Ezekiel / Egypt Compared to the Fallen Cedar: Pride and Doom

Egypt Compared to the Fallen Cedar: Pride and Doom

Ezekiel 31:1-18

Chapter 31

¹ In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me, saying. ² Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude: To whom did you become like in your greatness? ³ Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branch and dense shade, tall of stature, and its top was between thickets. ⁴ The waters made him great; the deep raised him; her rivers went around it, her plantings; and she sent her channels to all the trees of the field. ⁵ Therefore its height was exalted above all the trees of the field; it rose up, and its boughs multiplied and its branches lengthened from many waters in its sending forth. ⁶ On its branches all the birds of the heavens nested, and under its boughs all the living creatures of the field bore young, and in its shadow all the many nations dwelt. ⁷ It was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches, for its root reached to many waters. ⁸ No cedars in the garden of God equaled it; no cypresses resembled its branches, and no plane trees were like its splendor; no tree in the garden of God resembled it in its beauty. ⁹ I made it beautiful in the abundance of its branches, and all the trees of Eden, which were in the Garden of God, envied it. ¹⁰ Therefore, the Lord GOD says this: Because you were exalted in stature, and it put its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud in its height. ¹¹ And I will give him into the hand of a mighty one of the nations. They have done it; he will do it to him according to his wickedness. You have driven him out. ¹² Foreigners, tyrants of nations, cut him off and abandoned him to the mountains, and in every valley his branches fell, and his boughs were broken in every wadi of the earth, and all the peoples of the earth came down from his shade, and they abandoned him. ¹³ On its downfall all the birds of the heavens will dwell, and on its branches all the beasts of the field will be. ¹⁴ in order that they not exalt themselves in their height, all trees of the waters, and they not lift their top among the twisted cords, and all drinkers of the waters not stand up to them in their height—for all of them they have been given to Death, to the land of the lowest depths, in the midst of the sons of Adam, to those going down the pit. ¹⁵ The Lord GOD says this: On the day of his descending into Sheol, I mourned for him. I covered the deep over him, and I restrained its rivers, and the great waters were restrained. I darkened Lebanon over him, and all the trees of the field fainted because of him. ¹⁶ At the sound of his fall I shook nations when I made him go down to Sheol with those going down to the pit. And they comforted him in the land below—all the trees of Eden, the choice and good of Lebanon, all drinkers of water. ¹⁷ They also went down with him to Sheol, to the slain of the sword, and his seed dwelt in his shadow in the midst of nations. ¹⁸ To whom have you likened yourself in this way, in glory and in greatness, among the trees of Eden? You have brought down the trees of Eden with you to the land of the lower parts. In the midst of the uncircumcised you will lie down with those slain by the sword. That is Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord GOD.