1 In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me:
2 "Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes: 'Who can compare with you in your greatness?
3 Consider Assyria, a cedar in Lebanon with lovely branches, a forest of shade, lofty in height, its top among the clouds.
4 Waters made it grow, the deep made it tall; its streams ran all around the place where it was planted and sent their channels out to all the trees of the field.
5 So it grew taller than all the trees of the field; its boughs grew many and its branches long because of the abundant water as it spread out.
6 All the birds of the sky made their nests in its boughs, all the animals of the field bore their young under its branches, and all the great nations lived in its shade.
7 It was lovely in its greatness, in the reach of its branches, for its roots went down to abundant water.
8 The cedars in the garden of God could not hide it; the fir trees could not match its boughs, and the plane trees were nothing beside its branches; no tree in the garden of God equaled its beauty.
9 I made it lovely with its many branches, and all the trees of Eden in the garden of God envied it.
10 "'So thus says the Lord GOD: Because you grew so tall, and it set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height,
11 I handed it over to the mightiest of the nations; he will surely deal with it. For its wickedness I have cast it out.
12 Foreigners, the most brutal of the nations, cut it down and abandoned it. On the mountains and in all the valleys its branches fell, and its boughs lay shattered in all the ravines of the land; all the peoples of the earth went out from its shade and abandoned it.
13 On its fallen trunk all the birds of the sky settle, and all the animals of the field are among its branches,
14 so that no trees beside the waters may grow so tall or set their tops among the clouds, and none of the well-watered trees may rise up to them in height. For all of them are handed over to death, to the world below, among the sons of men, with those who go down to the pit.
15 "'Thus says the Lord GOD: On the day it went down to Sheol I caused mourning; I covered the deep over it; I held back its streams, and the abundant waters were stopped. I dressed Lebanon in black for it, and all the trees of the field wilted over it.
16 At the noise of its fall I made the nations quake, when I brought it down to Sheol with those who go down to the pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, all the well-watered trees, were consoled in the world below.
17 They too went down to Sheol with it, to those slain by the sword, as did those who were its arm, who had lived in its shade among the nations.
18 "'Which of the trees of Eden, then, was like you in glory and greatness? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the world below; you will lie among the uncircumcised, with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his hordes, declares the Lord GOD.'"