On June 21, during the eleventh year of King Jehoiachin's captivity, this message came to me from the LORD:
"Son of man, give this message to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and all his people: To whom would you compare your greatness?
You are as Assyria was--a great and mighty nation. Assyria, too, was once like a cedar of Lebanon, full of thick branches that cast deep forest shade with its top high among the clouds.
Deep springs watered it and helped it to grow tall and luxuriant. The water was so abundant that there was enough for all the trees nearby.
This great tree towered above all the other trees around it. It prospered and grew long thick branches because of all the water at its roots.
The birds nested in its branches, and in its shade all the wild animals gave birth to their young. All the great nations of the world lived in its shadow.
It was strong and beautiful, for its roots went deep into abundant water.
This tree became taller than any of the other cedars in the garden of God. No cypress had branches equal to it; no plane tree had boughs to compare. No tree in the garden of God came close to it in beauty.
Because of the magnificence I gave this tree, it was the envy of all the other trees of Eden, the garden of God.
"Therefore, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Because it became proud and arrogant, and because it set itself so high above the others, reaching to the clouds,
I handed it over to a mighty nation that destroyed it as its wickedness deserved. I myself discarded it.
A foreign army--the terror of the nations--cut it down and left it fallen on the ground. Its branches were scattered across the mountains and valleys and ravines of the land. All those who lived beneath its shadow went away and left it lying there.
The birds roosted on its fallen trunk, and the wild animals lay among its branches.
Let no other nation proudly exult in its own prosperity, though it be higher than the clouds, for all are doomed. They will land in the pit along with all the proud people of the world.
"This is what the Sovereign LORD says: When Assyria went down into the grave, I made the deep places mourn, and I restrained the mighty waters. I clothed Lebanon in black and caused the trees of the field to wilt.
I made the nations shake with fear at the sound of its fall, for I sent it down to the grave with all the others like it. And all the other proud trees of Eden, the most beautiful and the best of Lebanon, the ones whose roots went deep into the water, were relieved to find it there with them in the pit.
Its allies, too, were all destroyed and had passed away. They had gone down to the grave--all those nations that had lived in its shade.
"O Egypt, to which of the trees of Eden will you compare your strength and glory? You, too, will be brought down to the pit with all these other nations. You will lie there among the outcasts who have died by the sword. This will be the fate of Pharaoh and all his teeming hordes. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!"