Deserts

Deserts

In the East, wide, extended plains are usually liable to drought, and consequently to barrenness. Hence the Hebrew language describes a plain, a desert, and an unfruitful waste, by the same word. The term which is in general rendered 'wilderness,' means, properly, a grazing tract, uncultivated and destitute of wood, but fit for pasture—a heath or steppe. The pastures of the wilderness are mentioned in;;; and may be very well explained by reference to the fact, that even the Desert of Arabia, which is utterly burnt up with excessive drought in summer, is in winter and spring covered with rich and tender herbage. Whence it is that the Arabian tribes retreat into their deserts on the approach of the autumnal rains, and when spring has ended and the droughts commence, return to the lands of rivers and mountains, in search of the pastures which the deserts no longer afford. The same word may therefore denote a region which is desert, and also one which, at stated seasons, contains rich and abundant pastures. But in fact the word translated in our Bibles by 'desert' or 'wilderness' often means no more than the common, uncultivated grounds in the neighborhood of towns on which the inhabitants grazed their domestic cattle.

The term a great desert or wilderness is especially applied to that desert of Stony Arabia in which the Israelites sojourned under Moses (;;; , etc.). This was the most terrible of the deserts with which the Israelites were acquainted, and the only real desert in their immediate neighborhood. It is described under ARABIA; as is also that Eastern desert extending from the eastern border of the country beyond Judea to the Euphrates. It is emphatically called 'the Desert,' without any proper name, in; .

The several deserts or wildernesses mentioned in Scripture are the following, which will be found under their respective names: the deserts of Edom, Etham, Judah, Kadesh, Maon, Paran, Shur, Sin, and Sinai.