“‘But I said to their children ¹  in the wilderness, “Do not follow the practices of your fathers; do not observe their regulations, ²  nor defile yourselves with their idols.

The sound of a carefree crowd accompanied her, ¹  including all kinds of men; ²  even Sabeans ³  were brought from the desert. The sisters ⁴  put bracelets on their wrists and beautiful crowns on their heads.

“‘I will make a covenant of peace with them and will rid the land of wild beasts, so that they can live securely ¹  in the wilderness and even sleep in the woods. ² 

Like fire they devour everything in their path; ¹  a flame blazes behind them. The land looks like the Garden of Eden ²  before them, but behind them there is only a desolate wilderness – for nothing escapes them! ³ 

When ¹  John’s messengers had gone, Jesus ²  began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness ³  to see? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁴ 

They did not ask: ‘Where is the Lord who delivered us out of Egypt, who brought us through the wilderness, through a land of desert sands and rift valleys, through a land of drought and deep darkness, ¹  through a land in which no one travels, and where no one lives?’ ² 

Now Moses ¹  was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert ²  and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. ³ 

The Maidens about His Beloved: Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her beloved? The Beloved to Her Lover: Under the apple tree I aroused you; ¹  there your mother conceived you, there she who bore you was in labor of childbirth. ² 

I will make streams flow down the slopes and produce springs in the middle of the valleys. I will turn the desert into a pool of water and the arid land into springs.

Do not fear, wild animals! ¹  For the pastures of the wilderness are again green with grass. Indeed, the trees bear their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield to their fullest. ² 

“Which one ¹  of you, if he has a hundred ²  sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture ³  and go look for ⁴  the one that is lost until he finds it? ⁵ 

He deprives the leaders of the earth ¹  of their understanding; ²  he makes them wander in a trackless desert waste. ³ 

gaunt ¹  with want and hunger, they would gnaw ²  the parched land, in former time desolate and waste. ³ 

Yet they continued to sin against him, and rebelled against the sovereign One ¹  in the desert.

He would pour ¹  contempt upon princes, and he made them wander in a wasteland with no road.

His disciples answered him, “Where can someone get enough bread in this desolate place to satisfy these people?”

“The elders ¹  will listen ²  to you, and then you and the elders of Israel must go to the king of Egypt and tell him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met ³  with us. So now, let us go ⁴  three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice ⁵  to the Lord our God.’

Aaron is to lay his two hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the Israelites and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins, ¹  and thus he is to put them ²  on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man standing ready. ³ 

Nadab and Abihu died ¹  before the Lord ²  when they offered ³  strange ⁴  fire ⁵  before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai, and they had no children. ⁶  So Eleazar and Ithamar ministered as priests ⁷  in the presence of ⁸  Aaron their father.

Then we left Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea.