Isaiah 35:1

1. The wilderness and the solitary place “The solitary place” spoken of in the previous chapter, but now the home of the wild beasts no longer. See on Isaiah 35:7. The change is described under the still-used figure of a desert, but a desert now clothed with a luxuriant growth of blooming vegetation.

Shall be glad for them Aben Ezra, Furst, and Delitzsch deny that “for them” is a correct reading; they claim the verb to end with a strengthened form only, not with a suffix requiring “for them.” This relieves the difficulty as to the meaning. Then it reads, Desert and waste shall rejoice; desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, (or better, as the narcissus, or crocus, or the anemone.) Passing north from the Sinaitic range over the blanched and broken, yet generally level, plateau et-Tih, one is cheered on reaching the “South Land” by the sight of bulbous plants of the genera Scilla squills, iris, narcissus, etc. which cover frequent localities from as far south as the travel of a day and a half to Beer-sheba. The anemone blooms beautifully as the travel in March is continued northward, and this, by Tristram, is believed to be the “rose” the “rose of Sharon.”