1. in the eleventh year in the third month. This would be June 587 B.C.E.

3. Look, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon. Assyria had been the paradigmatic image of the towering, overweening imperial power that was brought down to the dust. The body of this prophecy will focus on the grandeur and downfall of Assyria, but it is all intended to serve as a monitory image of the fate that will now overtake arrogant Egypt.

4. the deep. Although tehom, “the deep,” often refers to the cosmic abyss of waters (as at the beginning of Genesis), here it indicates the groundwater that nurtures the tree.

5. boughs . . . branches. One might note that Ezekiel uses four different Hebrew words (one borrowed from the Aramaic) for “branches” in the course of this prophecy.

6. in its shade dwelled / all the many nations. The introduction of “many nations” is a clear indication that the towering tree is an image of Assyria’s imperial grandeur.

8. Cedars did not match it / in the garden of God. As in the prophecy concerning Egypt in chapter 28, Ezekiel pushes his hyperbole to the limit by bringing Eden into the picture, saying that even the perfect cedars of God’s garden were not the equal of this grand tree.

10. it grew high. The Masoretic Text reads “you grew high,” and perhaps the switch from second person to third person in this verse was accepted usage for Ezekiel, but it would be confusing in English. The Syriac shows the third person here, but there is no way of knowing whether it used a Hebrew text with the third person or whether the translators were regularizing the Hebrew.

11. I have banished it. This clause (a single word in the Hebrew) looks syntactically disjunct and may reflect a scribal error.

12. its branches shall break in all the watercourses of the earth. Previously, the many watercourses nurtured the tree and caused it to grow high. Now, the broken branches float down the streams, manifestly unable to be sustained in life by the water.

13. on its branches all the beasts of the field shall be. The tree has been shattered and the broken branches lie on the ground. Instead of birds nesting in the living branches, earthbound animals crouch over them.

14. well-watered trees. The Hebrew says literally “water-drinking trees.”

For they are all given over to death. The fact that trees, like human beings, die is an indication that empires, too—the grandest of trees—come to an end.

15. I dried up, covered the deep over it. The wording is a little confusing. Ordinarily, the deep is an inexhaustible source of water. Here, however, the deep is dried up—or, perhaps alternatively, its waters are “blocked”—so that when the great tree of the Assyrian empire descends into the netherworld, the “deep” or abyss that covers it serves to reinforce its withered state.

16. when I brought it down to Sheol . . . all the trees of Eden . . . took comfort. The somewhat complicated symbolic plot is as follows: Because trees, like humankind, are mortal, even the trees of Eden have gone down to Sheol. Now, when they see that the great tree of the Assyrian empire, which they were said to have envied, has joined them in the realm of death, they rejoice; the tree that towered over them has now been reduced to their equal.

17. the slain by the sword, its helpers. As is often the case with Ezekiel’s handling of allegorical figures, the referent here obtrudes into the allegorical image: “the slain by the sword” are fallen soldiers, and “helpers” would be Assyria’s military allies or mercenary troops.

18. Among the uncircumcised you lie. See the note on 28:10.

This is about Pharaoh and all his throngs. This notation at the very end of the prophecy betrays a certain awkwardness in the deployment of the allegory. The entire extended image of the towering tree has been a representation of the grandeur of the Assyrian empire. Now, however, the prophet must remind his audience that in fact Pharaoh is like Assyria in his greatness and that the whole prophecy is really about Pharaoh.