"'Wilderness Generation,' the title, is biblical in its origin. It's a reference to the children born in the wilderness in the book of Exodus. I'm thinking of the generations born in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. I'm curious about how we are doing and where we are going. We have inherited so much history of protest and progress, and this moment feels like so much of that is being eroded. The play is trying to look at these generations as characters. Each of the cousins at the heart of the play fall within Gen X, Millennial, and a hint of Gen Z."
— James Ijames
The "wilderness generation" refers to the Israelites who followed Moses from Egypt, as detailed in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in the Bible. Exodus sees them delivered from slavery in Egypt, wandering through "the wilderness" (generally assumed to be the plains of Moab desert.)
According to Biblical scholar Jason Elder, the story of the people wandering in the wilderness "is a theological roadmap of dependence, rebellion, renewal, and trust." God initially promised Moses that the journey to the promised land of Canaan would be swift. However, as Moses is receiving the Ten Commandments—the Law of how they were to live in covenant as a people with their God, and rules about how to worship—the Israelites lose faith in God and the journey they are on. For people who remember their Bible stories, these incidents include building and worshiping the Golden Calf, complaining about the manna God provides for them to eat, lying about Canaan when they could have entered it, saying it was unconquerable when they doubted God would help them take the land from its inhabitants.
Ijames uses the Psalmist's remembrance of God's past punishment of the Wilderness Generation for one of the epitaphs for the play. The psalmist is celebrating the greatness of God ("let us make a joyful noise to God in song"), going on to remind the faithful, "For forty years I loathed that generation and said, 'They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.' Therefore I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.'" —Psalms 95: 10-11
For his part, Ijames imagines a generation weary from the struggles that their parents' generation have handed them, eager to hold onto the progress they've been given but trying to heal from the scars of the struggle, find a home in each other, and create for themselves—and their children—a family space of trust and renewal, full of the promise that God offered the fleeing Israelites.