80:9 You cleared the ground for it; 1
it took root, 2
and filled the land.
80:10 The mountains were covered by its shadow,
the highest cedars 3 by its branches.
80:11 Its branches reached the Mediterranean Sea, 4
and its shoots the Euphrates River. 5
31:3 Consider Assyria, 6 a cedar in Lebanon, 7
with beautiful branches, like a forest giving shade,
and extremely tall;
its top reached into the clouds.
31:4 The water made it grow;
underground springs made it grow tall.
Rivers flowed all around the place it was planted,
while smaller channels watered all the trees of the field. 8
31:5 Therefore it grew taller than all the trees of the field;
its boughs grew large and its branches grew long,
because of the plentiful water in its shoots. 9
31:6 All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs;
under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth,
in its shade all the great 10 nations lived.
31:7 It was beautiful in its loftiness, in the length of its branches;
for its roots went down deep to plentiful waters.
31:8 The cedars in the garden of God could not eclipse it,
nor could the fir trees 11 match its boughs;
the plane trees were as nothing compared to its branches;
no tree in the garden of God could rival its beauty.
31:9 I made it beautiful with its many branches;
all the trees of Eden, in the garden of God, envied it.
31:10 “‘Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: Because it was tall in stature, and its top reached into the clouds, and it was proud of its height,
While I was watching,
there was a tree in the middle of the land. 13
It was enormously tall. 14
4:11 The tree grew large and strong.
Its top reached far into the sky;
it could be seen 15 from the borders of all the land. 16
4:12 Its foliage was attractive and its fruit plentiful;
on it there was food enough for all.
Under it the wild animals 17 used to seek shade,
and in its branches the birds of the sky used to nest.
All creatures 18 used to feed themselves from it.
4:13 While I was watching in my mind’s visions 19 on my bed,
a holy sentinel 20 came down from heaven.
4:14 He called out loudly 21 as follows: 22
‘Chop down the tree and lop off its branches!
Strip off its foliage
and scatter its fruit!
Let the animals flee from under it
and the birds from its branches!
1 tn Heb “you cleared away before it.”
2 tn Heb “and it took root [with] its roots.”
3 tn Heb “cedars of God.” The divine name אֵל (’al, “God”) is here used in an idiomatic manner to indicate the superlative.
4 tn Heb “to [the] sea.” The “sea” refers here to the Mediterranean Sea.
5 tn Heb “to [the] river.” The “river” is the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. Israel expanded both to the west and to the east.
6 sn Either Egypt, or the Lord compares Egypt to Assyria, which is described in vv. 3-17 through the metaphor of a majestic tree. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:185. Like Egypt, Assyria had been a great world power, but in time God brought the Assyrians down. Egypt should learn from history the lesson that no nation, no matter how powerful, can withstand the judgment of God. Rather than following the text here, some prefer to emend the proper name Assyria to a similar sounding common noun meaning “boxwood” (see Ezek 27:6), which would make a fitting parallel to “cedar of Lebanon” in the following line. In this case vv. 3-18 in their entirety refer to Egypt, not Assyria. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:121-27.
7 sn Lebanon was know for its cedar trees (Judg 9:15; 1 Kgs 4:33; 5:6; 2 Kgs 14:9; Ezra 3:7; Pss 29:5; 92:12; 104:16).
8 tn Heb “Waters made it grow; the deep made it grow tall. It (the deep) was flowing with its rivers around the place it (the tree) was planted, it (the deep) sent out its channels to all the trees of the field.”
9 tn Heb “when it sends forth.” Repointing the consonants of the Masoretic text would render the proposed reading “shoots” (cf. NRSV).
10 tn Or “many.”
11 tn Or “cypress trees” (cf. NASB, NLT); NIV “pine trees.”
12 tc The LXX lacks the first two words (Aram “the visions of my head”) of the Aramaic text.
13 tn Instead of “in the middle of the land,” some English versions render this phrase “a tree at the center of the earth” (NRSV); NAB, CEV “of the world”; NLT “in the middle of the earth.” The Hebrew phrase can have either meaning.
14 tn Aram “its height was great.”
15 tn Aram “its sight.” So also v. 17.
16 tn Or “to the end of all the earth” (so KJV, ASV); NCV, CEV “from anywhere on earth.”
17 tn Aram “the beasts of the field.”
18 tn Aram “all flesh.”
19 tn Aram “the visions of my head.”
20 tn Aram “a watcher and a holy one.” The expression is a hendiadys; so also in v. 23. This “watcher” is apparently an angel. The Greek OT (LXX) in fact has ἄγγελος (angelo", “angel”) here. Theodotion simply transliterates the Aramaic word (’ir). The term is sometimes rendered “sentinel” (NAB) or “messenger” (NIV, NLT).
21 tn Aram “in strength.”
22 tn Aram “and thus he was saying.”
23 tn Aram “its sight.”
24 tn Aram “the beasts of the field” (also in vv. 23, 25, 32).
25 sn Much of modern scholarship views this chapter as a distortion of traditions that were originally associated with Nabonidus rather than with Nebuchadnezzar. A Qumran text, the Prayer of Nabonidus, is often cited for parallels to these events.