Wilderness as Metaphor for God in the Hebrew Bible

The ancient Israelite authors of the Hebrew Bible were not philosophers, so what they could not say about God in logical terms, they expressed through metaphor and imagery. To present God in His most impenetrable otherness, the image they chose was the desert. The desert was Ancient Israel's southern frontier, an unknown region that was always "elsewhere" "from that elsewhere, God has come"--"God came from the South" (Hab 3:3); "God, when you marched from the desert" (Ps 68:8); "from his southland mountain slopes" (Deut 33:2). Robert Miller explores this imagery, shedding light on what the biblical authors meant by associating God with deserts to the south of Israel and Judah. Biblical authors knew of its climate, flora, and fauna, and understood this magnificent desert landscape as a fascinating place of literary paradox. This divine desert was far from lifeless, its plants and animals were tenacious, bizarre, fierce, even supernatural. The spiritual importance of the desert in a biblical context begins with the physical elements whose impact cognitive science can elucidate. Travelers and naturalists of the past two millennia have experienced this and other wildernesses, and