Be Mindful of Bemidbar

In English we call the fourth book of the Bible “Numbers,” but in Hebrew it is called BeMidbar, which means “in the wilderness.” This title is taken from the fourth word in the opening verse of Numbers:

v’yedaber YHWH el-Mosheh bemidbar Sinai...

(“And YHWH spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai...)

If you look at this statement in Hebrew, you might notice that the first word, v’yeDaBeR (“spoke”), and the fourth word, bemiDBaR (“in the wilderness”), share the D-B-R root. When used as a verb, the D-B-R root is the common word for “speak.” When used as a noun, the middle letter beit makes a “v” sound for davar, which means “word” or “thing.”

There are other nouns that are formed with the D-B(or V)-R root. A spokesman is a DoVeR. A talkative person is a DaVRan. DaVRanut is oratory. And a wilderness is a miDBaR.

Why is the word “wilderness” formed from a root which usually means “speak” or “word”? Is it just a coincidence, or is there a connection between these two ideas? Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I’m more inclined to believe that there is a connection. I base this on some observations about the wilderness and on some Bible passages that suggest a connection between the wilderness and speaking. Or to be more precise, a connection between the wilderness and hearing God’s voice speaking to man.

When we read the Scriptures, we often unknowingly make the mistake of imposing our own ideas onto the Biblical text. Our own background and personal experiences in life affect how we interpret the text. The first time I read in the Bible about Moses and the children of Israel wandering in the “wilderness,” I pictured them traveling through a green forest with lots of trees, something similar to the wilderness I had seen driving through places like the Ozarks, or northern Wisconsin, or the tree-covered hills of Kentucky and Tennessee.

I later learned that the wilderness of Sinai is not a green forest with lots of trees. It’s a barren, sandy desert with rocks strewn about. It’s more like the deserts of the Southwestern United States than like the wilderness of northern Wisconsin. Apparently that reference to the wilderness of Sinai as “a waste howling wilderness” in Deuteronomy 32:10 must not have registered with me the first time I read through the Bible.

The first time I went to Israel, in 1976, I saw what a “wilderness” in the Middle East looks like. It was not at all like the wilderness areas I had seen in middle America.

In 1977, before Israel gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, I was in Eilat with a group of friends. Someone told me that there was a local Bedouin Arab who could be hired to drive people through the Sinai Peninsula to Jebel Musa (“Mount of Moses”) in his Jeep. After making a few inquiries, I found our Bedouin. He was wearing long robes and had a wispy beard hanging from his chin and a curved dagger hanging from his belt. Except for his Jeep, he looked like he had stepped out of Bible times. He spoke no English, only Arabic and Hebrew, so we negotiated in Hebrew and agreed on a price. A couple of hours before dawn the next morning, our Hebrew-speaking Bedouin chauffeur picked us up on the beach of the Red Sea where we were sleeping and drove us into the desert.

Hour after hour we drove south through the barren, sandy desert on a dirt “road.” Occasionally we would see small groups of Bedouins encamped with their tents and camels in places that were hours away from civilization by car, and probably days away by camel. At one point, a lone Arab standing alongside the “road” flagged down our driver and asked if he could spare any water. Our driver poured him some water, and the man made us some tea by boiling water in an old IDF tin can over his campfire. He had nothing else around him except a bag of his belongings, a few camels, and a roofless “sukkah” made of dried bushes. It made us wonder how in the world these people survive in this desert.

Traveling through the wilderness of Sinai provided me with a real, geographical context for all those stories about the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. But it did more. It also provided me with some thoughts and observations about the desert and about God speaking to man in the desert.

The desert, the midbar, is bare and barren, and bears no mark of man’s meddling. As the Gesenius Lexicon says, the word denotes a “sterile and solitary region.” It is far away from the worldly splendor of Egypt. It is isolated, virgin territory where God’s expression of Himself is not filtered through the clutter of human culture and civilization. If you go deep into the desert at night, you will be aware of nothing except the silence of the stars and the voice of God. The eerie silence in the desert can provide man with a listening ear. It can create a desert in the heart of man, a blank slate upon which the Creator can write the words He wishes to speak to the man, if the man will listen.

The Book of Numbers starts by telling us that Yahweh spoke (v’yeDaBeR) to Moses in the wilderness (bemiDBaR). This double use of the D-B-R root in this opening verse suggests a connection between the wilderness and hearing God speak.

A similar indication of this connection can be seen in Luke’s Gospel. Luke 1:80 says that John the Baptist “was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” Luke does not tell us exactly what John was doing in the desert all those years, but John apparently acquired a listening ear that could discern the voice of God. Luke begins the third chapter of his Gospel with these words:

“Now in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea, and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.”

I love the way Luke lists the names of all the Caesars and governors and tetrarchs and high priests, and tells about the territory each of them ruled, and then, after listing all of these political and religious leaders, all of the powerful big-shots of the civilized world, Luke tells us that the word of God came to John in the wilderness.

What a contrast! Not only does Luke contrast the powerful leaders of the political and religious world to John the Baptist, he also contrasts the civilized, cultured cities of Judaea, Galilee, Iturea, Trachonitis, and Abilene to the desert. God does not send His word to any of the powerful, well-dressed and well-fed big-shots in the civilized world, not even to the high priests in Jerusalem. God bypasses all those big-shots and sends His word to an obscure, unknown man who grew up in the desert wearing coarse camel hair garments and eating locusts and wild honey.

When Yeshua spoke to the people about John the Baptist, He said: “What went ye out for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee” (Luke 7:24-27).

Hundreds of years earlier, God had spoken to Moses in the desert to prepare His people for their arrival in the Promised Land. Now He spoke to John the Baptist in the desert to prepare His people for the arrival of the Messiah. To whom will He speak to in the desert to prepare His people for the second arrival of the Messiah?

I believe that God is speaking even now, not just to one but to many people, to prepare His people for the return of Yeshua. These people are not necessarily in a literal desert in a geographical sense. Rather, they are people who have figuratively gone to the wilderness by disentangling themselves and detaching themselves from the ungodly world system and from the apostate church systems around them. Let me elaborate.

The clearest revelation of the Almighty is given to those who figuratively, inwardly go into the desert. Our minds are crowded and cluttered with lies, misinformation, and vain thoughts which have seeped into our thinking from the world around us. To think rightly, we have to restore our spiritual sanity by separating ourselves from the culture that surrounds us. We do not need to physically and geographically go into the desert; we just have to spiritually and mentally separate ourselves from the world around us, so that we are in the world but not of the world.

It’s okay to be thankful that we are American citizens living in 21st-century America, but we must not let 21st-century American culture affect how we view the Scriptures. To receive Divine revelation from the Scriptures, we must approach them without our 21st-century American eyeglasses, because those eyeglasses will distort our spiritual vision. If we want Divine revelation from the Bible, we must forget our own nationality, our own culture, and sometimes even our own church background and family. None of these things should dictate our view of the Scriptures. If we want Divine revelation, we need to look at the naked truth of God’s Word apart from the influence of our times, our nationality, our culture, and even our former theological indoctrination and our own family if they are contrary to the Scriptures.

“Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house” (Ps. 45:10). These are the instructions to the Bride of Messiah in Psalm 45. The Book of Hebrews tells us that Psalm 45 speaks of the Messiah. (See Hebrews 1:8f.) Psalm 45 presents the Messiah as a Warrior King going to battle against the Enemy. The Messiah’s victory is followed by a description of His Bride. To fully appreciate the words spoken to the Bride in this psalm, we need to consider Deuteronomy 21:10-13, where instructions are given concerning captives taken in war. If a man sees a woman among the captives and wants to marry her, the woman must do five things. She must go to the man’s house, shave her head, pare her nails, take off the raiment of her captivity, and mourn her father and mother a full month. Then she can be the man’s bride.

These Torah instructions to a captive bride have a spiritual application to the Bride of Messiah. Like the captive Gentile bride who had to shave her head, pare her nails, and take off the raiment of her captivity, we have to strip away our old identity. We have to forget our former Gentile identity, because we are now being joined to Israel through our union with our Israelite Bridegroom, the One who has captured and captivated our hearts.

We have to forget our 21st-century American identity, because we are entering an eternal kingdom which includes people from every nation, kindred, tongue, and tribe. We even have to forget our former church background and family ties if they interfere with our relationship with the King, because He has said, “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:37).

The instructions to the Bride in Psalm 45 to forget her own people and her father’s house are introduced by attention-getting words: “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house.” Notice those words: Hearken. Consider. Incline thine ear. The Holy Spirit wants to be sure that these instructions are heard, considered, and obeyed. The result of hearing, considering, and obeying is expressed in the next verse: “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.”

If we want to be the Bride whose beauty the King greatly desires, we have to go to the desert. We have to disentangle ourselves and separate ourselves from the world system in which we live, and live a life apart. We are called to live as a holy nation in the midst of a harlot nation, a wilderness people in the midst of a worldly people.

When Moses and John the Baptist were living in the wilderness, they heard God speak. The word of God came to Moses to prepare the people for their arrival in the Promised Land. The word of God came to John the Baptist to prepare the people for the first arrival of the Messiah. Those who are living as a wilderness people at this time in history are inclining their ear to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches today to prepare us for the second arrival of the Messiah. What we are hearing the Spirit say to the church can be summed up in the first word that John the Baptist spoke in the New Testament: “Repent” (Matt. 3:2). Turn back to your Maker and to His ways. Return to the ancient paths of the Patriarchs and Prophets. Remember ye the law of Moses. Stop disobeying your heavenly Father’s instructions, and obey Him by the power of the Holy Spirit which He has given to you.

Let me close by pointing out one other Bible passage that suggests a connection between the desert and speaking. In the Song of Solomon, the Bridegroom says to the Bride, “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely” (4:3).

In the latter part of that statement, the word translated “speech” is midbar. Normally midbar means “wilderness” or “desert,” but here it is translated “speech.” It would sound awkward in English to say “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy wilderness is comely.” But if it is the Bridegroom speaking to His Bride who has detached herself from the world to go to a figurative desert so she can more clearly discern the voice of her Beloved, then maybe it’s not so strange to hear the Bridegroom say to her “thy wilderness is comely.”

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Image: Michelangelo's Moses Minus the Horns by Daniel Botkin from his Monochromatic Monotheistic Gallery. See all Daniel’s work on his art website: DanielBotkin.com.