Assyria's Cedar Greatness Becomes Pharaoh's Warning

Whom art thou like in thy greatness?

In the eleventh year, the word to Pharaoh and to his multitude: Whom art thou like in thy greatness? Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, a shadowing shroud, of an high stature; his top was among the thick boughs.

Waters made him great; the deep set him up with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees; his boughs multiplied; his branches became long because of the multitude of waters.

Birds, beasts, and Eden's envy

All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs; under his branches all the beasts of the field brought forth their young; under his shadow dwelt all great nations. He was fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches, for his root was by great waters.

The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him; the fir trees were not like his boughs; the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like him in his beauty. The LORD made him fair by the multitude of his branches, so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him. Imperial size is the warning to Egypt, not a racial identity and not evidence of virtue.