EZEKIEL 31

2 Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to his multitude; Whom art thou like in thy greatness?

As Assyria fell, suddenly crushed from mighty power to utter powerlessness, so Egypt should be brought down.

3 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.

8 The cedars in the garden of Elohim could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of Elohim was like unto him in his beauty.

9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of Elohim, envied him.

This country, in after ages, came to be denominated "the Garden of the Lord;" and the kings who reigned in it, "the Trees of Eden." It was no doubt termed the Lord's garden as a whole, from the fact of His having, in the beginning, planted a garden in it where He put the man; so that the name of a small part of Eden, came to be applied by his family in the time of Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, and Moses, to the whole region; more especially as the future paradise is to occupy a considerable portion of its ancient limits.

The plain of Jordan appears to have been part of Eden from the following texts. "Lot beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere as the garden of the Lord. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan and Lot journeyed east; and dwelled in the cities of the plain (Gen. 13:10-12); that is, in the East, or Eden.

There is a prophecy in Ezekiel, predicting the overthrow of the Egyptian Pharoah by the king of Babylon, "the mighty one of the heathen."

In setting forth the certainty of his overthrow, God recapitulates the power and dominion of the Ninevite dynasty of Assyria: which, however, was not able to withstand the king of Babylon, and therefore there was no hope for Egypt of a successful resistance. In the recapitulation, the Ninevite Assyrian is styled, "a cedar in Lebanon;" that is, his dominion extended over the land of the ten tribes of Israel, in which are the cedar-crowned mountains of Lebanon.

...These trees (Dan. 4:20-22) are representative of the royalties of Mesopotamia, Syria, Israel, &c., which the kings of Assyria had abolished (Isaiah 37:12-13); and which "could not hide him," or prevent him getting the ascendancy over them. It is clear, then, from the terms of this beautiful allegory, that the countries I have indicated are comprehended in Eden; that as a whole it is styled the garden of the Lord; and that the trees are the royalties of the land.

Elpis Israel