Jerome
Patristic
c. A.D. 347–420
“(Verse 14.) And I will stretch out my hand upon them and make the land desolate and forsaken, from the wilderness of Deblath to all their dwellings. And they shall know that I am the Lord. O mountains of Israel, when your slain ones have fallen among your idols and on every high hill and on all the mountaintops, when I have filled your forests with the corpses of the dead, those whom you once burned incense to, then I will stretch out my hand against you in vengeance, which has been restrained until now, and I will make the whole land of Israel a desolation, from the wilderness of Deblath in the land of Hamath, which is called Epiphania of Syria, to all their dwellings. So that all may know that there is nothing between the wilderness and the Great Sea that the sword of the enemy has not consumed. Many people think that the same place is meant, about which it is written in Jeremiah: 'And they took Zedekiah in the desert that is near Jericho, and all his company fled from him.' And when they had captured the king, they brought him to the king of Babylon in Riblah, which is in the land of Hamath (Jer. 39:5). It may also be called Deblatha or Reblatha due to the close similarity of the Hebrew letters Daleth and Res, which are distinguished by a small dot. But according to mystical understanding, the Lord extends His hand over all those who have been deceived by heretical error, in order to make their land, which is interpreted as the Church, desolate from the desert of Deblatha, which in our language means 'mass of figs', and of compacted thistles, so that after they have discovered bitterness in the simulated sweetness, which was not of cultivated land but of solitude, then they may know that He Himself is the Lord. Honey drips from the lips of a prostitute, who temporarily satiates the mouths of those who eat, but afterwards is found bitter as gall (Prov. 5:3,4). This also signifies the two baskets of figs that were placed in front of the Temple in Jeremiah (Jer. 24): one basket of good figs and one of rotten figs. One of these refers to the Church of Christ, the other to the congregation of the wicked.”