Jeremiah 39:5

In the plains of Jericho. — Here again we have the distinctive word, the Araboth of the Jordan, the enlargement of the Jordan valley, three miles wide, near Jericho. The intention of the king was apparently to make his way to the ford near Jericho, cross the river, and escape to the open country of Gilead.

Riblah in the land of Hamath. — The city of Hamath stood on the Orontes, about half-way from its source, near Baalbek, to the bend which it makes at Jisr-hadid, and commanded the whole valley of the river to the defile of Daphne, below Antioch. It was a well-known city at the time of the Exodus (Numbers 13:21; Numbers 34:8), and in that of David was the capital of a kingdom, which became tributary to him and Solomon (2 Samuel 8:10; 1 Kings 4:21). Riblah (still retaining its name, Ribleh), also on the Orontes, and near its source, was a centre from which the great lines of traffic led by the Euphrates to Nineveh, by Palmyra to Babylon, by Lebanon and the coast to Palestine and Egypt, and through the Jordan valley to the Holy Land. It was, therefore, a natural post of observation for the Chaldæan king while his generals were carrying on the sieges of Tyre and Jerusalem. So when Pharaoh-necho was for a time, before the battle of Carchemish, master of the Assyrian territory, it was to Riblah that he summoned Jehoahaz, and there imprisoned him (2 Kings 23:33). In this instance Zedekiah was brought before Nebuchadnezzar as a vassal prince who, having received his authority from the Chaldæan king (2 Kings 24:17), had rebelled, and met with scant mercy.