(14) More desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath.--The name Diblath does not occur elsewhere; but Diblathaim, the dual form, is mentioned in Numbers 33:46-47, Jeremiah 48:22, as a double city on the eastern border of Moab, beyond which lay the great desert which stretches thence eastward, nearly to the Euphrates. It was customary to call any wilderness by the name of the nearest town. (See 1Samuel 23:14-15; 1Samuel 23:24-25; 1Samuel 25:2, &c.) That wilderness appears from this passage to have been proverbial for its desolation.

Verse 14. - More desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath; better, with the Authorized Version, from the wilderness. The name does not appear elsewhere, and has not been identified. Assuming the Authorized Version rendering, we must think of Ezekiel as naming, as Dante haines the Valdichiana ('Inf.,' 29:47), some specially horrible and desolate region. For such a region the name of Diblah (a cake of figs) does not seem appropriate. Taking the Revised Version translation ("from the wilderness toward Diblah"), we have a phrase analogous to "from Dan to Beersheba," as denoting the extent of the desolation. The "wilderness" is usually applied to the nomad region south of Palestine, and this would lead us to look for Diblah in the north, and so to look elsewhere than to the two places Beth-diblathaim (Jeremiah 48:22) and Almon-diblathaim (Numbers 33:46), both of which are in Moab. The difficulty was solved by Jerome by the conjectural emendation of Riblah, the two Hebrew letters for d and r being often written by copyists for each other. Riblah (it is a suggestive fact that the two chief manuscripts of the LXX. the Alexandrian and the Vatican, have Deblatha, or Deblaa, in 2 Kings 23:33; 2 Kings 25:6) was a fortified town on the north road from Palestine to Babylon, where the Babylonian kings used to take up their position during their invasions of the former. Within a short time after Ezekiel wrote this chapter, it became memorable in its connection with Zedekiah's sufferings (comp. 2 Kings 23:33; 2 Kings 25:6, 20, 21; Jeremiah 39:5, 6; Jeremiah 52:9, 10, 26). Its probable site is fixed on the banks of the Orontes. The evidence, on the whole, is, I think, in favour of this interpretation. It is adopted by Ewald, Cornill, Smend, Gesenius, and most recent critics. An additional fact in its favour is that Hamath, in the same region, appears as an ideal northern boundary in Ezekiel 47:16.

6:11-14 It is our duty to be affected, not only with our own sins and sufferings, but to look with compassion upon the miseries wicked people bring upon themselves. Sin is a desolating thing; therefore, stand in awe, and sin not. If we know the worth of souls, and the danger to which unbelievers are exposed, we shall deem every sinner who takes refuge in Jesus from the wrath to come, an abundant recompence for all contempt or opposition we may meet with.So will I stretch out mine hand upon them,.... Not unto them, in a way of mercy; but upon, or against them, in a way of judgment. The Targum paraphrases it,

"and I will lift up the stroke of my power upon them;''

his mighty hand of vengeance:

and make the land desolate; by destroying the inhabitants of it:

yea, more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath, in all their habitations; so the Syriac version renders it, "and I will make this land more desolate than the land of Diblath"; but other versions, "I will make the land desolate from the wilderness of Diblath"; to which the Targum agrees; or, "from the wilderness to Diblath": Kimchi and Ben Melech think this is the same with Riblath; as Deuel is put for Reuel in Numbers 1:14; which was in the land of Hamath, and which, Jerom says, was in his times called Epiphania in Syria; here it was that Nebuchadnezzar brought Zedekiah, and slew his sons before him, Jeremiah 39:5; this, though in Hamath in Syria, was on the borders of the land of Israel, Numbers 34:8; so that "hence from the desert of Diblath", as the Arabic version renders it, "even to Jerusalem", as may be supplied, takes in the whole land, and shows that it should be utterly desolate. There is a Bethdiblathaim mentioned in Jeremiah 48:22; as in Moab; and there is also Almondiblathaim, which was one of the stations of the Israelites; and seems to be in Moab, or on its borders, Numbers 33:46; and appears, by the places named with it, to be the same as that in Jeremiah; and so was part of that terrible wilderness through which the Israelites passed; and to which the desolation of the land of Israel by the Chaldeans is compared; and which serves to confirm our version, which makes the desolation to be greater than that:

and they shall know that I am the Lord; the true God; the one and only Lord God; who never changes his purposes; fulfils his promises and threatenings; and there is no escaping his mighty hand.