Spirituality of the Judaean Desert III: Amos of Tekoa

Extract

The term ‘desert’ (midbar) in the Bible will often mislead people in our western countries, for what is meant by the term is, as often as not, something like uncultivated pasture-land or steppe-land. The root debar in cognate languages means ‘to drive to pasture', and the midbar is the zone between cultivable land and absolute desert, a zone to which cattle could be and still are driven to gather what food they can. Such a ‘desert’ does in fact respond to beneficent rain, and sometimes appears, for a short time at least, quite green. The psalmist knew how the desert could be green, and sang of how ‘the stream of plenty flows; flows through the desert pastures, till all the hillsides are clad’ (Ps. lxv, 13). And Job tells of the almighty power of God who has ‘carved a channel for the tempestuous rain, a vent jor the echoing thunderstorm, that they should fall on some lonely desert where foot of man never trod, water those trackless Wastes, and make the green grass spring …’ (Job xxxviii, 26).