2 Kings 14:9
And Jehoash the 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.
The thistle is Amaziah king of Judah and the cedar is Jehoash king of Israel, following an Eastern custom of describing rulers and other people by the names of trees, at times on the ground of their appearance. The passage is an allegory or parable in the form of personification, attributing to inanimate objects the life, speech and action that properly belong to rational beings in order to enforce or illustrate a truth. In it the thistle in Lebanon speaks to the cedar in Lebanon to propose a marriage alliance in which its son would marry the cedar's daughter, and afterward a wild beast in Lebanon treads down the thistle. In the lesser-held form the proposal is reversed, with the thistle proposing that its daughter marry the cedar's son before being trampled by the wild beast.
The speaking and acting of the plants is an illustrative object lesson, not evidence that thistles and cedars literally have families who marry, are conscious, are capable of human speech, or that the events literally happened. By this figure the passage expresses the contempt the king of Israel felt for the proposition the king of Judah had made to him. The same device by which inanimate things are made to speak and act concerning the facts of their case as though alive accounts for the rich man being represented as conscious, intelligent and active in hades, without teaching anything about the real condition of the dead or establishing that the dead are conscious.