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31In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: ²Mortal, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes: Whom are you like in your greatness? ³Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon, with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds. ⁴The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. ⁵So it towered high above all the trees of the field; its boughs grew large and its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots. ⁶All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived. ⁷It was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches; for its roots went down to abundant water. ⁸The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it, nor the fir trees equal its boughs; the plane trees were as nothing compared with its branches; no tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty. ⁹I made it beautiful with its mass of branches, the envy of all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of God.

¹⁰Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because it towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height, ¹¹I gave it into the hand of the prince of the nations; he has dealt with it as its wickedness deserves. I have cast it out. ¹²Foreigners from the most terrible of the nations have cut it down and left it. On the mountains and in all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs lie broken in all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth went away from its shade and left it. ¹³On its fallen trunk settle all the birds of the air, and among its boughs lodge all the wild animals. ¹⁴All this is in order that no trees by the waters may grow to lofty height or set their tops among the clouds, and that no trees that drink water may reach up to them in height. For all of them are handed over to death, to the world below; along with all mortals, with those who go down to the Pit.