While Israel were miraculously fed by the manna during their forty years wandering in

the wilderness, we read of no such miraculous provision for the flocks and herds that

accompanied them, yet they lived and thrived throughout that trying period. Some

wilderness were "great and terrible", some were described as "waste howling" wilderness

but the basic meaning of the word wilderness is not that of scorched arid desert, neither is

the typical and spiritual meaning to be found in such a condition. The main word

translated "wilderness" in the O.T. is midbar, which is derived from dabar "to lead or to

drive" as cattle. Gesenius defines the word as "an uninhabitable plain country, fit for

feeding flocks, not desert, a pasture".

So we read in Joel 2: 22 "the pastures of the wilderness do spring", as in Psa. 65: 12

we read "Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness; and Thy paths drop fatness. They

drop upon the pastures of the wilderness", and in Isa. 42: 11 "let the wilderness and the

cities thereof lift up their voice".

The English word retains something of the primitive idea as may be seen by

examining its composition and origin. It is composed of the word "wilder", a shortened

form of "wild deer", and our forefathers when laying out a garden often set aside one

portion called a wilderness, so that it may grow in unchecked luxuriance--never that it

may become a desert.

The Greek word translated "wilderness" is eremos which is derived from eremoo "to

make desolate".  The word however sometimes denotes no more than uncultivated

ground used as a common or pasture in distinction from arable and enclosed land

("Shaw's Travels", and Doddridge on Luke 15: 4).

"The wilderness of Judaea" (Matt. 3: 1) does not mean a country absolutely desert

and uninhabited, but only little cultivated and thinly inhabited, as in Josh. 15: 61, 62.

We come now to the passages that provoked this inquiry. The Lord demanded of

Pharaoh through Moses saying:

The essence of this demand is discovered in the contrast that is intended between the

sophistication of Egypt and the primitive uncivilized nature of the wilderness; Egypt

famed for its "wisdom" (Acts 7: 22) which Moses had to unlearn in the "desert" or

"wilderness" (Exod. 3: 1); Egypt noted for its temples, its pyramids, its sphinx, its gods;

Egypt in which even the Israelites trusted sometimes rather than in the Lord, so much so

that Isaiah had to say "now the Egyptians are men, and not God" (Isa. 31: 3); Egypt the

type of the world in its apparent independence of rain from heaven (Zech. 14: 18, 19). In

contrast with Egypt, Scripture places the wilderness, a place unspoiled by the hand of

man, a place where one could meet with God undisturbed by the deadening distractions

of so called civilization.