“As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so I shall seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered in a day of cloud and thick darkness.
“My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and on every high hill. And My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, and no one was seeking or searching for them.”
“So the displeasure of יהוה burned against Yisra’ĕl, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the eyes of יהוה was destroyed.
He found him in a wilderness, And in a wasted, howling desert. He encompassed him, He made him understand, He watched over him as the apple of His eye.
who led you through that great and awesome wilderness – fiery serpents and scorpions and thirst – where there was no water, who brought water for you out of the flinty rock,