Ulangan 8:15

8:15 and who brought you through the great, fearful desert of venomous serpents ¹  and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow ²  from a flint rock and

Ayub 12:24

12:24 He deprives the leaders of the earth ³ 

of their understanding; ⁴ 

he makes them wander

in a trackless desert waste. ⁵ 

Mazmur 107:40

107:40 He would pour ⁶  contempt upon princes,

and he made them wander in a wasteland with no road.

[8:15]  ¹ tn Heb “flaming serpents”; KJV, NASB “fiery serpents”; NAB “saraph serpents.” This figure of speech (metonymy) probably describes the venomous and painful results of snakebite. The feeling from such an experience would be like a burning fire (שָׂרָף, saraf).

[8:15]  ² tn Heb “the one who brought out for you water.” In the Hebrew text this continues the preceding sentence, but the translation begins a new sentence here for stylistic reasons.

[12:24]  ³ tn Heb “the heads of the people of the earth.”

[12:24]  ⁴ tn Heb “heart.”

[12:24]  ⁵ tn The text has בְּתֹהוּ לֹא־דָרֶךְ (bÿtohu lo’ darekh): “in waste – no way,” or “in a wasteland [where there is] no way,” thus, “trackless” (see the discussion of negative attributes using לֹא [lo’] in GKC 482 §152.u).

[107:40]  ⁶ tn The active participle is understood as past durative here, drawing attention to typical action in a past time frame. However, it could be taken as generalizing (in which case one should translate using the English present tense), in which case the psalmist moves from narrative to present reality. Perhaps the participial form appears because the statement is lifted from Job 12:21.