DIBLAH

(Dibʹlah).

A site mentioned by Ezekiel (6:14) when recording Jehovah’s prophecy of the desolation to come upon the land of Israel as recompense for its idolatrous worship. Any ancient location by this name is unknown, and most modern scholars, therefore, hold that “Diblah” is a copyist’s error for “Riblah,” the initial Hebrew letter for “R” (ר) being easily mistaken for the Hebrew letter for “D” (ד). If this is the case, it may be identified with the Biblical Riblah (ruins near modern Ribleh) at the Orontes River, “in the land of Hamath” (2Ki 23:33), and “the wilderness toward Diblah [Riblah]” could have reference to the gravelly unbroken plain of the Syrian Desert that lies to the S and SE of Riblah. Some translators, however, render Ezekiel’s words to read “from the wilderness to Riblah.” (RS) According to such rendering, the meaning might be that Jehovah’s judgment would extend from “the wilderness,” the Promised Land’s traditional southern boundary (Ex 23:31), to the region of “Hamath” (represented by Riblah) far to the north. (1Ki 8:65) Ezekiel’s use of such a phrase would then be the equivalent of the better known “from Dan down to Beer-sheba.”​—Jg 20:1; see RIBLAH No. 2.