52 Hey, powerful person!
    Why do you brag about evil?
    God’s faithful love lasts all day long.
² Your tongue devises destruction:
    it’s like a sharpened razor, causing deception.
³ You love evil more than good;
    you love lying more than speaking what is right. Selah
⁴ You love all destructive words;
    you love the deceiving tongue.

With whom do you compare in your greatness?
³ Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon:
    beautiful branches, dense shade, towering height;
    indeed, its top went up between the clouds.
⁴ Waters nourished it; the deep raised it up,
    because its streams flowed around the place where it was planted.
From there, water trickled down to all the other trees of the field.
⁵     And so it became higher than all the trees of the field.
Its branches became abundant; its boughs grew long.
    Because of the plentiful water, it grew freely.
⁶ All the birds in the sky made nests in its branches;
    all the beasts of the field gave birth under its boughs,
        and in its shade, every great nation lived.
⁷ It became beautiful in its greatness and in its lush foliage,
    because it took root in plentiful water.
⁸ No cedar was its equal in God’s garden.
    The fir trees didn’t have anything like its branches,
        and the plane trees had nothing like its boughs.
None of the trees in God’s garden could compare to it in its beauty.
⁹ As for its beauty—I made it so, with its abundant foliage.
All the trees of Eden envied it,
    all that were in God’s garden.

Consider the fate of those who tower high!
When it allowed its branches to reach up among the clouds,
    it became arrogant.
¹¹ So I handed it over
to the most powerful nation,
    who continually acted treacherously against it.
I banished it!
¹² Foreigners, the worst of the nations, cut it down
    and left it to lie among the hills.
All its branches fell among the valleys,
    and its boughs were broken off in the earth’s deep ravines.
All the earth’s peoples departed from its shade and abandoned it.