“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,
God has Ezekiel ask Pharaoh who he resembles in his greatness, and the answer is a portrait of Assyria as a towering cedar. Verse 10 is the turn: the description becomes a verdict, and it names the exact fault that brought the great tree down.
The comparison Egypt did not want
God answers Egypt by pointing to a power just as strong. One writer notes how we like to think the rule applies to everyone but us:
Numerical Bible NotesHow gladly would we make ourselves the one exception, so that what applies to others should not apply to us! God therefore points them to Assyria, a power as strong as Egypt itself.
Why a cedar
The cedar is not a random image. In Scripture it always carries the same sense:
The Bible TreasuryAs a symbol in Scripture, the cedar always stands for power or exaltation, if not pride… When judgment comes on the great of the earth, the prophet Isaiah says it is the day of the LORD upon the cedars of Lebanon (Isaiah 2:13). Such passages mark the cedar as the symbol of dignity and power.
The height was a gift
The verse speaks of height. The chapter first says who gave that height:
William KellyAs the cedar of Lebanon stands among the trees for height, size, spread of shade and beauty, so the Assyrian stood among the nations. God had held back nothing that could adorn or make great Nineveh, or the people whose capital it was. He even gave it enormous far-reaching power and influence over the countries around, so that all envied it.
What Assyria did with the gift was nothing new:
Numerical Bible NotesBut after being made great like this by God's fostering care, it only repeated the old story. Is there any gift of God that man will not abuse?
The fault named: a heart lifted up
The verse does not condemn size. It condemns what the size did to the heart.
William KellyBut the Assyrian wanted for himself the glory of a king of kings. This lifting up of his heart in his height brought his doom on him.
Dependence can be plain to see and still not be felt:
Numerical Bible NotesAssyria owed everything to its two rivers, as Egypt did to the Nile. It was completely dependent, as anyone could see. Yet what grew out of that was self-exaltation, not a sense of dependence. So in the end it had to be brought low, for God's law is: everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.
"Therefore" — the verdict carried out
The word therefore points to what God does next. He has a use for a proud power, and a sentence for it as well:
J. N. DarbyGod uses the pride and wickedness of the wicked to discipline His people. Afterwards He destroys the instrument. The Assyrian was God's rod to strike Israel, but he glorifies himself against God — and God breaks the rod.
The public lesson
The fallen cedar had a message in it, and the message was not for Egypt alone:
Numerical Bible NotesAll the peoples of the earth had gone down from his shadow and left him. This was no unexplainable disaster. It was a warning against pride, one that the sure government of God preaches everywhere.
Assyria is not the only tree of this kind in the Bible:
Ernst-August BremickerOther examples in the Bible confirm that a tree becoming great is something negative. In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty king of Babylon, is pictured as a tree, but in a negative way. Another example is Ezekiel 31, where Assyria is compared to a great tree. A mighty tree stands for great authority and political power, and such power is easy to misuse.
Summary
- Given. Assyria's size, its shade and the nations that sheltered in it all came from God. He held back nothing that could make Nineveh great.
- Grasped. The height was not the sin; the heart raised by the height was. Assyria wanted for itself the glory of a king of kings.
- Groundless. Assyria did not make its own rivers, so it had no ground for self-exaltation. A dependence that is never felt ends in being brought low.
- Given up. Because the heart rose, doom followed. God uses a proud power as His rod, then breaks the rod.
- Gone public. Assyria's ruin was no mystery. God's government preaches the same warning against pride to every nation — and to every reader since.