This is certainly a reference to exile, linked back with Israel’s wilderness wanderings (Numbers 20:2–13). For it was here that Israel was punished for questioning God’s provision, despite him delivering them from Egypt.1 Thus the wilderness metaphor threatens Israel with removal from the land God had given them, to a wilderness that lacks God’s abundant blessings and protection. Dearman2 suggests that it compounds the threat of stripping Israel naked, since being unclothed and dehydrated in an arid wilderness would certainly lead to death.
3 lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.