Ezekiel 31:10

"Therefore thus said the Lord Jehovah: Because thou art exalted in stature, and he hath set his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height; I will even deliver him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations; he shall surely deal with him; I have driven him out of his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off and left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are broken, and his boughs are broken by all the water courses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him. Upon his ruin all the birds of the heavens shall dwell, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches; to the end that none of the trees by the waters exalt themselves in their stature, neither set their top among the thick boughs, nor that their mighty one stand up in their height, even all that drink water: for they are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit."

ASSYRIA'S FALL WAS A WARNING AGAINST HUMAN PRIDE

"Thus said the Lord Jehovah ..." (Ezekiel 31:10). Note the past tense. This is a reference to the prophecy of the doom of Assyria, as fully recounted in Nahum. (See my commentary on this, Vol. 3, pp. 3-58.)

Ezekiel 31:10-14 set forth the fall of Assyria in its true status, that is, as a past event, already known to the whole world of that period.

A mighty one of the nations (Nebuchadnezzar) has gone up against it; and we see the great trunk lying prone across valleys and mountains; it has been felled to the earth; the nations have been scared from under its shadow; and the tree which only yesterday might have stood against the whole world now lies prostrate and dishonoured - "none so poor as to do it reverence."[11]

"Here under the figure of the felling of a cedar there is depicted the overthrow of a monarchy and a kingdom that has already taken place."[12] Our chapter is a prophecy of a destruction yet future which is directed against Egypt; and, if any further proof had been needed that this description beginning in Ezekiel 31:3 and continuing through Ezekiel 31:17 cannot possibly be applied to Egypt, this provides it.

"Strangers have cut him off ... have left him ... and have left him ..." (Ezekiel 31:12) The prophecy of Nahum has the prophetic record of how that forsaking of Assyria took place.

Yet they flee away. Stand, stand, they cry, but none looketh back (Nahum 2:8).

Although this destruction is surely coming upon Egypt, the passage here is still recording what has already happened to Assyria. Cooke and others have attempted to interpret this portion of the chapter as written in the prophetic perfects, "have cut it down," meaning "will cut it down."[13] This cannot be correct, because the past tense is contrasted with the future tense in Ezekiel 31:12 and Ezekiel 31:18, as accurately pointed out by Keil.[14]

Ezekiel 31:18 plainly indicates the overthrow of Egypt and his power as still in the future, contrasting dramatically with the felling of the cedar which already had taken place. "Thus destruction of the cedar can only be Assyria, and not Egypt at all."[15]

The certainty of this application to a past event is seen in the fact that, "Ezekiel corrected his allegory to accommodate the past tense. The birds and wild beasts are still there; but instead of dwelling in the boughs, the (vultures, owls, jackals and hyenas) hover and creep over the carcass of the dead, decaying trunk!."[16]