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Book of Mormon Geography represented by water and terrain

Book of Mormon

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Wildernesses

Wildernesses ended up as a bit of a conundrum. The dilemma is that they are not described very clearly in some aspects yet are a vital part of the geography. At first, they seemed to be uninteresting and I had left most of them out of the early analyses. I had included just the east, south and west wildernesses. After determining that those three wildernesses were insufficient to describe the importance of wildernesses to understanding the geography, I then went back and included every wilderness. The first thing that I noticed is that I had been caught in terminology used by other authors and was not paying close attention to the Book of Mormon. There is no west wilderness in the Book of Mormon. There are wildernesses in the western portion of the lands, but they are not named the west wilderness. Likewise, there are two wildernesses between Nephi and Zarahemla, not just the south wilderness. The south wilderness is a narrow wilderness and the other wilderness is a much bigger and broader wilderness. This leads to a conclusion that there is something about a wilderness that indicates it has a distinctive boundary and that some wildernesses are distinctive enough to warrant a name.

So, what is the nature of a wilderness that allows it to have a distinctive boundary and that it is possible to determine where one wilderness stops and another one starts? In II Nephi 5:53 [7:2], they seem to be a place of little water, "Behold, at my rebuke, I dry up the sea, I make their rivers a wilderness and their fish to stink, because the waters are dried up; and they die because of thirst." On the other hand, there is water in a wilderness, as in I Nephi 1:33 [2:6], "And it came to pass that when he had traveled three days in the wilderness, he pitched his tent in a valley by the side of a river of water." Although there was a wilderness lower in elevation to Jerusalem in the Old World, all references to wildernesses in the New World are they are at the same altitude or higher than the people traveling in them, as in Alma 13:74 [22:30], "And it bordered upon the land which they called Desolation; it being so far northward, that it came into the land which had been peopled, and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla; it being the place of their first landing. And they came from there up into the south wilderness." Wildernesses could be narrow, as in Alma 13:68 [22:27], "And it came to pass that the king sent a proclamation throughout all the land, amongst all his people who were in all his land, who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even to the sea, on the east, and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness."

Wildernesses were not very desirable. They are mentioned in the same context as a desert, as pointed out in II Nephi 5:72 to 73 [8:3], "For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; And he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord." There is a Hebraic parallelism that matches a wilderness to a desert, i.e. "wilderness like Eden" and "desert like the garden of the Lord." People could live in the wilderness, as in Alma 13:70 [22:28], "Now the more idle part of the Lamanites lived in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents; and they were spread through the wilderness, on the west, in the land of Nephi:" Wildernesses were not mountains. There are several verses that include mountains and wildernesses, but as different areas, as in Helaman 4:32 [11:28], "And it came to pass that it was expedient that there should be a stop put to this work of destruction; therefore they sent an army of strong men into the wilderness, and upon the mountains to search out this band of robbers, and to destroy them."

So, we're left with wildernesses being places of little water, yet a place where people can live. They can exist in areas of rising terrain. They could be narrow. Types of terrain that are described by these constraints are plains, hills, and plateaus. The Book of Mormon does describe plains as plains, so that leaves hills and plateaus. Hills and plateaus agree with the descriptions for a wilderness. They are places of little water and there is enough food available to live, though not in abundance. Ridges occurred in areas of wilderness; so hills and plateaus also agree with the terminology that describes ridges, or you can look at it as hills and plateaus allow interpreting the grammar in the Book of Mormon as describing ridges. Either way, wildernesses were areas of hills or plateaus.

In reviewing the use of the term "wilderness" in the Bible, there are four Hebrew words used, midbar, 'arabah, horbah, and jeshimon. The term wilderness or desert in the Bible does not have the same meaning as the desert in English. In Hebrew, it translates better as a place of "solitude" (Isaiah 35:1). It is used to describe:
So, we see that the use of the term "wilderness" in the Book of Mormon is used essentially the same as in the bible. However, it was used in conjunction with elevated places (like the steppes mentioned in the Bible), such as "up into the wilderness" quite often.

© 2002- Aric Turner