Ezekiel 31
Pharaoh Warned of Assyria's Fate: the Assyrian was a Cedar in Lebanon
Prophecies against the Gentile Nations1
In the eleventh year, in the third month, in the first day of the month, The LORD's word came to me, saying,
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"Son of man, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his multitude:'Whom are you like in your greatness?
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Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanonwith beautiful branches,and with a forest-like shade,of high stature;and its top was among the thick boughs.
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The waters nourished it.The deep made it to grow.Its rivers ran all around its plantation;and it sent out its channels to all the trees of the field.
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Therefore its stature was exalted above all the trees of the field;and its boughs were multiplied.Its branches became long by reason of many waters,when it spread them out.
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Thus was it beautiful in its greatness,in the length of its branches;for its root was by many waters.
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The cedars in the garden of God could not hide it.The cypress trees were not like its boughs.The pine trees were not as its branches;nor was any tree in the garden of God like it in its beauty.
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I made it beautiful by the multitude of its branches,so that all the trees of Eden,that were in the garden of God, envied it.'
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"Therefore thus said the Lord God: 'Because you are exalted in stature, and he has set his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height;
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I will even deliver him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations. He will surely deal with him. I have driven him out for his wickedness.
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Strangers, the tyrants of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him. His branches have fallen on the mountains and in all the valleys and his boughs are broken by all the watercourses of the land. All the peoples of the earth have gone down from his shadow, and have left him.
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All the birds of the sky will dwell on his ruin, and all the animals of the field will be on his branches;
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to the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves in their stature, and don't set their top among the thick boughs. Their mighty ones don't stand up on their height, even all who drink water; for they are all delivered to death, to the lower parts of the earth, among the children of men, with those who go down to the pit.'
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I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to Sheol with those who descend into the pit. All the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the lower parts of the earth.
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They also went down into Sheol with him to those who are slain by the sword; yes, those who were his arm, who lived under his shadow in the middle of the nations.
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"'To whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth. You will lie in the middle of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword."'This is Pharaoh and all his multitude,' says the Lord God."
Eze 31:1-18. THE OVERTHROW OF EGYPT ILLUSTRATED BY THAT OF ASSYRIA.
Not that Egypt was, like Assyria, utterly to cease to be, but it was, like Assyria, to lose its prominence in the empire of the world.
1. third month--two months later than the prophecy delivered in Eze 30:20.