The waters nourished it: The cedar tree grew so tall because it had plenty of water to make it grow. The waters may refer to rainwater, but it more likely refers to underground water here, since such water helps large trees to grow. Rather than say exactly where these waters came from, translators may render this line as “It had plenty of water to make it grow” (similarly Contemporary English Version).

The deep made it grow tall …: The deep refers to the mythical ocean that the Israelites believed held up the earth (see the comments on 27.19). “Underground rivers” (Good News Translation) and “deep springs” (New International Version, New International Reader’s Version, New Living Translation, New Century Version) do not capture adequately the sense of the Hebrew word here. A better model is “the ocean under the earth.” The cedar tree was so big that it even tapped into this mythical underground ocean, which shows how large and magnificent it was. In fact, this cedar seems to have been a special favorite of the deep, because it was making its rivers flow round the place of its planting, that is, the underground ocean was watering the cedar with its rivers of waters, while sending forth its streams to all the trees of the forest, that is, it was watering all the other trees with lesser streams of water. The Hebrew word for the rivers that fed the cedar tree refers to natural rivers or currents of water, while the word for the streams that fed the other trees refers to artificial canals or irrigation ditches (Greenberg). Few translations make this distinction clearly. The place of its planting is the place “where the tree was growing” (Good News Translation), “the bottom of the tree” (New Century Version), “its base” (New International Reader’s Version). Forest, which is a place where many trees grow close together, is a misleading rendering because the Hebrew word here refers only to a “field” (New Revised Standard Version, New International Version, King James Version / New King James Version, New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), which is open “country” (Revised English Bible). For many languages the most appropriate term will be “bush.”

A model for this verse is:

• The cedar tree had plenty of water and the great underground ocean made it grow very tall. That ocean sent rivers of water around the place where it was planted, but it only sent little streams of water to all the other trees of the bush.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .