Ezekielchapter 31
18 verses · KJVEzekiel book hub →
Key verse
I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 10 to 14.
The chapter
Chapter summary
A tree taller than empire. Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and a shadowing shroud, exalted by the deep waters that nourished it; the birds of the heavens nested in its boughs, the beasts brought forth under it, and great nations dwelt in its shade, so that the trees of Eden envied it. But because it lifted itself up in stature and set its top among the thick boughs, it was delivered to the mighty one of the nations, cut down and left on the mountains for the beasts. The nations shake at the sound of its fall, and it goes down to Sheol. 'This is Pharaoh and all his multitude.'
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel · Ezekiel overview
Where the chapter sits
Ezekiel 31 falls in Oracles against the nations (chapters 25–32). Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia (25); Tyre (26–28); Sidon (28); Egypt (29–32). The King of Tyre lament (28:11–19) surfaces interpretive debate on Satan's fall.
Before it: Symbolic acts and judgment on Jerusalem, chapters 4–24. After it: Restoration promised, chapters 33–37.
The whole shape of Ezekiel→The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 31The history
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.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- The Babylonian Chronicle (ABC 3), the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel
A. Assyria, the cedar no tree in Eden could match
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.the third month: The date sets the oracle two months before Jerusalem's own fall, and the Lord turns the prophet toward Egypt with a single rhetorical question, whom art thou like in thy greatness? A question rather than a statement is the method here, the same technique the book used against Tyre, letting Pharaoh's own pride answer itself in the parable that follows. Keil reads the timing as deliberate, Egypt measured for its fall in the same season Jerusalem's siege is closing.
Ezekiel 31:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
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
2. (vv. 3-6)
a.a cedar in Lebanon: The answer comes as a story: Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, its top among the thick boughs, fed by waters that ran to every tree of the field. Gill and Clarke both take the image from Assyria's actual glory under its 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, and the reader is meant to hear Pharaoh's own name for the Nile before the chapter ever states it plainly.
Ezekiel 31:3, 2 voices
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.”
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.”
Ezekiel 31:4, 1 voice
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
Ezekiel 31:6, 2 voices
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
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
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.in the length of his branches: His beauty is stated three times over, 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 the prophet could reach for, Assyria measured against paradise itself and found to outshine every tree God planted there. The claim is deliberately extravagant, because the fall that follows has to answer a pride this large.
Ezekiel 31:8, 1 voice
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.”
B. Cut down by the mighty one of the nations
1. (vv. 10-11)
a.lifted up thyself 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 of the heathen, which Henry and Keil both identify as the Babylonian power that in fact ended Assyria's empire, so the allegory rests on remembered history rather than invention. The verdict falls on pride specifically, not on strength itself, a distinction the commentators mark because Egypt's own strength is about to meet the same test.
Ezekiel 31:10, 2 voices
Ezekiel 31:10
“Assyria’s fall. Eze 31:11 More accurately: Therefore I will deliver him, etc ... he shall surely deal with him. I have driven him out, etc. Eze 31:14 Their trees - Rather, as in the margin, “standing unto themselves” meaning “standing in their own strength.” The clause will then run thus: “Neither all that drink water stand up” in their own strength. “All that drink water” means mighty princes to whom wealth and prosperity flow in. The Egyptians owed everything to the waters of the Nile.”
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
Ezekiel 31:11, 3 voices
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 31:11
“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
Ezekiel 31:11
“He must leave the king of Egypt to apply all this to himself, to see his own face in the looking-glass of the king of Assyria's sin, and to foresee his own fall through the perspective glass of his ruin,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 12-14)
a.the terrible 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, to the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, language JFB reads as aimed past Assyria at every power that measures itself by its own resources. The phrase go down to the pit enters here for the first time in the chapter and will carry the allegory through its close.
Ezekiel 31:14, 2 voices
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
Ezekiel 31:14
“Note, The fall of proud presumptuous men is intended for warning to others to keep humble. It would have been well for Nebuchadnezzar, who was himself active in bringing down the Assyrian, if he had taken the admonition. Here is a prophecy of the fall of the king of Egypt in like manner,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. The pit mourns as the great tree comes down
1. (vv. 15-17)
a.I caused a mourning: The Lord marks the day of the fall with mourning fit for a funeral of cosmic scale, the deep covered, the floods restrained, Lebanon and every tree of the field made to grieve. Fairbairn reads the descent language, cast down to hell with them that descend into the pit, as the same underworld picture the book will use again over Egypt in the next chapter, a gathering place for fallen powers rather than a private grave. The nations that had sheltered under Assyria's shadow, his arm, go down with him, so the fall is corporate and not only the fall of one king.
Ezekiel 31:15, 2 voices
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.”
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
2. (v. 18)
a.in glory and in greatness: The chapter closes by naming its target outright, this is Pharaoh and all his multitude. Clarke notes the method of the whole oracle, an allegory left uninterpreted until its very last line, so that the hearer has already agreed to Assyria's fall before learning the sentence is being read over Egypt. 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, 2 voices
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
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
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 31. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley; Matthew Henry; Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel and Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible.
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