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the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes:
‘Who are you like in your greatness?
3 Consider Assyria, a cedar in Lebanon,
with fair branches and a shady canopy;
great in height,
its top was among the clouds.
4 The waters nourished it,
deep springs made it tall,
with their streams flowing all around
the area the tree was planted,
and sending out their channels
to all the trees of the field.
5 ‘So it grew taller in height
than all the trees of the field;
its boughs were multiplied,
and its branches grew long as they spread out,
because of the abundance of water.
6 All the birds of the air
made their nests in its boughs,
and all the beasts of the field
gave birth to their young under its branches;
all the great nations
lived in its shade.
7 ‘It was beautiful in its greatness
and in the length of its branches,
for its roots reached down
to abundant waters.
8 The cedars in the garden of God
could not rival it,
nor could the pine trees
equal its boughs,
and the plane trees
didn’t compare with its branches.
No tree in the garden of God
was like it in beauty.
9 I made it beautiful
with its many branches,
the envy of all the trees of Eden
in the garden of God’.
10 “Therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Because it lifted itself up in height, set its top among the clouds, and grew proud because of its height, 11 I have therefore delivered it into the hand of a ruler of the nations. Because I have cast it out, he will deal with it according to its wickedness. 12 Foreigners from the most ruthless of the nations have cut it down and left it lying. Its branches fell on the mountains and in all the valleys; its boughs lay broken among all the ravines of the land. All the peoples of the earth came out from under its shade and left it. 13 All the birds of the air settled on its fallen trunk, and all the beasts of the field were among its branches— 14 so that no trees by the waters may again tower proudly to lofty heights or set their tops among the clouds. No other well-watered tree will again reach up to them in height; for they are all consigned to death, to the lowest parts of the nether regions below, among the mortal peoples who go down to the Pit’.
15 “This is what the Lord God says: ‘On the day the cedar went down to Sheol, I caused mourning. I covered over the subterranean deep, and held back its abundant streams. I filled Lebanon with mourning on account of it, and all the trees of the field withered because of it. 16 I made the nations tremble at the sound of its fall, when I threw it down to Sheol with those who descend down to the Pit. Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, all that were well-watered, were consoled in the lowest parts of the nether regions below. 17 They also went down with it to Sheol, to those slain by the sword, together with its allies, those who had lived in its shade among the nations.
18 ‘Which of the trees in Eden can be compared with you in glory and greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lowest parts of the nether regions below; you will lie among the uncircumcised, with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his hordes’, says the Lord God.”