Ezekiel 31 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
June 587 BC, in the eleventh year of the exile, while Jerusalem was still under siege
Location
Addressed to Egypt from Babylonia, using Assyria and the cedar forests of Lebanon as its picture
Audience
Judean exiles in Babylonia
Situation
Pharaoh is asked who he thinks he resembles, and the answer is Assyria, once a cedar taller than every other tree, sheltering birds and beasts and envied by the trees of Eden. That cedar was cut down by foreigners for its pride, and Egypt is told it will go down to the same place.
Key Background
Assyria had dominated the Near East for centuries before Nineveh fell in 612 BC, an event recent enough that Ezekiel's hearers knew it as living history rather than legend, which makes it a pointed example. Lebanese cedar was the prestige building timber of the region, imported for temples and palaces from Egypt to Mesopotamia, so a giant cedar was a natural emblem of imperial reach. The image of a world tree whose branches shelter all nations appears widely in Near Eastern royal symbolism, and here it is used to set up the fall.
In the in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of came to me:
of say to king of Egypt and to his vast throngs: Who could you even compare yourself to in your greatness?
Think of — once a in Lebanon, with beautiful branches casting deep shade, towering in height, its crown threading through the clouds.
The waters made it grow tall, the lifted it high, sending their rivers flowing around where it was planted, channeling their streams to every tree of the field.
So it towered higher than every other tree in the field. Its boughs multiplied, its branches stretched long, spreading wide from the abundant water.
All the of the nested in its boughs, all the wild animals gave birth beneath its branches, and every great nation lived in its shade.
It was stunning in its greatness, in the reach of its limbs, because its roots went deep into abundant water.
The cedars in own could not rival it. No cypress could match its boughs, no plane tree could compare to its branches. No tree in was as beautiful.
I made it beautiful with its abundant branches, and every tree in — God's garden — was envious of it.
"So this is what the says: Because it towered so high, lifting its crown into the clouds, and its with its height —
I handed it over to the most the nations. He dealt with it as its wickedness deserved. I drove it out.
Foreigners — the most of — cut it down and left it there. Its branches fell on the mountains and in every valley, its boughs lay broken in every ravine of the land. All the peoples of the earth withdrew from its shade and abandoned it.
On its fallen trunk, every bird of the sky settled, and among its branches, every wild animal made its home —
so that no tree by the waters would ever grow so tall again, or push its crown into the clouds, and no tree that drinks deep would ever reach that height. Because all of them are handed over to death, to the underworld, among the children of mortality who go down to the
"This is what Yahweh, the Lord, says: On the day it went down to the grave, I made the — I held back their rivers, and the great waters were stopped. I dressed Lebanon in darkness for it, and all the trees of the field wilted with grief.
I made the nations tremble at the sound of its fall when I brought it down to the grave with those who descend into the pit. Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and finest of Lebanon, all that drank deeply — they were in the
They too went down to the grave with it, to join those killed by the sword — its who had in its shade among the nations.
"Which of Eden's trees was your equal in and greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the underworld. You will lie among the uncircumcised, with those killed by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his vast throngs," declares Yahweh, the Lord.