ISRAEL EXALTED.
Ezekiel 17:22-24.
The word of the LORD came ‘expressly’ to the priest Ezekiel in ‘the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity’ (cf. Ezekiel 1:2-3). Our present chapter is a ‘riddle,’ or an allegory: ‘a parable unto the house of Israel’ (EZEKIEL 17:2).
It speaks of two eagles: first of king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (EZEKIEL 17:3, EZEKIEL 17:12), who took king Jehoiachin of Judah (‘the highest branch of the cedar’) and carried him off into Babylon: ‘a land of traffic’ and ‘a city of merchants’ (EZEKIEL 17:3-4). Nebuchadnezzar ‘took also of the seed of the land, and planted it’ (EZEKIEL 17:5-6), and took one ‘of the king’s seed’ – Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah – and set him up as a puppet king in Jehoiachin’s place, ‘and made a covenant with him’ (EZEKIEL 17:13).
The second eagle represents the other superpower of the region, Egypt, towards which the roots of this vine of Nebuchadnezzar’s planting inclined its roots and branches (EZEKIEL 17:7, EZEKIEL 17:15). Under Zedekiah, Judah reached out to Egypt: but by breaking covenant with Babylon (EZEKIEL 17:16), Zedekiah was also breaking covenant with the LORD (EZEKIEL 17:18-19). The outcome was never going to be favourable to either king Zedekiah or the remaining people of Judah (EZEKIEL 17:20-21).
As we enter the climax of this chapter, our main reading for today, the two eagles are no longer in focus: neither are mentioned. Now it is the LORD Himself who is re-establishing the Davidic dynasty by cropping off a tender shoot from the young twigs at the top of the highest branch of the high cedar. In contrast to Babylon, ‘a city of merchants’ (cf. EZEKIEL 17:4), this shoot, He promises, He will plant in “a high and lofty mountain” (EZEKIEL 17:22).
That “shoot” corresponds to the ‘shoot from the root of Jesse’ (cf. Isaiah 11:1), and the ‘righteous Branch’ that the LORD would raise unto David (cf. Jeremiah 23:5). The mountain is no doubt Zion (EZEKIEL 17:23a; cf. Isaiah 2:2-4). And here, “the birds of the air” (EZEKIEL 17:23b) nest in the goodly cedar which the LORD has planted, opening up the kingdom of God to the Gentiles through our Lord Jesus Christ who is the seed, shoot, root and Branch of our salvation (cf. Mark 4:30-32).
So, “all the trees of the field” - all the people of the world – “shall know” that it is the LORD who has brought down the high tree, EXALTED the low tree, dried up the green tree, and has made the dry tree flourish. “I the LORD have spoken, and have done it” (EZEKIEL 17:24). The fulness of His salvation informs us who God is, and what He has done our behalf, until such time as ‘the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea’ (cf. Habakkuk 2:14).
