Ezekiel 31:1–9

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 to me, ⌊saying⌋,c 2 “Son of man,d say to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to his crowd,e

‘To whom are you like in your greatness?

3 Look! Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon,

with beautiful branchesf and a forest giving shade,

and ⌊very high⌋,g

and its treetop was between the clouds.

4 Waters made it great,

the deep made it grow high;

its rivers were going all around ⌊its planting area⌋,h

and its channels it sent out

to all of the trees of the field.

5 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⌋.i

6 In its branches all the birdsj of the heavenk made their nest,

and under its branches all the animalsl of the field gave birth,

and in its shadow all the many nations lived.

7 And it was beautiful in its greatness,

in the length of its branches,

for its root was toward much water.

8 Cedars in the garden of God

could not be equal to it;

fir treesm 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.

9 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.’ ”