Because you can't live out there and just hope for the rain to come. Eventually you'll die.
- [21:51]
B
Yeah. The poet of Psalm 55, who wants to run away from all of their troubles and all their enemies, so says, oh, that I had wings like a dove. That I could fly away and find rest. Oh, that I could flee far away. I would even go dwell in the midbar.
- [22:11]
A
Mm. Because I have wings and I can get there and chill out and then come back.
- [22:16]
B
Yeah, totally. But you can see in the imagination, midbar is the furthest possible from any people who could cause me trouble.
- [22:23]
A
Okay, okay.
- [22:24]
B
Away from people. So he's not thinking about quiet time, not thinking about water right here. Yeah, you're right. Because a bird can go to and from the wilderness in a way that humans.
- [22:33]
A
Yeah. It's like, I can't live out there, but if I could just fly out there right now and just get away from these people, how nice would that be?
- [22:41]
B
Yeah. So it's great and terrible with dangerous creatures and a hostile environment for human life. It's a place that's uninhabited by humans, and humans can't cultivate it. And it's the furthest possible place that you can imagine is to go out to the midbar. That's midbar.
- [23:03]
A
Great and terrible.
- [23:04]
B
That's one meaning of midbar. However, if you think about it and think about our map, the midbar came right up to the eastern side of the hill country where Jerusalem and Judea and northern Israel is. Which means that you could take a little day trip or a little multi day trip over the hills down east and go down into the midbar. And if you find some water sources. Right. Or streams or seasonal streams, you could stake out a little town there right on the edge of the mid bar.
- [23:35]
A
Okay.
- [23:36]
B
And so midbar can also refer to that edge region where the habitable land transitions. There's always a little transitional zone.
- [23:46]
A
Right.
- [23:46]
B
And so midbar can also refer to that. And it's primarily associated with pasture land for animal grazing.
- [23:53]
A
Seasonal pasture land.
- [23:54]
B
Yeah. So famously, when Moses in Exodus 3 encounters God in the burning bush. He's at the back of the midbar.
- [24:03]
A
The back of the midbar?
- [24:05]
B
Yeah, he's down in Midian.
- [24:07]
A
Can you show me that on the map?
- [24:09]
B
So he's somewhere in the middle. This region in here, it's called Uz on this map, but Midian.
- [24:16]
A
Okay, so he's far. He went far.
- [24:18]
B
He went across the Sinai.
- [24:19]
A
He went across the Sinai Peninsula.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. He's really out there. Yeah, but he's out there with animals, which means that he.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah, you know, could go on edge land.
- [24:30]
B
A two week pasture trip where he's just out there with his animals, just cycling through the hills. So the mid bar is a place multiple times where people graze animals, which means they're at least in proximity to a town that's in the transition zone. So midbar can refer to the transition zone too.
- [24:49]
A
Okay.
- [24:49]
B
David famously, when he tells Saul about how he was protecting his flock from bears and lions, he said he had to do that in the midbar. It's in the midbar. Another word that can also be associated with that transition zone is the Hebrew word sade, which just means field. And even I think field works this way in English, where field can refer to land that was uncultivated, like right in on the edge of civilization. But build a little log home thinking American colonial period. And then you cultivate that field. Cultivate that field.
- [25:33]
A
Like a wild field.
- [25:33]
B
Yeah, a wild field. So the sada, the field, can refer to uncultivated land in that transition region where humans can just reach to and then stake out a spot. So esau, when Isaac sends Esau to go hunting to make the tasty wild game, he says, go out into the saada and hunt for me.
- [25:55]
A
Okay.
- [25:56]
B
And in many places, the Sade is in parallelism to the midbar. Other words that occur a little less often, but are still synonyms. One is the aravah, which is the desert plains, kind of like a high desert. It gets seasonal rains, but it's kind of a transition into the real desert in the south. So that's called the arava. Then you've got the word kharev, which just means literally to. To become dry, to dry out. So the dry land. So aravah occurs about 60 times. Harev occurs a little over 40 times in the Hebrew Bible. Then there's a really uncommon word. It's 13 times throughout the Hebrew Bible. Yeshimon, the root word comes from shammam, which just means to be empty, uninhabited. Here's some examples that work them together. Jerusalem, after it's destroyed by Babylon is described in Jeremiah 33 as a charev, a dried out place without human and without animals. And the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem are shamem, empty, desolate. So it's translated in the new American standard as waste and desolate, but dry and empty. The last one is the word tsiah, which also means a dried out land. But here we're talking about like, you know, how dirt cracks open when it gets real dry. It's like that kind of situation. Okay, yeah.
- [27:31]
A
What would we call that?
- [27:33]
B
Parched land. There's a passage in Jeremiah where he refers to the land that the Israelites went through on their journey from Egypt to the promised land. He describes it in Jeremiah 2. He says Yahweh is the one who brought us up from the land of Egypt, the one who led us in the midbar. In the land of the Aravah. The midbar is just describing it as uncultivated. Then he calls it the Aravah. And then in the land of the Tsiya of dryness. Yeah. Then it says it's full of gorges or deep ravines. So hills with deep ravines. A land of dryness and then of deep darkness, which he's getting a little cosmic there. A land that no one passes through and where no human lives. That's the midbar.
- [28:24]
A
Okay.
- [28:25]
B
So it can be hilly. It's not just flat.
- [28:28]
A
You're going to find animals.
- [28:29]
B
Yes.
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A
You're going to find brush.
- [28:31]
B
In fact, you'll find a common cast of animals. Here's just from two places in Isaiah, Isaiah 13:34, when Babylon and Edom have experienced their downfall. And those cities become wildernesses. Wilderness creatures will take up residence in the cities. It's like dystopian, apocalyptic kind of scenery. So you've got owls.
- [28:52]
A
These are the desert creatures.
- [28:53]
B
These are desert creatures. Owls, ostriches, shaggy goats, hyenas and jackals, pelicans, I think of the coast. But pelicans, hedgehogs and ravens, these are our desert animals.
- [29:12]
A
And then snakes.
- [29:13]
B
Oh, of course, snakes. And scorpions. Scorpions, yeah, that's right, dude, scorpions. So all of that, this is the base meaning. That's what midbar is.
- [29:24]
A
Okay, that region. Those regions.
- [29:26]
B
Yes. Yeah, totally. So the basic meaning, it's a dangerous and hostile place towards human life. It's where humans don't live and can't really make an existence because of hostile creatures and lack of resources. However, it can sometimes refer to the transition regions between cultivated inhabitable land on the edges. And that's the Base meaning of wilderness in the Bible. Okay, Sam. The second meaning of wilderness is it's a place where when people go there, they experience hardship that creates a test of their character and purifies or refines their character and their relationship with God. So you could just say it's a place of testing and purification.
- [30:59]
A
It's kind of its literary meaning.
- [31:01]
B
It's its literary meaning. In other words, when characters in the Bible go into the wilderness, more often than not, they encounter death and they encounter God. And somehow, at the precipice of death, encountering God forces them to make some decisions. And those decisions have a shaping form of influence on their character. And this is where the Exodus scroll really comes in to its own. Because Israel's journey in the wilderness after they leave Egypt, starting in Exodus 15, is described as both encounters with near death because of lack of water. And these are called by God and by Moses, tests of trust in God.
- [31:45]
A
And it should have taken, what, a couple weeks to get through. Yeah, but God hasn't.
- [31:49]
B
11 days.
- [31:50]
A
Moses says, okay, should take 11 days. I've done it. Moses says, I was on the backside of this wilderness. And they were in for 40 years.
- [32:00]
B
Forty years, yeah. So the testing narratives in the wilderness in Exodus, these are in Exodus 15, 16, 17. And then there's seven wilderness testing narratives in numbers, chapters 11 through 21. These are primary stories. And the rest of the biblical authors just constantly riff on quote from call back to hyperlink to these stories. So the first story is in Exodus 15:22. They go out from the sea of reeds into the mid bar of Shur, which is a station in between Israel and Egypt. And they went three days into the midbar, and they could not find water. So they grumble and God provides water.
- [32:44]
A
Okay.
- [32:45]
B
This is also then on the other side of Mount Sinai in Scroll of Numbers. Oh, and remember, the scroll of Numbers in the Jewish tradition. Oh, yeah. Is called Bamidbar. Bamidbar in the wilderness.
- [32:58]
A
I think that's why this word was sounding very familiar to me. That's right.
- [33:02]
B
Yep. In the wilderness. Because the whole book takes place in the wilderness, on the transition from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land. And that's where Moses sends the spies, 12 spies in to check the land. And then they come back and they're like, well, it's a lot of fruit, but giant fruit and giant humans.
- [33:21]
A
Giant humans.
- [33:21]
B
And so they rebel against Moses, say they want to go back to Egypt, the people want to go back to Egypt, and it doesn't go well. So God assigns that Generation to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and they die. And that wandering is associated with that testing of their character and God forming a whole generation to learn how to trust Him. Manna, providing manna and water in the wilderness. So this is the main meaning of wilderness. It gets brought up in the prophets. Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all talk about this wandering in the wilderness period as a.
- [34:02]
A
Period of formation, of testing and purification.
- [34:04]
B
Yep. The psalms constantly call back to it. In fact, in one important place, Psalm 78, which is a psalm that's all about teaching the future generations to learn how to meditate on the story of our ancestors. It opens up. It's a poem connected with the Levite singer songwriter named Asaf. And the poem begins by saying, hey, listen to my Torah. I have some Torah instruction to offer. I'm going to open my mouth with parables, that interesting introduction. But then he goes on to basically retell the story from the Exodus up to the time of David. That's the whole poem. And he says the purpose is so that the generation to come and the generation yet to be born will rise up and tell their children that they should trust in God and not forget his works and keep his commandments, and not to be like their ancestors who were stubborn and rebellious and. And then one of the main sections of the poem explores and retells how often they. This is in verse 40, how often they rebelled against him in the midbar. And they vexed him.
- [35:23]
A
Vexed him.
- [35:24]
B
They vexed God in the wasteland.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah, wasteland's what word there?
- [35:30]
B
That's the Yeshimon, the empty place, the desolate place.
- [35:33]
A
Okay.
- [35:35]
B
And there, again and again, they tested God. God tested them. They tested God. So wilderness, especially associated with 40, the number 40, and tests of trust. But it's because the wilderness is a hostile place with no resources.
- [35:52]
A
Yeah, it raises the stakes.
- [35:53]
B
It raises the stakes and puts you in a situation of trust, a crisis of trust. So the feeling of the environment matches this meaning of the wilderness. Pretty naturally, if you go out into the waste place, you're going to have to have access to some resources beyond yourself, which leads. Then this is really the flip side, because if you fail to trust, it doesn't go well for the wilderness generation.
- [36:20]
A
They die out there.
- [36:21]
B
They die out there. However, there's this whole other set of characters and stories who, when they go into the wilderness, they face a crisis of life and death and they meet God and they trust him. And then what they get in the wilderness is Eden. And this is all built off of the Planting of Eden's story, which we'll look at in the next conversation. But Eden begins as a wilderness with wilderness vocabulary. And God plants the garden as a little Eden oasis in the midst of a wilderness. And so there are stories connected to Hagar or with Moses that we're going to look at. And there, when they meet God in the midbar, and God hears them, comes to meet them, and they trust him, the wilderness becomes a refuge. It becomes like a little oasis refuge in the land of death. The primary meaning is still negative. So this is less about the wilderness. It's more about if you're with God and God is with you in the wilderness, you can hang out there. So Hagar, Moses, Israel, in moments when God provides for them, like manna or water. We're going to look at a whole season of David's life where he was fleeing and hiding from King Saul, hiding in caves and mountains, and that's all in the wilderness. And this is one of the most important periods of David's life where he really forges his close relationship with Yahweh. And what's really cool is that that season of David's life. You know how there's certain psalms attached to David? There's 73 of the 150 Psalms in the Hebrew Bible have a note that says of David connected to David, and then there's about a dozen that have little descriptors, like a poem that he sang when this happened or that happened. And most of those little notes are connected to really the most terrible moments in his life, either when he had to run from Saul in the wilderness. So there's a bunch of poems connected to his wilderness season after he made a huge mistake is, to put it lightly, Uriah and Bathsheba. And then when he had to flee for his life again into the wilderness when his son pulled a military coup. But those two wilderness wanderings are highlighted in the psalms. And actually this is a great place to kind of land the plane here. So David's experience of the wilderness, however, is both, like, on the knife edge of life and death.
- [39:03]
A
This is the valley of the shadow of death kind of place.
- [39:05]
B
Totally, yes. So just a couple quick references. Psalm 63 begins a Psalm of David when he was in the midbar of Judah. And you can see why the poem's apropos, O God, you are my God. I will seek you diligently. My soul thirsts for my Nephesh. My being thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you in a dry and weary land that has no water. But I have seen you in the holy place. I have beheld your strength and your glory. Your loyal love is better than life. So my lips will praise you. I'll bless you. As long as I live, my soul, my Nephesh will be satisfied. As with the best and most rich food. So he's in the wilderness, but he's had encounters in the past with God's presence.
- [40:05]
A
He's likely hungry and thirsty and tired.
- [40:07]
B
In the wilderness, but he's hungry and thirsty. And somehow that longing for food and drink becomes for him a way of experiencing his longing for intimacy with God. And this season of his life is where he began to forge those ties of close connection. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
- [40:28]
A
Yeah.
- [40:29]
B
So those are our three meanings.
- [40:30]
A
Okay. So the literal meaning, which has attached to it kind of a metaphysical meaning, which is just the uninhabited dry place and dangerous. And dangerous, yeah.
- [40:45]
B
Not just dry. The dryness is dangerous on two fronts. The lack of water, meaning you die, and then the dangerous creatures.
- [40:53]
A
Okay.
- [40:53]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:55]
A
And then it becomes, when employed in the story of the Bible, especially in stories in the Bible, it's a place where people are tested. You come to the end of yourself pretty quick in the wilderness.
- [41:05]
B
Yeah. Everything that you got from the Greenland eventually runs out, and you don't have that anymore.
- [41:14]
A
Yeah. And so it requires you to make some pretty big decisions on who. Who are you gonna trust, how are you gonna respond in need? What do you long for? And that brings us to the third meaning, which is you're saying that there is a whole stream of stories where people are in the wilderness and kind of essentially passing the test or at least meeting God out there in a.
- [41:46]
B
Way that they're at that knife edge of life and death and they find life, and that's where they encounter God in a way that strips them of every resource they have of their own and then forces them to. Yeah. Leap out in trust.
- [42:02]
A
Help me understand the difference between those two. Then the test and the place where you meet, encounter God, and encounter life.
- [42:09]
B
Oh, you're right. They're actually connected. Yeah. So maybe there's two main meanings. And there's two A and two B.
- [42:16]
A
Yeah, I guess so.
- [42:17]
B
So one is what you describe the feeling and reality of the wilderness, and then the other is the human experience of the wilderness where your.
- [42:25]
A
Your trust is tested.
- [42:27]
B
And that either goes poorly or it goes well.
- [42:30]
A
Yeah. Based on trust, you can encounter life or death.
- [42:35]
B
Yeah.
- [42:35]
A
And I guess when life shows up in the desert, it becomes so much more wonderful and miraculous.
- [42:41]
B
Yes. The Oasis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [42:44]
A
And the desert never seems like the place where you're supposed to settle. You're going through the.
- [42:50]
B
Yeah, you go through it. It's a transition.
- [42:51]
A
It's a transition into a new faith.
- [42:53]
B
It's a transformational experience. So there's a lot of deep echoes here of something that's really built into the human psyche about how hardship, suffering and lack can actually provide a refining or transformative character. The journey motif. Going on a long journey and you emerge out the other side changed. So we're tapping into a pretty universal human experience of hardship as a season of developing your character. But the biblical authors have a real specific geography that they use to work those themes. Yeah, okay. So that's the basic set of ideas. And what we're going to look at is just cycles of stories that play out these themes. And I've picked stories and moments that the biblical authors have connected through intentional hyperlinking. But we have to start in the beginning. And we've kind of been in this territory before. But the seven day creation narrative and the Eden narrative both use important desert vocabulary right at the beginning. And then the meaning of those words and what happens to the desert in these two creation stories is foundational for understanding how the rest of this imagery works in the rest of biblical story. So, as always, we'll have an episode on the creation narratives before we move on into the biblical story.
- [44:26]
A
Okay. To Genesis 1 and 2. Thanks for listening to this episode of BibleProject Podcast. Next week we're going to turn to Genesis 1 and 2 and see how God creates out of the chaos and nothingness which the Bible presents as a wilderness.
- [44:44]
B
Eden itself is a little oasis surrounded by nothingness. And if I want to avoid returning back into the nothingness, I need to stay here, connected to a life that is outside my own, an infinite source of life.
- [44:59]
A
Bibleproject is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. And everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.
- [45:15]
C
Hi, my name is Kate and I'm from Newburgh, Oregon. Hi there. My name is Frank. I live in Wales. I first heard about the Bible Project when I was looking for something to explain the Gospel of John. And scouring the webs, I found the bibleproject. I first heard about bibleproject through my church. Someone recommended it to me. To check it out, unpack a few different sections that I was studying. I use bibleproject to have a real grasp on things that I'm sharing myself. My favorite thing about Bible Project is that you can access it anywhere. I can be traveling and be able to watch a few videos at the airport or even sit at home and do a classroom online. And my favorite thing about it is that it gives the overall view of a book and the Bible itself. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. That leads to Jesus. Bibleproject is a nonprofit funded by people like me. Find free videos, articles, podcasts, classes, and more on the BibleProject app and@bibleproject.com hi, this is Katrina. I'm a product designer at BibleProject and I've been working here for two years. My favorite part about working at BibleProject is creating experiences that help people understand, engage with, and truly delight in the Bible. There's a whole team of people that bring the podcast to life every week. For a full list of everyone who's involved, check out the show credits in the episode description. Wherever you stream the podcast and on our website.