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Pharaoh Is Warned Through Assyria’s Destruction

31 And then[a] in the eleventh[b] year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of Yahweh came[c] to me, saying,[d] “Son of man,[e] say to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to his crowd,[f]

‘To whom are you like in your greatness?
Look! Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon,
    with beautiful branches[g] and a forest giving shade,
and very high,[h]
    and its treetop was between the clouds.
Waters made it great,
    the deep made it grow high;
its rivers were going all around its planting area,[i]
    and its channels it sent out
    to all of the trees of the field.
Therefore it became tall,
    with its height more than all of the trees of the field,
and its branches became numerous,
    and its branches became long
    from its sending its shoots from abundant water.[j]
In its branches all the birds[k] of the heaven[l] made their nest,
    and under its branches all the animals[m] of the field gave birth,
    and in its shadow all the many nations lived.
And it was beautiful in its greatness,
    in the length of its branches,
    for its root was toward much water.
Cedars in the garden of God
    could not be equal to it;
fir trees[n] could not resemble its branches,
    and plane trees were not even like its branches;
any tree even in the garden of God
    could not resemble it in its beauty.
I made it beautiful with the abundance of its branches,
    and all of the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied it.’”

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Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 31:1 Literally “and it happened/it was”
  2. Ezekiel 31:1 Literally “on one ten”
  3. Ezekiel 31:1 Literally “was”
  4. Ezekiel 31:1 Literally “to say”
  5. Ezekiel 31:2 Or “mortal,” or “son of humankind”
  6. Ezekiel 31:2 Or “hordes”
  7. Ezekiel 31:3 Hebrew “branch”
  8. Ezekiel 31:3 Literally “high of height”
  9. Ezekiel 31:4 Literally “base of its tree”; NRSV, “in the place where it was planted”
  10. Ezekiel 31:5 Literally “from water much at sending shoots its”
  11. Ezekiel 31:6 Hebrew “bird”
  12. Ezekiel 31:6 Or “sky”
  13. Ezekiel 31:6 Hebrew “animal”
  14. Ezekiel 31:8 Or possibly, juniper