Bible Strands
Psalms 107:33
He turns rivers into deserts, springs of water into thirsty ground,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses the assembly and council of elders, situating this declaration within a liturgical call to praise following accounts of deliverance. The verse functions as a corporate statement of God’s sovereign control over the natural world.
The words — יָשֵׂ֣ם (ya.Sem) literally means “he made” or “he turned,” and לְ/מִדְבָּ֑ר (le./mid.Bar) means “into a wilderness.” These terms frame the text’s description of divine action on the landscape.
The thread — This motif of God altering waterways and land appears in Isaiah 42:15, Isaiah 50:2, and Amos 4:7, where divine power to dry or withhold water is consistently tied to judgment or redemption. The pattern establishes a recurring biblical theme of God’s authority over creation.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of God’s absolute authority to change the earth’s condition, while the surrounding context links this power to the moral state of its inhabitants. It asks the reader to accept that environmental shifts are direct expressions of divine will, not random natural events.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground;
Cross-references
- Isaiah 42:15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation. I will turn the rivers into dry land and drain the marshes.
- Isaiah 50:2 Why was no one there when I arrived? Why did no one answer when I called? Is My hand too short to redeem you? Or do I lack the strength to deliver you? Behold, My rebuke dries up the sea; I turn the rivers into a desert; the fish rot for lack of water and die of thirst.
- Amos 4:7 “I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was three months away. I sent rain on one city but withheld it from another. One field received rain; another without rain withered.
- 1 Kings 17:1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”
- 1 Kings 18:5 Then Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go throughout the land to every spring and every valley. Perhaps we will find grass to keep the horses and mules alive so that we will not have to destroy any livestock.”
- Psalms 74:15 You broke open the fountain and the flood; You dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
- Isaiah 13:19 And Babylon, the jewel of the kingdoms, the glory of the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.
- Isaiah 19:5 The waters of the Nile will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and empty.
- Isaiah 34:9 Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.
- Isaiah 44:27 who says to the depths of the sea, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your currents,’