Eze 31:8-9, 36:35 | JFB | STEP | 8. cedars . . . could not hide him —could not outtop him. No other king eclipsed him. were not like —were not comparable to. garden of God —As in the case of Tyre ( ), the imagery, that is applied to the Assyrian king, is taken from Eden; peculiarly appropriate, as Eden was watered by rivers that afterwards watered Assyria ( ). This cedar seemed to revive in itself all the glories of paradise, so that no tree there outtopped it.

Ezekiel 31:8-9

8. cedars . . . could not hide him—could not outtop him. No other king eclipsed him.

were not like—were not comparable to.

garden of God—As in the case of Tyre (Eze 28:13), the imagery, that is applied to the Assyrian king, is taken from Eden; peculiarly appropriate, as Eden was watered by rivers that afterwards watered Assyria (Ge 2:10-14). This cedar seemed to revive in itself all the glories of paradise, so that no tree there outtopped it.

9. I . . . made him—It was all due to My free grace.

Ezekiel 36:35

35. they shall say—The heathen, who once made Israel's desolation a ground of reproach against the name of Jehovah Himself (Eze 36:20, 21); but now He so vindicates its sanctity (Eze 36:22, 23) that these same heathen are constrained to acknowledge Israel's more than renewed blessedness to be God's own work, and a ground for glorifying His name (Eze 36:36).

Eden—as Tyre (the type of the world powers in general: so Assyria, a cedar "in the garden of God, Eden," Eze 31:8, 9), in original advantages, had been compared to "Eden, the garden of God" (Eze 28:13), from which she had fallen irrecoverably; so Israel, once desolate, is to be as "the garden of Eden" (Isa 51:3), and is to be so unchangeably.