But here the cedar means human grandeur and national greatness, full of arrogant pride and therefore doomed to be abased. Isaiah in his sublime prophecy on the coming day of the Lord uses thus the cedars of Lebanon: "For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low. And upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan" (Isa. ii:12-13). Of interest are the words in the sixth verse: "All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs." The same statement is made in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, in which the King of Babylon had seen a great tree, "and the fowls of heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof" (Dan. iv:12). And our Lord spoke a parable of the mustard seed which became a tree "so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof" (Matt. xiii:32). The fowls mean peoples who associated with Assyria, Egypt and the King of Babylon, while these powers became proud and lifted up. The mustard tree in the parable of our Lord represents the development of Gentile-Christendom as an earthly institution and organization, lifted up like a big tree, and the birds which find shelter there are the symbols of the unclean, the unsaved masses, nominally professing Christians. And God who dealt with the Assyrians, with the King of Egypt, God, who humbled Nebuchadnezzar, will yet deal in His coming great judgments with the Gentile nations of today for their pride and wickedness, as well as with Christendom. II. The Fall and Desolation of the Tree. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height; I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him. Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches: To the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs, neither their trees stand up in their height, all that drink water: for they are all delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit (verses 10-14).