2 Chronicles 25:18
And Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.
2 Chronicles 25:18 belongs to the account of Amaziah's campaign against Edom and its aftermath. In that account Amaziah was warned not to rely on the hired army of Israel even though he had paid to hire it, since God could grant victory without it and was able to repay the loss. Honoring God outweighs the earthly cost of abandoning a wrong course.
The verse records Joash king of Israel warning Amaziah king of Judah by a parable. In the parable a thistle proudly seeks marriage with a cedar, proposing that his son marry the cedar's daughter, but a wild beast passes by and tramples the thistle. It illustrates the danger of overconfidence and the defeat of a weaker presumptuous power.
The verse also belongs to the record of the unstable Amaziah, showing how turning from God led to strife, captivity and great loss. The outcome could have been different if God had been remembered. God stands ready to turn and work mightily for His people when they seek Him with all the heart.
The verse uses personification, presenting the thistle and cedar as speaking and arranging a marriage and the wild beast as trampling the thistle, giving plants and other nonhuman things human speech and actions. The thistle's marriage proposal is not literal speech but God causing lifeless things to speak and act as though alive. The same kind of speaking and acting is seen in the blood of Abel crying, dead Abel speaking, the depth and sea speaking, destruction and death hearing, the stone hearing words, the trees holding an election, making speeches and singing, the stone crying from the wall with the beam answering, the withheld wages or hire crying, the slain souls under the altar crying for vengeance, and death and hades personified. In the same way the dead in sheol and hades are made to speak and act concerning the facts of their cases as though alive, as with Rachel lamenting, the mighty dead conversing with Pharaoh in hades, and dead kings mocking the king of Babylon, so their conversations do not prove consciousness in death and speech in death does not mean consciousness in death.