Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Ezekiel 31: Egypt, look to the fall of Assyria

Assyria is taken as an example to Egypt.

Assyria was a great empire compared to a great tree in Eden.

1-9 In the eleventh year, on the first day of the third month, God’s Message came to me: “Son of man, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt, that pompous old goat:
“‘Who do you, astride the world,
    think you really are?
Look! Assyria was a Big Tree, huge as a Lebanon cedar,
    beautiful limbs offering cool shade,
Skyscraper high,
    piercing the clouds.
(...)
Not a tree in God’s garden
    was in the same class of beauty.
I made it beautiful,
    a work of art in limbs and leaves,
The envy of every tree in Eden,
    every last tree in God’s garden.’”

Assyria fell following the Lord's decree.

10-13 Therefore, God, the Master, says, “‘Because it skyscrapered upward, piercing the clouds, swaggering and proud of its stature, I turned it over to a world-famous leader to call its evil to account. I’d had enough. Outsiders, unbelievably brutal, felled it across the mountain ranges. Its branches were strewn through all the valleys, its leafy boughs clogging all the streams and rivers. Because its shade was gone, everybody walked off. No longer a tree—just a log. On that dead log birds perch. Wild animals burrow under it.

Egypt will follow Assyria fate. The Lord tells the pharaoh:

18 “‘Which of the trees of Eden came anywhere close to you in splendor and size? But you’re slated to be cut down to take your place in the underworld with the trees of Eden, to be a dead log stacked with all the other dead logs, among the other uncircumcised who are dead and buried.
“‘This means Pharaoh, the pompous old goat.
“‘Decree of God, the Master.’”

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