Ezekiel 31: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to ask Pharaoh king of Egypt who can be compared to him in greatness, and then points to Assyria: a cedar in Lebanon fed by deep waters, taller and more beautiful than any tree in God's garden, sheltering birds, animals, and great nations. Because that tree grew proud of its height, God handed it over to the ruler of the nations, who cut it down and left it; the nations shook at its fall, and it went down to the place of the dead with those killed by the sword. The chapter closes by turning the picture back on Pharaoh, who will be brought down the same way along with all his crowds of people.

Claim by Claim

1. 31:1
   • In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to the speaker.
   • The word came saying what follows.
2. 31:2
   • The LORD addresses the prophet as son of man.
   • The LORD commands him to speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to Pharaoh's multitude.
   • The message asks Pharaoh whom he resembles in his greatness.
3. 31:3
   • Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon.
   • The cedar had beautiful branches.
   • The cedar was a shading thicket that overshadowed the forest.
   • The cedar was of high stature.
   • Its top was among the thick boughs, which may also mean among the clouds.
4. 31:4
   • The waters made the cedar great.
   • The deep made the cedar tall.
   • The deep's rivers ran around the place where the cedar was planted.
   • The deep sent its channels out to all the trees of the field.
5. 31:5
   • Therefore the cedar's height was greater than all the trees of the field.
   • Its boughs multiplied.
   • Its branches grew long because of the abundant waters.
   • Its branches grew long as it spread them out.
6. 31:6
   • All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs.
   • All the beasts of the field gave birth under its branches.
   • All great nations dwelt in its shade.
7. 31:7
   • The cedar was beautiful in its greatness.
   • The cedar was beautiful in the length of its branches.
   • Its root reached abundant waters.
8. 31:8
   • The cedars in the garden of God could not overshadow or rival it.
   • The cypress trees were not like its boughs.
   • The plane trees were not like its branches.
   • No tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty.
9. 31:9
   • The LORD says he made the cedar beautiful with its many branches.
   • All the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God envied it.
10. 31:10
    • Therefore the Lord GOD says what follows.
    • The reason given is that the tree grew tall in height.
    • The tree set its top among the thick boughs, which may also mean among the clouds.
    • Its heart was lifted up because of its height.
11. 31:11
    • The LORD delivered it into the hand of the mighty one of the nations.
    • That mighty one will surely deal with it.
    • The LORD drove it out for its wickedness.
12. 31:12
    • Strangers, the most ruthless of the nations, cut it down.
    • They abandoned it.
    • Its branches fell on the mountains and in all the valleys.
    • Its boughs were broken in all the ravines of the land.
    • All the peoples of the earth went down out of its shade.
    • They abandoned it.
13. 31:13
    • All the birds of the sky settle on its fallen trunk.
    • All the beasts of the field are among its branches.
14. 31:14
    • The purpose is that no trees by the waters should exalt themselves in height.
    • The purpose is that they should not set their tops among the thick boughs, which may also mean among the clouds.
    • The purpose is that none of those that drink water should stand up to them in their height.
    • All of them are given over to death.
    • All of them are given over to the lower parts of the earth.
    • They are given over among the children of men.
    • They are given over with those who go down to the pit.
15. 31:15
    • The Lord GOD says what follows.
    • On the day the cedar went down to Sheol, the LORD caused mourning.
    • The LORD covered the deep over it.
    • The LORD restrained the deep's rivers.
    • The great waters were held back.
    • The LORD made Lebanon mourn for it.
    • All the trees of the field fainted because of it.
16. 31:16
    • The LORD made the nations shake at the sound of its fall.
    • The LORD cast it down to Sheol with those who descend into the pit.
    • All the trees of Eden were comforted in the lower parts of the earth.
    • The choice and best of Lebanon were comforted there.
    • All that drink water were comforted there.
17. 31:17
    • They also went down to Sheol with it, to those slain by the sword.
    • Those who were its arm dwelt in its shade among the nations.
18. 31:18
    • The question is asked to whom Pharaoh is thus like in glory and greatness among the trees of Eden.
    • Pharaoh will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth.
    • Pharaoh will lie among the uncircumcised.
    • Pharaoh will lie with those slain by the sword.
    • This is Pharaoh and all his multitude.
    • The Lord GOD declares this.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

31:1

Ezekiel dates his oracles from the deportation of King Jehoiachin of Judah to Babylon in 597 BC, the exile Ezekiel himself was part of. The eleventh year, third month, first day falls around June 587 BC, a few weeks before Babylon breached the walls of Jerusalem.

31:2

"Son of man" is a Hebrew phrase meaning simply "human being" or "mortal"; it is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, over ninety times. "Crowds of people" translates a Hebrew word (hamon) covering a nation's massed population, its army, and the noisy pomp that goes with them, Pharaoh's teeming greatness, not just his subjects.

31:3

Assyria was the empire that had dominated the whole region, including Israel and Judah, for two centuries; its capital Nineveh fell in 612 BC and the last of it was gone by 609 BC (roughly a generation before this speech. Egypt is being shown a corpse and asked whether it looks familiar. The cedars of Lebanon were the tallest and most valuable timber known in the ancient Near East, shipped to build palaces and temples; a cedar is the obvious image for an empire. (The Hebrew word read here as "Assyria" is spelled the same as a word for a kind of tree, and some read the line as "a cypress, a cedar in Lebanon") the text is genuinely uncertain.) The phrase rendered "among the clouds" can equally mean "among the thick branches"; both senses run through the chapter.

31:4

"The deep" is the mass of fresh water the ancient world pictured lying beneath the earth, feeding springs, wells and rivers from below. The tree is not merely rained on; it is fed from the primordial source, an image with an edge to it for Egypt, whose whole life came from the Nile.

31:6

Birds nesting in the branches and animals sheltering under them is standard imagery for an empire: smaller peoples living under a great power's protection, and paying for it. The tree is not just tall, it is the thing everyone else depends on.

31:8

"God's garden" is Eden, pictured here not as a vegetable plot but as a divine park planted with the finest trees in existence. The comparison is to the best that has ever grown anywhere.

31:10

The Hebrew slides between addressing the tree as "you" and describing it as "it" within a single sentence, because the tree, Assyria, and Pharaoh listening are all the same target. The rendering keeps the shift rather than smoothing it out.

31:11

"The ruler of the nations" is left unnamed. In Assyria's case the destroyer was Babylon; the same Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, was the standing threat to Egypt as Ezekiel spoke.

31:12

In the KJV "terrible" means terrifying, causing dread, rather than low in quality. "Strangers" means foreigners. Stripping a defeated country and leaving it in ruins rather than governing it was normal practice for conquering armies.

31:13

The fallen trunk left where it dropped, with scavengers settling on it, is the picture of a body left unburied on the battlefield. For an ancient reader that was the most humiliating end imaginable.

31:14

"The pit" and "the world below" both refer to Sheol, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead going, powerful and powerless alike. It is a place of shadowy existence, not a place of punishment; the point being made is leveling, not torment.

31:15

Covering the deep and stopping the rivers is mourning imagery: the underground waters that fed the tree are pictured shrouded and stilled, as a household would darken itself and stop its ordinary business at a death.

31:16

"Comforted" here has the older sense of being consoled by company in misfortune, the trees already fallen take some satisfaction in seeing the greatest of them all brought down to their own level.

31:17

"They had been its strength" renders a Hebrew idiom, "they were its arm", its military backing and allies, the powers that propped the empire up.

31:18

To lie among the uncircumcised was, to an ancient Israelite audience, burial in the most dishonourable company imaginable, and the insult bites harder because the Egyptians themselves practiced circumcision and looked down on peoples who did not. "Those killed by the sword" means men cut down in battle and often left unburied, a shameful death, not a soldier's honor.