Comparison with Assyria
31
📚And it came about in the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 📚“Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to that multitude of his,“Who are you like 📖 in your greatness?
3 📚See, the Assyrian was a cedar 📖
in Lebanon with beautiful branches,
and cast a shadow over the forest.
It was very tall; Its top was among
the thick boughs.
4 📚The waters made it grow,
the deep water made it tall,
its rivers flowed all around the place
it was planted,
and sent out its streams
to all the trees of the field.
5 📚Therefore it became higher 📖 than
all the trees of the field,
and its boughs were multiplied,
and its branches became long
because of the abundant water,
as it spread out.
6 📚All the birds of heaven made
their nests in its boughs,
and all the beasts of the field
gave birth to their young
under its branches.
And under its shadow lived
all the great nations.
7 So it was beautiful in its greatness,
in the length of its branches,
for its root was by great waters.
8 📚The cedars in the garden of God
could not eclipse it;
the fir trees were not like its boughs,
and the plane trees were not
like its branches,
and no tree in the garden of God
was like it in its beauty.
31:8 It had more worldly splendor than any other kingdom God had planted in the world up to that time.⚜
9 📚I made it beautiful in the abundance
of its branches,
so that all the trees of Eden,
that were in the garden of God,
envied it.
10 📚“Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you towered so high, and lifted its top among the thick boughs, and its heart was puffed up because of its height,
31:9-10 God was the One Who gave power and splendor to Assyria. Instead of giving honor to God it committed the sin of pride which God will not tolerate for long (Jam 4:6).⚜
11 📚I handed it over to the mighty one of the nations 📖, for him to deal with it. He certainly dealt with it; I drove it out for its wickedness. 12 📚And foreigners, the most terrible of the nations, cut it off and left it. Its branches fell on the mountains and in all the valleys, and its boughs were broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth departed from its shadow, and left it.
31:12 The Assyrian armies were crushed by the Babylonians at the battle of Carchemish in 609 BC. After that Assyria never regained its power, and disappeared into history.⚜
13 📚On its ruin all the birds
of heaven remain,
and all the beasts of the field
are on its branches.
14 📚Therefore not one of all the trees
by the waters should exalt themselves
for their height,
or raise their top among
the thick boughs,
nor should their well-watered
trees stand proudly in their height,
for they have all been delivered
to death,
to the lower parts of the earth,
among the children of men
who go down to the pit.
31:14 All man’s kingdoms together with their splendor and pride will end up as Assyria did.⚜
15 📚 📖“Thus says the Lord God: In the day when it went down to the grave I caused mourning. I covered the deep for it, and I held back its floods, and the great waters were stopped. And I caused Lebanon to mourn for it, and all the trees of the field wilted because of it. 16 📚I made the nations shake at the sound of its fall, when I hurled it down to hell with those who descend into the pit. Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, all the well-watered ones, were comforted in the lower parts of the earth. 17 📚They also went down into hell with it to those slain with the sword, with those who were its arm, who lived under its shadow among the nations.
31:15-17 At the fall of Assyria there was a great tumult among the nations, and great gloom to its allies.⚜
18 📚“Among the trees of Eden which was like you in glory and in greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth. You 📖 will lie among the uncircumcised with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his hordes, says the Lord God”.