Ezekielchapter 31
18 verses · Ezekiel · 593 to 571 BC · The Prophets
I made it beautiful with its many branches, the envy of all the trees of Eden, which were in the garden of God.’
Introduction
Ezekiel, The Prophets, Ezekiel Overview.
This chapter was given two months before Jerusalem fell, and it asks Pharaoh a question. Ezekiel's hearers had grandparents who remembered when Assyria ruled the world, and they had seen that empire vanish within a few years. The prophet holds up that fallen power as a mirror for Egypt. He draws an empire as a great tree that gives shade and shelter to the nations. Listen for the height of the tree and for what it is watered by, then for the day it is cut down. Listen last for the other trees who meet it in the world of the dead.
Context
- Who
- Exiles whose grandparents remembered when Assyria ruled everything
- What
- An allegory of Assyria as a great cedar that grew proud and was cut down, held up as a warning to Pharaoh.
- Where
- Spoken at Tel Abib in Babylonia to Pharaoh of Egypt, with the fallen empire of Assyria as the example.
- When
- The eleventh year, third month, first day of Jehoiachin's exile, about 21 June 587 BC.
- Why
- To show Pharaoh and the exiles that no empire is too tall to fall, since God sets the height of nations and brings down the proud.
Historical context
The cedar of Lebanon was the most valuable tree in the ancient world. It grew tall and straight, resisted rot and insects, and smelled sweet, and every empire wanted it. Egyptian and Mesopotamian kings recorded their timber expeditions to Lebanon as major achievements, and Solomon's temple was built with it. A cedar towering above every other tree, watered by the deep, with birds nesting in its branches and nations living in its shade, is the picture of an empire.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The empire named is Assyria, and its fall was recent history to Ezekiel's hearers. Assyria had crushed the northern kingdom in 722 BC, besieged Jerusalem in 701, and dominated the Near East for two centuries. Then it came apart fast: the city of Asshur fell in 614 BC, Nineveh in 612, the Babylonian Chronicle records the campaign, and the last Assyrian resistance at Haran collapsed by 609. Within about five years the greatest power on earth stopped existing.
The felling is described the way a real logging operation looked and sounded. The tree is cut down by the most ruthless of the nations and left where it falls, its branches broken in the ravines and its shade abandoned, and all the peoples who had lived under it go away.
There is one more move at the end. The cedar goes down to the underworld, and the other great trees of Eden, the ones already in the pit, are comforted to see it arrive. Empires do not fall alone; they join a company.
Significance
The question the chapter opens with is aimed at Pharaoh but heard by exiles: whom are you like in your greatness? The answer is a tree everybody could remember and nobody could find.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
For Judeans two months from losing their own city, the lesson cut both ways. The empire that had terrorized their grandparents was gone; the empire currently terrorizing them was not permanent either. Height is not safety, and God is the one who sets the height in the first place.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this lane, printed no weekly portion and no Haftarah from this chapter, and no festival reading for the book. That table carries the Haftarah of each of the fifty-four weekly portions and the books read whole at the feasts, and it carries nothing for the special Sabbaths or the fast days. This card therefore names no public reading of the chapter and leaves that question to a source that holds those readings.
The corpus joins the chapter to the weeks of the Torah portions through the works arranged by portion. Under the third verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 9:2 and Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 15:1. Under the ninth verse it carries Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Bereshit 40. Under the eleventh verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Noach 21:4.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Every quotation of it is held to fifty words or fewer because the translation is modern.
The chapter answers Pharaoh with the fall of Assyria, and Rashi reads it that way from the start. The question of the second verse is "In your haughtiness against Me, whom did you think to resemble?" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:2:1). The answer is the cedar of Lebanon, which is Assyria, the one God has "already cast down" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:3:1). Rashi follows Targum Jonathan for the whole figure and says so at the fourth verse (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:4:2).
The trees of Eden that could not dim the cedar are "all the praiseworthy kings", and "none among them surpassed it in beauty" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:9:1 and 31:8:1). The mightiest of the nations who cut it down is Nebuchadnezzar. Rashi dates it from Seder Olam, chapter 24, with Megillah 11b and Arachin 12a: "In his first year, he conquered Nineveh" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:11:1).
He reads the warning to the watered trees as a word about Israel. Such trees "are tender and frail, but have numerous and long branches because of the moisture of the water". Assyria "should not have been haughty over Israel and should not have stood over them" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:14:1). Those who went down before Assyria find comfort in its fall. "They said, “This one is like us also.”" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:16:1). The last verse turns back to Pharaoh: "Behold you have seen that I lowered him into the Grave, and you too will be lowered with the trees of Eden" (Rashi on Ezekiel 31:18:1).
The corpus carries three further notes on this chapter without an English text, each of them marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Metzudat David on Ezekiel 31:1:1 and at Radak on Ezekiel 31:1:1 and 31:2:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries thirty-eight rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. On the second verse it holds Seder Olam Rabbah 26:1. On the third verse it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 15:7, Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 6:14 and Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 9:2. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 15:1, Midrash Tehillim 22:16 and Pesikta DeRav Kahana 16:7 there. It also holds Shemot Rabbah 23:5, Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:15:1 and Sifrei Aggadah on Esther, Midrash Panim Acherim, Version II 6:12 there. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Nach 1054:8 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 247:1 there. On the sixth verse it holds Midrash Tehillim 119:29 and Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on Psalms, Addendum to Psalm 118 52. On the eighth verse it holds Berakhot 53b:8, Midrash Lekach Tov on Lamentations 4:1:1 and Pesachim 75b:9. It also holds Shabbat 77b:2 and Tractate Kallah Rabbati 8:14 there.
On the ninth verse it holds Bereshit Rabbah 15:2 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Bereshit 40. On the eleventh verse it holds Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Noach 21:4. On the fifteenth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 1:1, Bereshit Rabbah 33:1 and Kohelet Rabbah 3:21:1. It also holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai, Additions 10:1, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bamidbar 1:1 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bo 2:1 there. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Emor 7:6, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Noach 8:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Bereshit 7:13 there. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Bo 2:3, Midrash Tanchuma, Emor 5:1 and Pesikta DeRav Kahana 9:1 there. It also holds Shemot Rabbah 14:2 and Vayikra Rabbah 27:1 there. On the eighteenth verse it holds Midrash Tanchuma, Tetzaveh 1:4.
On the thirty-fourth verse it holds Pesikta Rabbati 47:1. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Ezekiel 31:2:1 to 31:18:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Ezekiel 31:1:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Radak, Radak on Ezekiel 31:1:1 and 31:2:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/ezekiel/31.json, the 38 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this chapter and printing no weekly portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Assyria, the cedar no tree in Eden could match
Ezekiel 31:1-2
the third month: The date sets the oracle two months before Jerusalem's own fall. The Lord turns the prophet toward Egypt with a single rhetorical question, whom art thou like in thy greatness? Keil reads the timing as deliberate, Egypt measured for its fall in the same season Jerusalem's siege is closing.
Ezekiel 31:1
“In the eleventh year - On Sunday, June 19, A.M. 3416, according to Abp. Usher; a month before Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldeans.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
to Pharaoh king of Egypt: Pharaoh's multitude is his army and the peoples who depended on Egypt. The king in these years was Hophra, named in Jeremiah 44:30, whose army had briefly drawn Babylon away from Jerusalem at Jeremiah 37:5. His failed rescue made Egypt look great and proved it weak.
Ezekiel 31:2
“These he was proud of, these he put a confidence in; and they were as proud of him and trusted as much in him. Now ask him, Whom art thou like in thy greatness? We are apt to judge of ourselves by comparison.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 31:3-6
a cedar in Lebanon: Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, fed by waters that ran to every tree of the field. Gill and Clarke both take the image from Assyria's river-fed empire, the Tigris standing behind the waters that made him great. The allegory is chosen because Egypt's own strength runs on a river.
Ezekiel 31:3
“Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon,.... Here grew the tallest, most stately, broad and flourishing ones. This sense is, that he was as one of them; comparable to one, for his exaltation and dignity; for the largeness of his dominion, the flourishing circumstances of it, and its long duration; that empire having lasted from the times of Nimrod unto a few years of the present time; for this is to be understood, either of the monarchy itself, or of Esarhaddon; or rather of Chynilidanus, or Saracus, the last king of it.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:3
“Fifth prophecy against Egypt: a warning to Pharaoh from the fate of the Assyrians. The Assyrian empire, after having been supreme in Asia for four centuries, had been overthrown by the united forces of the Babylonians and Medes, in the year of the battle of Carchemish (605 b.c.), which had broken the power of Egypt. This gives force to the warning to Egypt from Assyria’s fall. Eze 31:4 His plants - Rather, her plantation. The water represents the riches and might which flowed into Assyria.”
ConnectionsEzekiel 17:22
the deep springs made it tall: The deep translates tehom, the word for the great waters of Genesis 1:2. The tree owes its height to a gift. Its channels running out to the other trees picture an empire whose wealth flowed on to the nations beneath it.
Ezekiel 31:4
“The waters made him great - Alluding to the fertility of Egypt by the overflowing of the Nile. But waters often mean peoples. By means of the different nations under the Egyptians, that government became very opulent. These nations are represented as fowls and beasts, taking shelter under the protection of this great political Egyptian tree, Eze 31:6.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
it towered higher than all the trees: The word therefore ties the tree's height to the waters of verse 4. Assyria's growth is credited to what it was given, and verse 9 will name the Giver. The pride charged in verse 10 forgets that source.
all the great nations lived in its shade: The birds and beasts are the peoples under Assyria's rule. Shade was an ancient figure for a king's protection, as when the bramble of Judges 9:15 offers the trees refuge in its shade. Daniel 4:12 gives Nebuchadnezzar's tree the same sheltered birds and beasts.
Ezekiel 31:6
“Made their nests - Settled their habitations. In his boughs - In his kingdom, in the cities and towns of it. All great nations - No nation that was great at that time, but, sought the friendship of this kingdom.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:6
“Even the bramble, if he be anointed king, invites the trees to come and trust in his shadow, Judg. ix. But the utmost security that any creature, even the king of Assyria himself, can give, is but like the shadow of a tree, which is but a scanty and slender protection, and leaves a man many ways exposed.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 31:7-9
in the length of its limbs: His beauty is stated three times, fair in his greatness, fair by the multitude of his branches, until even the trees of Eden envied him. Wesley reads the garden language as the highest possible comparison, Assyria measured against paradise itself and found to outshine every tree God planted there.
The cedars in the garden of God: The garden of God is Eden, the standard of perfect growth, and Ezekiel placed the king of Tyre in the same garden at 28:13. The plane tree is a large spreading tree of the Near East. Eden's best fall short.
Ezekiel 31:8
“The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him,.... That is, could not rise so high as this cedar, and overtop him, and obscure his glory; even those that were most excellent, which grew in Eden, near to which Babylon stood, and where a mighty king dwelt.”
I made it beautiful with its many: God claims Assyria's beauty as His own work. Isaiah 10:5 calls Assyria the rod of the LORD's anger, and Isaiah 10:15 mocks the axe that boasts against the one who swings it. The gift became the ground of the boast.
Ezekiel 31:9
“His large dominions were well managed, like a spreading tree that is kept in shape and good order by the skill of the gardener, so as to be very beautiful to the eye. His government was as amiable in the eyes of wise men as it was admirable in the eyes of all men.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Cut down by the mighty one of the nations
Ezekiel 31:10-11
it became great in height: The charge is named without ornament, because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and judgment follows on that ground alone. The Lord delivers him into the hand of the mighty one, which Henry and Keil both identify as the Babylonian power that ended Assyria's empire.
Ezekiel 31:10
“There were other sins in which the Egyptians and the Assyrians did concur, particularly that of oppressing God's people, which is charged upon them both together ( Isa. lii. 4 ); but here that sin is traced up to its cause, and that was pride; for it is the contempt of the proud that they are filled with.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
according to its wickedness: The judgment on Assyria is measured to its wickedness. Nineveh fell in 612 BC to Babylon, and the ruler of the nations who ended Assyria is the power marching on Egypt in chapter 30. The banishment is a sentence already carried out.
Ezekiel 31:11
“Here the literal supersedes the figurative. shall surely deal with him--according to his own pleasure, and according to the Assyrian's (Sardanapalus) desert. Nebuchadnezzar is called "the mighty one" (El, a name of God), because he was God's representative and instrument of judgment (Da 2:37, 38).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:11
“The mighty one of the heathen - Nebuchadnezzar. It is worthy of notice, that Nebuchadnezzar, in the first year of his reign, rendered himself master of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. See Sedar Olam. This happened about twenty years before Ezekiel delivered this prophecy; on this account, Ashshur, Eze 31:3, may relate to the Assyrians, to whom it is possible the prophet here compares the Egyptians. But see the note on Eze 31:3.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 31:12-14
the most ruthless of the nations: Strangers, the terrible of the nations, cut him down, and his branches lie broken by every river of the land he once shadowed. Verse 14 turns the fall into a standing warning, language JFB reads as aimed past Assyria at every power that measures itself by its resources.
nested on its fallen trunk: Verse 13 reverses verse 6. The same birds and beasts that once sheltered under the living tree now settle on its ruin. The peoples Assyria protected turn to profit from its fall.
Ezekiel 31:13
“Its fall is triumphed in by the other trees, who were angry to see themselves overtopped so much: All the trees of Eden, that were cut down and had fallen before him, all that drank water of the rain of heaven, as the stump of the tree that is left in the south is said to be wet with the dew of heaven ( Dan. iv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:13
“Upon his ruin shall all the fowls - The fall of Egypt is likened to the fall of a great tree; and as the fowls and beasts sheltered under its branches before, Eze 31:6, so they now feed upon its ruins.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
among the mortals who descend to the: The Pit is a poetic name for Sheol, the place of the dead beneath the earth in Hebrew thought. The word rendered mortals is literally sons of man. Every tree, however high, dies as a man dies.
Ezekiel 31:14
“FAIRBAIRN points the Hebrew differently, so as for "their trees," to translate, "(And that none that drink water may stand) on themselves, (because of their greatness)." But the usual reading is better, as Assyria and the confederate states throughout are compared to strong trees.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The pit mourns as the great tree comes down
Ezekiel 31:15-17
I caused mourning: The Lord marks the day of the fall with mourning fit for a funeral of cosmic scale. Fairbairn reads the descent language as the same underworld picture the book will use again over Egypt in the next chapter. The nations that had sheltered under Assyria's shadow go down with him.
Ezekiel 31:15
“Effect of Assyria’s fall. Eze 31:15 I covered the deep - To cover with sack-cloth was an expression of mourning Eze 27:31. The deep, the source of Assyria’s prosperity Eze 31:4, was made to mourn, being dried up instead of giving forth its waters, its glad abundance. For him - Upon his account. Floods ... great waters - Or, rivers ... the multitude of waters (as in Eze 31:4-5). Lebanon represents the country which Assyria governed; “the trees,” the tributary princes. Eze 31:16 See the marginal references.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:15
“I restrained the floods, and the great waters were stayed, that they might run into another channel, that of lamentation. Lebanon particularly, the kingdom of Syria, that was sometimes in confederacy with the Assyrian, mourned for him; as the allies of Babylon, Rev. xviii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
were consoled in the earth below: The trees of Eden are kings and nations that fell before Assyria. They take comfort when the greatest tree joins them below, since its fall proves no power escapes the grave. Pharaoh receives the same grim comfort at 32:31.
to those slain by the sword: Slain by the sword marks a violent death without honour. The phrase becomes the refrain of chapter 32's roll call of the dead. Egypt had its own allies, listed at 30:5, and they share the same fate.
Ezekiel 31:17
“They also went down into hell with him - Into remediless destruction.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
in glory and greatness: The chapter closes by naming its target outright, this is Pharaoh and all his multitude. Clarke notes the method, an allegory left uninterpreted until its very last line. The uncircumcised language introduced here, thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, becomes the roll call the next chapter completes.
Ezekiel 31:18
"All that has been said of the Assyrian consider as said to thyself. To whom art thou so like, as thou art to the Assyrian? To none." The lesson on a gigantic scale of Eden-like privileges abused to pride and sin by the Assyrian, as in the case of the first man in Eden, ending in ruin, was to be repeated in Egypt's case.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 31:18
“This is Pharaoh - All that I have spoken in this allegory of the lofty cedar refers to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, his princes, confederates, and people. Calmet understands the whole chapter of the king of Assyria, under which he allows that Egypt is adumbrated; and hence on this verse he quotes: - Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. What is said of Assyria belongs to thee, O Egypt.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Carl Friedrich Keil; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Patrick Fairbairn and Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible.