Five-minute study · Day 37 · Isaiah 40
Isaiah 40:3
A word worth stopping on: wilderness מדבר midbar
A voice cries: in the wilderness, prepare the way of the LORD. That verse split history open. John the Baptist quoted it. All four Gospels applied it to him. But a thousand years before John ate locusts in the Judean desert, the word midbar, 'wilderness,' already carried layers of meaning that shaped how Israel understood their God. And two thousand years after Isaiah wrote it, a community of Jewish scribes read this verse and walked into the desert to live it out. They left their library behind in caves near the Dead Sea.
Word study: wilderness
- Hebrew
- מדבר
- Pronounced
- midbar
- Strong's
- H4057
- Definition
- Wilderness, open pastureland, a place for driving flocks. From davar, meaning to drive or to lead. The place where the shepherd leads.
Midbar comes from the verb davar, to drive or lead, particularly livestock. A midbar is where you take the flock. Open, uncultivated, unowned. In a world where cities meant temples to other gods and markets selling idol-food, the midbar was clean. Empty. A place where the only voice you could hear was the one you had followed there.
Israel's defining experience with God happened in the midbar. Forty years between Egypt and Canaan. Manna every morning. The pillar of fire at night. Every covenant was cut, every law was given, every complaint was lodged and answered in the wilderness. Hosea 2:14 says God will 'allure her, and bring her into the wilderness (midbar), and speak comfortably unto her.' The wilderness is where God courts his people.
Isaiah 40:3 places the voice in the midbar. Prepare the way of the LORD. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The preparation happens in the empty place, the stripped-down place, the place where distractions have been removed and the road can be laid bare.
Historical context · Second century BC to 68 AD
The Community That Moved to the Desert
In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls began emerging from caves near Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Among the documents was the Community Rule (1QS), the charter of the group that lived there. Column 8, line 14 quotes Isaiah 40:3 directly and applies it to their community's decision to relocate to the wilderness.
The Qumran community believed they were fulfilling Isaiah's words by literally preparing the way in the midbar. Their preparation was the study of Torah. The Community Rule states: 'This is the study of the Law which he commanded through Moses, so that they may act according to all that has been revealed from time to time.' They moved to the desert to read, to copy, to study, and to wait.
James VanderKam, in 'The Dead Sea Scrolls Today,' notes that the Qumran community understood Isaiah 40:3 as a program for action. The wilderness was where you went to strip away the corruption of Jerusalem's compromised Temple establishment and prepare for God's intervention. John the Baptist, preaching in the same Judean wilderness a generation later, may have known of this community. His message echoed theirs: the wilderness is where renewal begins.
For reflection
The midbar is the stripped-down place. No distractions, no noise, just the voice and the road. You do not need to move to a desert. Where is the midbar in your week? Is there a space, even thirty minutes, where every other voice goes quiet?
The preparation Isaiah describes happens in the empty place. Busyness is the opposite of midbar.
Sources: BDB Lexicon; VanderKam, 'The Dead Sea Scrolls Today'; Motyer, 'The Prophecy of Isaiah'