Ezekiel 6:12-14

6:12 The one far away will die by pestilence, the one close by will fall by the sword, and whoever is left and has escaped these ¹  will die by famine. I will fully vent my rage against them. 6:13 Then you will know that I am the Lord – when their dead lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and all the mountaintops, under every green tree and every leafy oak, ²  the places where they have offered fragrant incense to all their idols. 6:14 I will stretch out my hand against them ³  and make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Riblah, ⁴  in all the places where they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

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¹ tn Heb “the one who is left, the one who is spared.”

² sn By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).

³ sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).

⁴ tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).