"'Then I passed by you and watched you, noticing that you had reached the age for love. I spread my cloak over you and covered your nakedness. I swore a solemn oath to you and entered into a marriage covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

Its boughs were strong, fit for rulers' scepters; it reached up into the clouds. It stood out because of its height and its many branches.

Consider Assyria, a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches, like a forest giving shade, and extremely tall; its top reached into the clouds.

"'Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: Because it was tall in stature, and its top reached into the clouds, and it was proud of its height,

Now the hand of the Lord had been on me the evening before the refugee reached me, but the Lord opened my mouth by the time the refugee arrived in the morning; he opened my mouth and I was no longer unable to speak.