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 

So now, look, the Lord has preserved my life, just as he promised, these past forty-five years since the Lord spoke these words to Moses, during which Israel traveled through the wilderness. Now look, I am today eighty-five years old.

But God turned away from them and gave them over ¹  to worship the host ²  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ³  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ⁴  house of Israel?

Within the territory of the tribe of Reuben across the Jordan River east of Jericho: ¹  Bezer in the desert and its pasturelands, Jahzah and its pasturelands,

and suddenly ¹  a great wind ²  swept across ³  the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they died! And I – only I alone – escaped to tell you!”

Is this the one who made the world like a desert, who ruined its ¹  cities, and refused to free his prisoners so they could return home?”’ ² 

For the fortified city ¹  is left alone; it is a deserted settlement and abandoned like the desert. Calves ²  graze there; they lie down there and eat its branches bare. ³ 

To you, O Lord, I call out for help, ¹  for fire ²  has burned up ³  the grassy pastures, ⁴  flames have razed ⁵  all the trees in the fields.

Even the wild animals ¹  cry out to you; ²  for the river beds ³  have dried up; fire has destroyed ⁴  the grassy pastures. ⁵ 

And the child kept growing ¹  and becoming strong ²  in spirit, and he was in the wilderness ³  until the day he was revealed ⁴  to Israel.

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 

Before him the coastlands ¹  will bow down, and his enemies will lick the dust. ² 

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.

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 

“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 

Early in the morning Abraham took ¹  some food ²  and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He put them on her shoulders, gave her the child, ³  and sent her away. So she went wandering ⁴  aimlessly through the wilderness ⁵  of Beer Sheba.

So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, that looks toward the wilderness. ¹