Jesus went into the wilderness to pray12/31/2023 What does wilderness mean in your language? Browse “Wilderness Babel” via the map. This records a search for solitude, for self-discovery, for divine presence, but this process, crucially, seems to require the ambience of the natural environment. “A great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). The Devil is there, but so is the Spirit. Jesus is baptized by John and then is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered unto him. (Matthew 4:1) And immediately the Spirit drives him (to cast out, with the idea of force) into the wilderness. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward hungry. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (being tempted) of the devil. The wilderness figures at critical junctures in the life of Jesus. Now we can address the reason Jesus went into the wilderness. His disciples saw him leave to pray, and later return. He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God (Luke 6:12). At times, he went away by himself, to be alone (Matthew 14:23 Mark 6:4647 John 6:15). Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Turning to the New Testament, which was written in Greek, not Hebrew, the word most often translated as “wilderness” is eremos (or eremia), an isolated place. What was written animated his life, and when he withdrew, he went to speak to his Father in prayer. Linguists will make the point that the Hebrews did not have an exact equivalent of the contemporary English word “wilderness.” Nevertheless, the Hebrews evidently knew the experience of confronting the wild. There is a psychology as well as a geography of wilderness, a theology gained in the wilderness. The wilderness is a locale for intense experiences-of stark need for food and water (manna and quails), of isolation (Elijah and the still small voice), of danger and divine deliverance (Hagar and Ishmael), of renewal, of encounters with God (Moses, the burning bush, the revelation of the divine name, Mount Sinai). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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