The High Cedars of Human Pride
Introduction: God's Forestry Management
We live in an age of swaggering nations. Men look at their skyscrapers, their aircraft carriers, their stock markets, and their technological prowess, and they conclude that they are the masters of their own fate. They believe their own press releases. The story of human history, as told by secular man, is a story of ascent, of man climbing out of the primordial ooze and into the driver's seat of the cosmos. But the Bible tells a very different story. The Bible tells us that God is the master of history, and that nations are nothing more than tools in His hands. He is the divine forester, and the nations are the trees in His great woodlot. He decides which ones grow tall and which ones get the axe.
This is not a popular message. Men want to believe they are self-made. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, certainly believed it. He saw the Nile, the source of his nation's life and wealth, and thought it was his own personal possession. He was the great crocodile, the master of his domain. But God, speaking through His prophet Ezekiel, is about to cut him down to size. And He does it in a most remarkable way. He doesn't just threaten Pharaoh directly; He first tells him a story about another, even greater, tree that has already been felled. He points to the fresh stump of the Assyrian empire and says, in effect, "You see that? You're next."
This passage is a divine taunt. It is a master class in biblical political science. It teaches us that all human greatness is a gift from God. It is derivative, not original. And the moment a nation or a man forgets this, the moment they begin to breathe their own fumes and believe they are the source of their own strength, the axe is already being laid to the root. This is not just a history lesson about ancient empires. It is a perpetual warning to every proud heart, every proud institution, and every proud nation that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
The Text
Now it happened in the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first of the month, that the word of Yahweh came to me saying, "Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude, 'To whom do you liken yourself in your greatness? Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon With beautiful branches and forest shade And lofty in height, And its top was among the clouds. The waters made it grow; the deep made it high. With its rivers it was going all around its planting place And sent out its conduits to all the trees of the field. Therefore its height was loftier than all the trees of the field, And its boughs became many and its branches long Because of many waters as it spread them out. All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs, And under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth, And all great nations lived under its shade. So it was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its foliage; For its roots extended to many waters. The cedars in God's garden could not match it; The cypresses could not liken themselves with its boughs, And the plane trees were not like its branches. No tree in God's garden could liken itself with it in its beauty. I made it beautiful with the multitude of its foliage, And all the trees of Eden, which were in the garden of God, were jealous of it.'"
(Ezekiel 31:1-9 LSB)
The Divine Summons (vv. 1-2)
The prophecy is dated with precision, grounding this divine confrontation in human history. God's interventions are not timeless fables; they are datable events.
"Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude, 'To whom do you liken yourself in your greatness?'" (Ezekiel 31:2)
God begins with a question that cuts to the very heart of pride. "Who do you think you are?" This is not a question seeking information. It is a rhetorical spear thrown at the inflated ego of the Egyptian king. Pharaoh saw himself as a god on earth, incomparable, a class of one. He and his teeming multitudes believed they were the center of the world. God's question is designed to make him look around. It forces a comparison. You think you are great? Let's talk about what real greatness looks like, and let's talk about what happens to it.
This is the fundamental question every man and nation must answer. To whom do you compare yourself? If you compare yourself to other men, you might come out looking pretty good. But the standard is not the tree next to you. The standard is the God who made the forest. Pride is always the result of a faulty comparison.
The Parable of the Great Cedar (vv. 3-6)
God does not answer His own question by pointing to Himself, not yet. He answers by pointing to a rival, a recently defeated superpower, Assyria. This is a brilliant rhetorical move. It is like telling a playground bully about the bigger bully who just got expelled.
"Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon With beautiful branches and forest shade And lofty in height, And its top was among the clouds." (Ezekiel 31:3)
God does not diminish Assyria's glory. He magnifies it. He wants Pharaoh to feel the full weight of this comparison. This was no sapling. This was a magnificent cedar, the king of the forest. Its branches were beautiful, providing shade and security. Its top was in the clouds, a clear metaphor for its immense pride and ambition, reminiscent of the tower of Babel. This was an empire that scraped the sky.
But where did this greatness come from? Verses 4 through 6 provide the answer, and it is the central theological point.
"The waters made it grow; the deep made it high... Therefore its height was loftier than all the trees of the field... All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs... and all great nations lived under its shade." (Ezekiel 31:4-6)
The source of the cedar's life was "the waters" and "the deep." It did not generate its own resources. It was planted in a place of abundance, and it drew its strength from that abundance. This is a picture of God's common grace. God is the one who sends the rain on the just and the unjust. He is the one who provides the political, economic, and military "waters" that allow an empire to flourish. Assyria's greatness was not self-made; it was a gift. The empire became a superpower, a world-system that provided a framework for other nations. The "birds of the sky" and "beasts of the field" represent the vassal states and peoples who found their place within the Assyrian power structure. It was a world unto itself, a great tree providing shade for many.
The Divine Artist and the Sin of Envy (vv. 7-9)
God continues to pile on the superlatives, describing the sheer aesthetic glory of this pagan empire. He is setting the stage for the great fall that is to come.
"So it was beautiful in its greatness... The cedars in God's garden could not match it... No tree in God's garden could liken itself with it in its beauty." (Ezekiel 31:7-8)
This is astonishing. God uses hyperbole to make His point. He says that this pagan cedar, Assyria, was more beautiful and more magnificent than the trees in His own garden, the garden of God, Eden itself. This is not to say that Assyria was more righteous. It is to say that the glory, power, and majesty that God bestowed upon this pagan nation was unparalleled. He gave it a unique splendor. This is a testament to the lavishness of God's creative power. He can make a pagan empire so glorious that it provokes the envy of the angels, so to speak.
And then comes the final, devastating assertion of sovereignty in verse 9. After all this description of the tree's beauty, God signs His name to the artwork.
"I made it beautiful with the multitude of its foliage, And all the trees of Eden, which were in the garden of God, were jealous of it." (Ezekiel 31:9)
Here is the Creator/creature distinction in its starkest form. "I made it beautiful." Assyria did not. The deep did not. Its own military genius did not. God is the artist. Assyria was merely the canvas. This is the truth that Assyria forgot, and it is the truth that Pharaoh was forgetting. They began to admire the beauty of the thing made and forgot the one who made it. They mistook the gift for a personal achievement.
The mention of jealousy is profound. The greatness God gave to Assyria was so immense that it became a stumbling block. It was an occasion for sin. The other nations envied it, and worse, the cedar itself became drunk on its own glory. When a created thing, whether a man or a nation, becomes this beautiful and powerful, the temptation to worship it is almost overwhelming. This is the essence of idolatry: to give the glory to the creature which is due to the Creator alone.
The Gospel Axe
The rest of the chapter, which we will consider later, describes what God does to this beautiful tree. He chops it down and casts it into Sheol. The message to Pharaoh is unmistakable. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And God is the one who swings the axe.
This is the story of every proud heart. We are all tempted to build our own little Assyrian empires. We want our tops to be in the clouds. We want to be beautiful and strong and secure in ourselves. We draw from the waters of God's common grace, His gifts of health, intelligence, and opportunity, and then we have the audacity to claim we are self-made.
The law of God comes to us as this prophecy came to Pharaoh. It shows us the great cedar of our own pride and tells us that it is destined for the fire. The axe is laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matthew 3:10). Our pride must be felled. Our self-righteousness must be brought down to the pit.
But the gospel reveals another tree. Not a proud and lofty cedar, but a rugged and cursed cross. On that tree, the King of Glory, the one who truly is beautiful, was made low. He descended into the pit, into Sheol, on our behalf. He took the axe of God's wrath that we deserved. God cut down His own Son so that proud, rebellious trees like us could be grafted into Him.
In Christ, we are planted in a new garden, the Church. We are not called to be magnificent, solitary cedars. We are called to be branches in the true Vine (John 15). Our life is not our own; it is drawn from Him. Our beauty is not our own; it is the reflected glory of Christ. The warning to Pharaoh is a warning to us all: Do not trust in your own greatness. Let the axe of God's law do its work in your heart, and then flee for refuge to the shadow of that other tree, the cross of Jesus Christ. For only there will you find life that cannot be cut down.