The ancient Israelite authors of the Hebrew Bible were not philosophers so what they could not say about God in logical terms they expressed through metaphor and imagery. To present God in His most impenetrable otherness the image they chose was the desert. The desert was Ancient Israels southern frontier an unknown region that was always elsewhere from that elsewhere God has comeGod came from the South Hab 33 God when you marched from the desert Ps 688 from his southland mountain slopes Deut