"זכרתי לך חסד נעוריך... לכתך אחרי במדבר בארץ לא זרועה"
“I recall for you the kindness of your youth, as you went after Me in the wilderness, in an unsown land.”

QUESTION: A midbar — wilderness — is an unsown land, so why the redundancy?

ANSWER: Before Hashem gave the Torah to the Jewish people, He offered it to the nations of the world. Each one of them rejected it, saying that it was impossible for them to observe it. For instance, Yishmael had a problem with “You shall not steal” and Eisav had a problem with “You shall not kill” (see Sifri, Devarim 33:2).

While every midbar — wilderness — is an unsown land, the wilderness in which the Jews traveled was unique. It was sown with the theory known as “Lo” — “No” — i.e. impossible for them. Hashem is particularly grateful to the Jewish people, for not only did we follow Him in the wilderness and observed His Torah, but we did it in an eretz lo zeru’ah — a land where the “no” was sown. Everybody claimed that it was impossible to observe Torah, and nevertheless we faithfully lived a true Torah life.