Bible Commentaries
Expositor's Dictionary of Texts
Ezekiel 31
Ezekiel 31:3
In Proserpina, after quoting this passage, Ruskin proceeds: "Now hear what follows. "The cedars in the Garden of God could not hide Him. The fir-trees were not like His boughs, and the chestnut-trees were not like His branches; nor any tree in the Garden of God was like unto Him in beauty." So that you see, whenever a nation rises into consistent, vital, and, through many generations, enduring power, there is still the Garden of God; still it is the water of life which feeds the roots of it; and still the succession of its people is imaged by the perennial leafage of the trees of Paradise. Could this be said of Assyria, and shall it not be said of England? How much more, of lives such as ours should be;—just, laborious, united in aim, beneficent in fulfilment, may the image be used of the leaves of the tree of Eden!"
Add Comment
Comments