Ezekiel 31:15

Creation puts on mourning and is paralysed at Pharaoh's fall. Lebanon is covered with blackness, and all the trees faint.

down to the grave to Sheòl, the place of the dead.

caused a mourning Rather: I caused to mourn, I covered the deep for him. The term "covered" (wanting in LXX.) is used as in Ezekiel 32:7, "cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof black," having the same meaning as "caused to mourn." The "deep" and the "floods" (rivers in Ezekiel 31:4) are those mentioned in Ezekiel 31:4, but though the ref. is to the Nile and the waters of Egypt, a universal magnitude is given to these, they are the "deep" absolutely. This deep which had nourished the great cedar is covered with mourning and paralysed by his fall, she is motionless, her waters congeal.

caused Lebanon to mourn Lit. madeLebanon black, in mourning. The prophet's representation naturally is not quite consistent. The home of Pharaoh, as a cedar, is Lebanon, but it is the waters of Egypt, magnified here into the "deep" absolutely, that nourish him. Hence both the deep and Lebanon, with all the trees thereon, mourn and faint (Isaiah 51:20) over his fall. What the language primarily expresses is the idea of the world-wide importance of the Egyptian power, so that, as the greatest forces of nature minister to its growth, all creation is affected by its fall. Cf. Ezekiel 32:9-10.