Blog Desert Archetype #1

Role that the Desert plays in the Bible Old and New Testament

Mathew 4:1-11

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”

7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’[e]”

11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Exodus 16:1-3

16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

There are many references to the desert as a place of hardship, trials, and hopelessness throughout the entire Bible. Some of the most popular stories of the Bible take place in the desert where a group of people (usually the Israelites) or a very important person (usually a prophet) have to endure hardship in order to strengthen themselves and to ultimately become more dependent on God. In the Old Testament, the Jews are freed from 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians and now have to walk through the vast desert that stands between the Egyptian empire and the Promised Land. It takes the Jews 40 years of moving through the desert to finally get to the Promised Land. However, throughout these 40 years, the Jews were stripped of everything they knew (Proper shelter, farmable land, etc.) and were forced to bow their knees before God and ask for his mercy and grace to provide them with their everyday needs. The desert plays a very important role in this story because it forces the Israelites to realize how vulnerable and hopeless they are, and that they have a God who will provide for them and guide them especially in their most dire time of need. 

The Desert is also the place where Jesus, the Christian Messiah, went to fast for 40 days after his baptism at the Jordan River. Once again we see the depiction of the desert as a place of bareness, hopelessness, and even death. On Jesus' last day of fasting the Devil comes to him and tempts him three times in an attempt to defeat him and test if he truly is the Messiah. In this story, the Desert is to an extent personified through the Devil as he is now luring Jesus into sin and ultimately death. First, the Devil tries to tempt his human side by challenging him to change a rock into bread since he is so hungry after 40 days of fasting. After failing to succeed the Devil tempts him by asking him to throw himself off a cliff and test God. Once again the Devil fails and in a final attempt to make Jesus sin the Devil tempts his human lust for power by presenting him the glory of all Kingdoms and promising him all of their power. Jesus the Messiah is steadfast and simply dismisses the Devil after his third try. Throughout this story, we see how the desert symbolizes the sinful temptations that the human flesh is weak and susceptible to, but that God's divinity is immune to. 

In both of these stories, the desert represents a place that reveals the weaknesses of the human flesh but also the place that allows humanity to become humble and to truly depend on an entity much more powerful than itself called God. 

Works Cited

The Holy Bible, New International Version: Containing the Old Testament and the New Testament. International Bible Society, 1997.