'Waste' in the Bible

Now Hobab the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, had come up out of the town of palm-trees, with the children of Judah, into the waste land of Arad; and he went and was living among the Amalekites;

For the Midianites came with their cattle and their tents like a great swarm of locusts. They and their camels were without number, and they entered the land to waste it.

Then Gideon said, Because of this, when the Lord has given Zebah and Zalmunna into my hands, I will have you stretched on a bed of thorns of the waste land and on sharp stems, and have you crushed as grain is crushed on a grain-floor.

But when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the waste land to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh;

Then he went on through the waste land and round the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and put up their tents on the other side of the Arnon; they did not come inside the limit of Moab, for the Arnon was the limit of Moab.

All the limit of the Amorites was theirs, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and from the waste land even to Jordan.

And the people see him, and praise their god, for they said, 'Our god hath given in our hand our enemy, and he who is laying waste our land, and who multiplied our wounded.'

So turning their backs on the men of Israel, they went in the direction of the waste land; but the fight overtook them; and those who came out of the town were heading them off and putting them to the sword.

And turning, they went in flight to the rock of Rimmon in the waste land: and on the highways five thousand of them were cut off by the men of Israel, who, pushing on hard after them to Geba, put to death two thousand more.

But six hundred men, turning back, went in flight to the rock of Rimmon in the waste land, and were living on the rock of Rimmon for four months.