Today's Scripture Reading (May 1, 2020): Ezekiel 6
Riblah is a
city that leaped out of Judah's collective nightmare. The town, located in
central Syria, was north of the traditional lands of the nations of Israel and
Judah. When Josiah, the good King of Judah, rode out to meet Necho II of Egypt,
he was routed by the Egyptian King and died trying to impede the Egyptian's
move through his territorial land. After the battle, it was to Riblah that Necho
went to set up camp, before he continued his campaign against the Babylonians. Three
months after Josiah's defeat, Necho removed Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, from Judah's
throne, and the former King of the Jews was imprisoned in Riblah before he was
taken to Egypt to live out the rest of his days.
And in Ezekiel's
near future, Riblah was going to regain its role in the national nightmare. It
would be at Riblah that the Babylonians would make their camp so that they
could launch an attack and siege against Jerusalem in 587 or 586 B.C.E. And it
would be at Riblah that the last King of Judah, Zedekiah, would be taken following
his defeat and parade through Judah at the hands of the Babylonians. It would
be at Riblah that Zedekiah's officials would be executed. And at Riblah, the sons
of Zedekiah would be killed in front of their father, and then Zedekiah would
be blinded so that the death of his sons would be the last thing that he would
see. And then Zedekiah would be removed to live out the rest of his life in
exile in Babylon. The image, formed in the psyche of the nation, was that Riblah
was a place where the enemies of Israel planned for the desecration of a country.
Ezekiel
writes that the land in Israel, from the desert in the south to Diblah, likely
in the north. The problem is that we really have no idea where Diblah might be.
In the context of Ezekiel's prophecy, a town in the north of Israel makes sense,
meaning that Ezekiel is asserting that all of Israel would be left in
desolation. And this is precisely what happened at the time of the final exile
of people into Babylon. In 596 B.C.E., a third wave of exiles were taken from the
land of Judah. With the exodus of Israelites that were left in Judah, but who had
decided to leave the beleaguered nation for what they believed to be safety in
Egypt, there were not enough people left in Canaan to care for the land. What
was left was laid to waste, inhabited only by animals until small groups of migrants
began to move back into the vacated territory.
A few of the
extant copies of Ezekiel suggest that Diblah should be written as Riblah and
that maybe Diblah is a mistake or a copyist error. But the reality is that we
don't know, and so Diblah remains the name we read in most of our Bibles.
But a case
can be made for Riblah in this passage. First, it was in the north, so the
phrase "from the desert (south of Judah) to Riblah (north of Israel)"
makes geographical sense, encompassing all of Israel and Judah. But maybe even
more importantly, Riblah was a place of past trouble and desolation. It was the
place from which the defeat of Israel arose, both in the days of Necho II of
Egypt and in the current time of trial at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar II of
Babylon.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Ezekiel 7
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