Dryness

A lack of moisture, often due to lack of rain or a period of drought, leading to vegetation drying up. Dryness is often used as a symbol of hopelessness or of the absence of God's blessing.

The dryness of river beds

Evaporation and recession of floodwaters

Genesis 8:13–14 See also Genesis 8:1–11

In Noah’s six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. So Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was fully dry.

God's drying up of rivers to allow his people to cross

Joshua 4:23 See also Exodus 14:10–31; Joshua 2:10, Joshua 3:1–17, Joshua 5:1; Psalm 106:7–11; Isaiah 11:15, Isaiah 51:10

For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, just as He did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over.

Other instances of rivers drying up

1 Kings 17:7 See also 2 Kings 19:24 parallel Isaiah 37:25; Psalm 74:15; Isaiah 15:6, Isaiah 19:4–10, Isaiah 42:15, Isaiah 44:24–27, Isaiah 50:2; Jeremiah 48:34, Jeremiah 51:36; Ezekiel 30:12; Joel 1:20; Nahum 1:4

Some time later, however, the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.

The dryness of vegetation

Psalm 37:2 See also Job 8:11–12, Job 8:19, Job 14:2, Job 15:30; Isaiah 34:4 on the day of the LORD; Isaiah 40:7–8; Jeremiah 8:13, Jeremiah 12:4; Ezekiel 19:10–14; Hosea 9:16; Matthew 13:3–6 parallels Mark 4:2–6, Luke 8:4–6 the parable of the sower; Matthew 21:19–20 parallel Mark 11:20–21 the fig-tree withers

For they wither quickly like grass and wilt like tender plants.

Physical dryness

Ezekiel 37:11 See also Psalm 102:4, Psalm 102:11; Proverbs 17:22; Zechariah 11:17

Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look, they are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’

Dryness indicative of desolation and hopelessness

Joel 1:12 See also Isaiah 24:7, Isaiah 33:9; Jeremiah 23:10; Joel 1:10, Joel 1:17; Zechariah 9:5, Zechariah 10:11

The grapevine is dried up, and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, palm, and apple— all the trees of the orchard— are withered. Surely the joy of mankind has dried up.

Dryness indicating God's withholding of moisture due to sin

Deuteronomy 28:22–24; 1 Kings 8:35–36