Ezekiel 31:18

“To whom are you thus like in glory and greatness among the trees of Eden? Yet you will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the nether parts of the earth. You will lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and his numerous people.”

A similar question is asked to that in Ezekiel 31:2. Who are Pharaoh and Egypt to compare themselves with? They had been compared with a great Cypress, more wonderful than the trees of Eden (Ezekiel 31:9). But comparison with the trees of Eden was meaningless. For they as well as Egypt will be brought down to the nether parts of the earth. This confirms that we are to see the trees of Eden as representing a nation or nations in their glory. And what more likely than that it should refer to the Tyre and her neighbours, so glorified in previous oracles, as we have suggested above?

And again it is emphasised that all come to the same end. In parts of the ancient Near East the ‘uncircumcised' were frowned on. They were as it were outcasts. They had no part in the religions of those who were circumcised (the great majority). But in the world of the dead all are equal, and Pharaoh would be there with the uncircumcised, and with the slain, a far cry from the idea of his riding daily through the skies as Osiris/Ra.