Ezekiel 17:22

"Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: I will take of the lofty top of the cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I will plant it upon a high and lofty mountain: in the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it; and it shall bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all birds of every wing; in the shade of the branches thereof shall they dwell. And all the trees of the field shall know that I, Jehovah, have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish: I, Jehovah, have spoken and have done it."

"This prophecy was fulfilled only in a Messianic sense."[13] "We have here a striking prediction of the kingdom of Messiah."[14] May noted that this scripture corresponds, "with the common designation of the Messiah as the Branch."[15]

There is actually another parable here, using the same figures with different interpretations from the same figures in the first part of the chapter. "The `tender one' taken from the topmost twigs is the Messiah of the house of David (Jeremiah 23:5f; 33:15)."[16] Other Biblical examples of kingdoms sheltering beasts and birds are in Ezekiel 31:6,12; Daniel 4:12,21; and Mark 4:32.

The promise here revealed that God would indeed honor all of the sacred promises to David, but that he would do so with entirely different personnel from that of the apostate Israel as represented by the unfaithful and treacherous Zedekiah.

"All the trees of the field" (Ezekiel 17:24). "These are the rulers of the world and the nations governed by them."[17] The world-wide acceptance of Christ in his Messianic rule is indicated by this, but not in the sense that "the nations" shall be incorporated into God's kingdom.