Think about the location: the wilderness. The term obviously refers to a literal place, most likely the wilderness of Judea (Matt 3:1), but it’s also a metaphor for unholy ground.
We’ve seen this in one particular instance. Conceptually, the wilderness was where Israelites believed “desert demons,” including Azazel, lived. The Azazel material is especially telling, since, as I noted in our earlier discussion, Jewish practice of the Day of Atonement ritual in Jesus’ day included driving the