Bible Browser

Proclamation against Pharaoh

20 In the eleventh year, in the first month, on the seventh day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: ²¹Mortal, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; it has not been bound up for healing or wrapped with a bandage, so that it may become strong to wield the sword. ²²Therefore, thus says the Lord God: I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms, both the strong arm and the one that was broken; and I will make the sword fall from his hand. ²³I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them throughout the lands. ²⁴I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand; but I will break the arms of Pharaoh, and he will groan before him with the groans of one mortally wounded. ²⁵I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh shall fall. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon. He shall stretch it out against the land of Egypt, ²⁶and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them throughout the countries. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.

The Lofty Cedar

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?
³   Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon,
with fair branches and forest shade,
   and of great height,
   its top among the clouds.^*
4 The waters nourished it,
   the deep made it grow tall,
making its rivers flow^*
   around the place where it was planted,
sending forth its streams
   to all the trees of the field.
⁵ So it towered high
   above all the trees of the field;
its boughs grew large
   and its branches long,
   from abundant water in its shoots.
⁶ All 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.
⁷ It was beautiful in its greatness,
   in the length of its branches;
for its roots went down
   to abundant water.
⁸ The 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.
⁹ I made it beautiful
   with its mass of branches,
the envy of all the trees of Eden
   that were in the garden of God.

10 Therefore, 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.