In the East, wide, extended plains are usually liable to drought, and consequently to barrenness. Hence the Hebrew language describes a plain, a desert, and an unfruitful waste, by the same word. The term which is in general rendered 'wilderness,' means, properly, a grazing tract, uncultivated and destitute of wood, but fit for pasture—a heath or steppe. The pastures of the wilderness are mentioned in;;; and may be very well explained by reference to the fact, that even the Desert of Arabia, which is utterly burnt up with excessive drought in summer, is in winter and spring covered with rich and tender herbage. Whence it is that the Arabian tribes retreat into their deserts on the approach of the autumnal rains, and when spring has ended and the droughts commence, return to the lands of rivers and mountains, in search of the pastures which the deserts no longer afford. The same word may therefore denote a region which is desert, and also one which, at stated seasons, contains rich and abundant pastures. But in fact the word translated in our Bibles by 'desert' or 'wilderness' often means no more than the common, uncultivated grounds in the neighborhood of towns on which the inhabitants grazed their domestic cattle.
The term a great desert or wilderness is especially applied to that desert of Stony Arabia in which the Israelites sojourned under Moses (;;; , etc.). This was the most terrible of the deserts with which the Israelites were acquainted, and the only real desert in their immediate neighborhood. It is described under ARABIA; as is also that Eastern desert extending from the eastern border of the country beyond Judea to the Euphrates. It is emphatically called 'the Desert,' without any proper name, in; .
The several deserts or wildernesses mentioned in Scripture are the following, which will be found under their respective names: the deserts of Edom, Etham, Judah, Kadesh, Maon, Paran, Shur, Sin, and Sinai.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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