The Place Where Intimacy Is Found

The people are not brought from Egypt into the land they had expected, but into the desert which is not a trial to be endured.  It is instead an aspect of their salvation as real as anything that might follow.  It is perhaps in the desert that they will be most certainly God's people.  They have stopped being Pharaoh's and as time goes by they will be less God's, unless they can return to the desert, the place where the intimacy is really found.