The Proud Cedar Is Cut Down and Descends

Because his heart is lifted up in his height

Because the cedar exalted himself, the LORD delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him. Strangers, the terrible of the nations, cut him off and leave him. Upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches fall; his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land.

All the people of the earth go down from his shadow and leave him. Upon his ruin all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches. None of the trees by the waters are to exalt themselves in height; none to shoot up their top among the thick boughs; none to stand up in their height, all that drink water. 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.

The pit consoles other trees

In the day when the cedar went down to the grave, the LORD caused a mourning: he covered the deep for him, held back her floods, and great waters were stayed. He clothed Lebanon with blackness; all the trees of the field fainted for him. The nations shook at the sound of his fall, when the LORD cast him down to hell with them that descend into the pit.

All the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, are comforted in the nether parts of the earth. They also went down into hell with him unto them that be slain with the sword, and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen. The fall does not authorize chopping forests, imperial conquest, or rejoicing over ordinary people who lived in a great power's shade.