Blogging Bible Study: Digging in the Desert - Wrapping up the Old Testament

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

There are 5 references to 'desert' left in the Old Testament: There are two in Amos, then we have one in Habakkuk, one in Zephaniah and one in Malachi. 

Amos is a sobering book, relating the sin of the people and the coming judgment.

"I brought you up out of Egypt, and I led you forty years in the desert to give you the land of the Amorites.  I also raised up prophets from among your sons and Nazirites from among your young men.  Is this not true, people of Israel?" declares the LORD.  "But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy."  Amos 2:10-12

"Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god which you made for yourselves.  Therefore, I will send you into exile beyond Damascus," says the LORD whose name is God Almighty. -- Amos 5:25-27

Both of these passages in Amos refer to the history of the Israelites in the desert...the forty years in which God provided for them  and they worshiped him.  But, he says, they have abandoned him.  It's interesting that he includes Nazirites along with the prophets as 'raised up'...that is, given a purpose to fulfill among the people.  Nazirites were men who took a vow of service to God; during the (generally specified and rarely...but occasionally...life-long) period of the vow, there was a whole list of specific things they were to refrain from doing, touching, or eating...among the specifics were that they were not to cut their hair and they were not to consume any grape-related product.  They were to be set apart for a purpose.  But the Israelites 'made the Nazirites drink wine'...they caused those set-apart ones to behave like the rest of the nation, and they refused to allow the prophets to speak the words God commanded them to speak. THEN...they gave their honor and their worship to people and things other than God Almighty, who brought them through the desert to their own land.

Oh, man, does this ever sound contemporary...or is it just me?

Moving on...

Habakkuk prophesied to the nation of Judah, immediately before the invasion of the Babylonians.  The Babylonians are specifically named in 1:6, then described in the following verses; one of which uses the word 'desert':

"they all come bent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand." Hab 1:9

A desert wind drives the sand in front of it...and the Babylonians hauled countless Judeans off to exile in Babylon...and God was going to allow it, owing to the idolatry of his people.

The next passage is in Zephaniah.  Chapter 2 is a list of judgments against the peoples who have opposed/ oppressed Israel; verses 13 and 14 mention the desert; I'm going to include verse 15:

He wills stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, leaving Nineveh utterly desolate and dry as the desert.  Flocks and herds will lie down there, creatures of every kind.  The desert owl and the screech owl will roost on her columns.  Their calls will echo through the windows, rubble will be in the doorways, the beams of cedar will be exposed. This is the carefree city that lived in safety.  She said to herself, "I am, and there is none besides me."  What a ruin she has become, a lair for wild beasts!  Zeph. 2:13-15.

Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the nation that carried off the northern kingdom of Israel/Samaria to exile from which they never truly returned...the Ten Lost Tribes.  Even she, in all the military power she had, was brought to ruin...because she thought she was self-sustaining.  Nope.

The final 'desert' verse in the Old Testament is in Malachi, and is a difficult passage, to say the least.

"I have loved you," says the LORD.  But you ask, "How have you loved us?"  "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says.  "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."  -- Malachi 1:2-3

I have seen several different explanations for this passage; Jacob, of course, was the younger twin who actually received the inheritance...the blessing...due to the older brother.  Esau's version of the story is that Jacob tricked him or stole it, but if you go back and read it you'll see that Esau despised it and gave it away to satisfy his physical appetite, only to regret his choice later (Gen. 25:29-34).  There was no trickery or subterfuge involved in Esau's surrendering of his birthright...which included the blessing from his father.  Esau himself was part of a plot to sneak it back from Jacob, but Jacob out tricked him there.  But even then, that wasn't to steal something from Esau...it was to collect what Esau had already given up.  God did bless Esau, because he was Isaac's son, but the descendants of Esau later not only failed to give aid to their cousins Israel/ Judah, but even rejoiced over them when they were attacked and looted the refugees and handed them over to their attackers (Ob. 2:10-14).  A nation without covenant, they were rejected and obliterated.  I think the point here is that  Jacob (Israel/Judah) was preserved and restored to their lands after exile....Esau  (Edom) has passed from the knowledge of men, and the lands that were theirs are now owned by other people who cannot trace their ancestry. Jacob/Israel was favored by God; Esau/Edom was not.  While the scripture tells us that God loves all individuals and does not want any of them to perish, nations are a different issue.  God has specifically said that nations would be judged on their treatment of his people, and that the nations who stand against Israel will ultimately face the consequences of that decision...and 'desert' is frequently used in the description of those consequences.