Jeremiah 2:6 - Exposition

Neither said they, etc.; as their children's children were forced by stress of trouble to say ( Isaiah 63:11 ; see note). A land of desserts and of pits. The first phrase applied to the region through which the Israelites passed ("a wilderness") was vague, and might mean merely pasture-land. The remainder of the description, however, shows that "wilderness" is here meant, as often (e.g. Isaiah 35:1 ; Isaiah 50:2 ), in the sense of "desert." Though recent travelers have shown that the Sinaitie peninsula is not by any means universally a "desert," and that in ancient times it was still less so, it is not unnatural that an agricultural people should regard it as a most inhospitable region, and should even idealize its terrors (comp. Deuteronomy 8:15 ). "Pits," i.e. rents and fissures in the soil, in which the unwary traveler might lose his life ( Jeremiah 18:20 , Jeremiah 18:22 ).