In a hate-filled slur, the Jewish people have been referred to as “Wandering Jews,” even naming a plant as such. Oh, but you say, no one means anything by it. Maybe. Or maybe not.
I suppose the term comes from a misunderstanding of the forty years Israel spent in the Wilderness after our LORD extricated them from slavery in Egypt.
Moving on. Wednesday is a day to write from a word beginning with “W.” So how about Wander?
Our Jewish ancestors didn’t wander. (Gentiles are adopted into Israel. Remember, one tree, wild and native branches.) Wander means: to move about without a fixed course, aim, or goal; to go idly about, i.e., wandering around the house.
One might infer that to wander means more than having no destination, but also having no guide or guidance.
Recall Abraham. Long before Israel’s enslavement in Egypt there was Abraham, father of Israel as a people, a nation. “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.” —Genesis 12:1—5
I like the word “sojourn,” for some reason. I’ve associated it with moving about, traveling, even wandering. Not necessarily so. Sojourn means a temporary stay. It may involve traveling to a particular place, but certainly not wandering. We see “sojourn” used in connection with Abraham going to Egypt for a time.
“Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.” —Genesis 12:10
Getting back on track. Forty years in the Wilderness. “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.’ ”
The LORD is the guide. His Word to and through Moses is the guidance.
Like they say in those silly commercials, “But that’s not ALL!”
But first, an aside. Even GotQuestions calls the movements of Israel in the Wilderness wandering. “He cursed them with forty years of wilderness wandering until the unbelieving generation died off, never stepping foot in the Promised Land.” —GotQuestions.org
Harrumph!
Anyway. “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.” —Genesis 13:21
The LORD is the guide. His Glory in the pillar of cloud is the guidance.
No, wandering was not what Israel did in the Wilderness. Israel had a guide and a destination. There is a reason it took forty years. That’s for another time, though.
LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .
Jonah’s Song 