Joseph and the Famine

There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine.

I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings.

I myself will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled.

I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins.

Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their ancestors’ sins they will waste away.

and from Bamoth to the valley in Moab where the top of Pisgah overlooks the wasteland.

And Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, overlooking the wasteland.

The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the Lord overthrew in fierce anger.

In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye,

When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying, “Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands, the one who laid waste our land and multiplied our slain.”

But Joab and Abishai pursued Abner, and as the sun was setting, they came to the hill of Ammah, near Giah on the way to the wasteland of Gibeon.

“It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands.

Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord.

The Capture of Rabbah

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, Joab led out the armed forces. He laid waste the land of the Ammonites and went to Rabbah and besieged it, but David remained in Jerusalem. Joab attacked Rabbah and left it in ruins.

Caravans turn aside from their routes; they go off into the wasteland and perish.

He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason; he makes them wander in a trackless waste.

“So man wastes away like something rotten, like a garment eaten by moths.

Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children.

Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed the parched land in desolate wastelands at night.

Their flesh wastes away to nothing, and their bones, once hidden, now stick out.

to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?

I gave it the wasteland as its home, the salt flats as its habitat.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland!

Many times he delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin.