Ezekiel 31 :: Amplified Bible (AMP)

In the eleventh year [after King Jehoiachin was taken captive to Babylon], in the third month, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me, saying,

‘Whom are you like in your greatness?

‘Behold (listen carefully), Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon

With beautiful branches and with forest shade,

And of high stature,

With its top among the clouds.

‘The waters nourished it, the deep [underground waters] made it grow tall.

Its rivers ran all around the place where it was planted,

Sending out its streams to all the trees (other nations) of the field.

‘Therefore it towered higher than all the trees of the forest

And its boughs multiplied and its branches grew long;

Because there was so much water they spread outward.

‘All the birds of the sky made their nests in its twigs,

And under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth [to their young],

And all of the great nations lived under its shadow.

‘So it was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches;

For its roots extended [downward] to great waters.

‘The cedars in the garden of God could not hide or rival it;

The cypress trees did not have boughs like it,

And the [fn]plane trees did not have branches like it.

No tree in the garden of God was like it in its beauty.

‘I made it beautiful with the great mass of its branches,

So that all the trees of [fn]Eden which were in the garden of God were jealous of it (Assyria).

‘Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Because it is high in stature and has set its top among the thick boughs and the clouds, and its heart is proud of its height,

‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “On the day when Assyria went down to Sheol (the place of the dead) I caused mourning; I closed the deep [subterranean waters] over it and restrained its rivers. And the many waters [that contributed to its prosperity] were held back; and I made [the heart of] Lebanon mourn for it, and all the trees of the field wilted away because of it.

“Which among the trees of Eden do you equal in glory and in greatness [O Egypt]? Yet you [also] will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth beneath (nether world). You will lie among the [fn]uncircumcised (the barbaric, the boorish, the crude) with those who were slain by the sword. This is how it shall be with Pharaoh and all his hordes!”’ says the Lord GOD.”