Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S18 || Babylon, Egypt, and Israel's Future Kingdom || Ezekiel 17:1-24 || Session 18
A cedar branch plucked by an eagle becomes a low, spreading vine. Another eagle appears, and the vine bends toward it, withering in judgment. Yet from this broken royal line, God promises to plant His own branch that will become a mighty, fruit-bearing cedar where birds of every kind will nest. This vivid forestry metaphor in Ezekiel 17 masterfully reveals God's plan spanning millennia.
The chapter begins with Ezekiel delivering a cryptic parable about eagles, cedar trees, and vines. As we explore the text, God himself provides the interpretation: Babylon (the first eagle) taking King Jehoiakim captive and installing Zedekiah, who then betrays his oath by seeking help from Egypt (the second eagle). The result? Devastating judgment on Jerusalem and the scattering of Israel.
But hidden within this prophecy of judgment lies an extraordinary promise of restoration. God declares He will personally take a tender sprig from the royal line and plant it on "the high mountain of Israel" (Jerusalem). Unlike the lowly vine produced by Babylon's interference, God's planting will grow into a magnificent cedar bearing fruit—something cedars naturally cannot do.
This prophecy points unmistakably to Jesus Christ, the "root and descendant of David," who will establish His millennial kingdom from Jerusalem. Jesus himself drew from this imagery when teaching about the kingdom of heaven. The birds nesting in its branches represent all peoples benefiting from this kingdom, including both believers and unbelievers living under Christ's rule.
What makes this prophecy particularly significant is that it remains unfulfilled. "All the trees of the field" (nations) have never acknowledged God's sovereignty through Jerusalem. This can only happen during Christ's future millennial reign when He returns to establish His kingdom on earth.
Ready to deepen your understanding of biblical prophecy and its connection to Christ? Subscribe now and join us as we continue reasoning through Ezekiel, revealing how ancient prophecies illuminate God's unfolding plan for humanity.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. We do verse-by-verse Bible study through the Word of God. My name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We are in Ezekiel, chapter 17. We've been working our way through this prophet and God has given him some very unusual things to do. He laid on his side for over a year. He cut his hair and weighed it. He made a small clay model. Now God has been giving Ezekiel some very harsh messages of condemnation towards the nation of Israel. One of the themes, as we're going to see in this next chapter, is that God is going to use Babylon, evil, wicked Babylon, to come in in judgment over Jerusalem. To illustrate this, Ezekiel is going to be telling a forestry lesson. We're going out into the forest and we're going to see birds and trees. So, Steve, can you read the first 10 verses of Ezekiel, chapter 17?
Speaker 2:Now the word of the Lord came to me saying Son of man, propound a riddle and speak a parable to the house of Israel, saying Thus says the Lord God, a great eagle with great wings, long pinions and a full plumage of many colors came to Lebanon and took away the top of the cedar, he plucked off the topmost of its young twigs and brought it to a land of merchants. He set it in a city of traders. He also took some of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil. He placed it beside abundant waters. He set it like a willow. Then it sprouted and became a low spreading vine, with its branches turned toward him but its roots remained under it. So it became a vine and yielded shoots and set out branches.
Speaker 2:But there was another great eagle with great wings and much plumage. And behold, this vine bent its roots towards him and set out its branches toward him from the beds where it was planted. That he might water it. It was planted in good soil, beside abundant waters. That it might yield branches and bear fruit and become a splendid wine Say. Thus says the Lord God, will it thrive? Will he not pull up its roots and cut off its fruit so that it withers, so that all its sprouting leaves wither, and neither by great strength nor by many people can it be raised from its roots again. Behold though it is planted. Will it thrive? Will it not completely wither as soon as the east wind strikes? It? Wither on the beds where it grew.
Speaker 1:So we have this parable of these two eagles and one of them goes and plucks off the top part of a tall cedar tree and takes it to another land and plants it and it becomes a low vine. Now to interpret this, one of the things we have to remember is that any time we see an animal, especially the Old Testament, we have to ask whether this was a clean or unclean animal according to the laws in Leviticus. And if we go through the list of clean and unclean animals, we find that an eagle is an unclean animal. Therefore, the eagle and any other unclean animal in any other parable is never a good thing. It's never a good animal. It's never right with God.
Speaker 1:So the eagles were unclean animals. These are out of fellowship with God. It tells us in this passage that it takes the topmost part of a cedar tree. Well, a cedar tree was valuable for the wood and they were very tall and stately and strong, and he takes the best part of that, the top shoot, takes it to another land and it immediately becomes a low vine that turns towards the eagle. Steve, what can we interpret that to?
Speaker 2:be. Well, I think what this is describing is. It's talking about when Nebuchadnezzar came into the land and took it under its control and through that, he took the king of Jerusalem, or Judah at the time, and took him and deposed him, and that happened to be King Jehoiakim. That's what it's talking about there taking this top off. Then, in this place, he ended up putting his brother in there, renaming him to Zedekiah, and this is the king that we see whenever the final siege of Jerusalem in 586 BC is undertaken and the temple's destroyed, the city's completely destroyed, but Zedekiah has been put in place by Nebuchadnezzar and he, at the time that he's done that. He has pledged allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar. We're going to see that change, though in a little bit.
Speaker 1:So again, the eagle, the unclean animal in the parable, takes the top part of a cedar tree. Cedars were very tall, very strong, very stately trees. He takes that and it plants it in another land. So the king of Israel was taken to another land and it grows, but it becomes a low grapevine. Grapevines didn't have enough strength to hold themselves up off the ground. People that grow grapes have to take the vines and hang them on a trellis to keep the grapes up off the ground. Grapevine doesn't have enough strength to hold itself up. Cedar trees are very strong, grapevines are very weak. Not only is it a weak vine that can't hold itself up, but it turns towards the unclean eagle.
Speaker 1:Therefore the parable is quite clear. It's taking the best part of Israel. The king, the best part, takes it to another land, plants it and there it's no longer a stately strong cedar tree. It's a lowly, weak vine that turns towards the unclean eagle and that symbolizes wicked Babylon taking the king and taking them to a foreign land. Then there's a second eagle. The second eagle in verses 7 through 9 pulls up the vine and it dies. Now this second eagle is Egypt. King Zedekiah turned to Egypt for help in defending against Babylon, but Egypt did not allow Israel to thrive. Steve, we have a great lesson here, simply because God is predicting these things very specifically, very graphically. Although they haven't happened yet, they were literally fulfilled.
Speaker 2:That's correct, Just like earlier in the book, whenever he depicted a wall and for Ezekiel to crawl through the hole in the wall and as he crawled through it that he put a blindfold on. As we talked about at that time, that all was a prediction of Zedekiah how he escaped, or at least tried to escape, from Jerusalem. And he didn't do it. He was captured and then Nebuchadnezzar put his eyes out. So, just like then, Ezekiel is given a picture of what's going to happen. Now he's given another picture, albeit a little bit further out, not specifics, as he was with the wall and all of that. He's given kind of an overview of the political situation. But this is what's going to happen Zedekiah is going to turn against Nebuchadnezzar. That, as I mentioned before, is what's going to force Nebuchadnezzar to actually then say, okay, I'm done with this, I'm going to take the temple and the city out.
Speaker 1:So again, for our listeners, don't miss the overall flow of the story of Israel here. God had set them up initially with a very clear message of the law and the sacrifices. He sent prophets like Moses and all these kings like David that were setting the nation on a right path. The nation responded by repeated disobedience and rejection of the one true God. Now God is passing judgment on them, and the judgment will come by letting a foreign nation, a very wicked one, come in and destroy the nation. That's what he's allowing them to do.
Speaker 2:And another thing is, Glenn, is that God had designated Babylon to be the one that was going to discipline Israel or Judah, and here we have Zedekiah making this alliance with Pharaoh to go against Babylon. It's, in essence, essence with everything that Jeremiah is telling the nation of Judah and Jerusalem and Zedekiah Ezekiel telling them that our exile is there in Babylon. Then, rather than succumbing to that the discipline that the Lord has through Babylon we have Zedekiah trying to go his own way. So we have that picture as well. God had selected Babylon to be the disciplinarian and here Zedekiah is trying to keep that from happening.
Speaker 1:The parable of the eagle, and really the two eagles and the cedar and the vines, as we said, were the kings of Israel and Babylon and Egypt. We don't have to guess that that's a correct interpretation, simply because the next part of the chapter gives us the interpretation. I'll go ahead and read it, starting in verse 11. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying Say now to the rebellious house Do you not know what these things mean? Say Behold, the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, took its king and princes and brought them to him in Babylon. He took one of the royal family and made a covenant with him, putting him under oath. He also took away the mighty of the land that the kingdom might be in subjection, not exalting itself, but keeping his covenant that it might continue. But he rebelled against him by sending his envoys to Egypt that they might give him horses and many troops. Will he succeed? Will he who does such things escape? Can he indeed break the covenant and escape?
Speaker 1:As I live, declares the Lord God, surely in the country of the king who put him on the throne, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke in Babylon he shall die, pharaoh with his mighty army and great company, will not help him in the war when they cast up ramps and build siege walls to cut off many lives. Now, he despised the oath by breaking the covenant. And behold, he pledged his allegiance Yet did all these things. He shall not escape.
Speaker 1:Therefore, says the Lord, god as I live, surely my oath, which he despised, and my covenant, which he broke, I will inflict on his head. I will spread my net over him and he will be caught in my snare. Then I will bring him to Babylon and enter into judgment with him there regarding the unfaithful act which he has committed against me. All the choice men and all the troops will fall by the sword and the survivors will be scattered to every wind. And you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken. So again, god says he's sending wicked Babylon into judge Israel. And Steve, that's quite graphic and it's quite severe. How do you think that would fall on the ears of the people of Israel that Ezekiel was speaking to?
Speaker 2:Well, it's not pleasant. Again, the people that he's talking to, they're the ones that are in exile already and, as we've mentioned before, they had had other prophets going around telling them that, oh, this is just going to be a temporary thing, we're going to be able to go back to Jerusalem and to our land, and God has told them over and over again, through Ezekiel and all of the stories that he's depicting to them, that no, they're going to be there, and they're going to be there for a period of 70 years, as was noted by Jeremiah. It's probably a little bit depressing. They're being told over and over again you need to go ahead and settle down here in the land, because you're going to be here a while and Jerusalem is finally going to be destroyed, and not only Jerusalem, but the temple. Now, remember that was their center of their worship. So they're being told that their center of their worship is going to be torn down, the temple itself. So you know it can't be pleasing to them.
Speaker 1:With this story again. The parable was of these two eagles that took the topmost part of a stately cedar tree and it turned into a low vine. And he gives the interpretation in verse 21,. All the choice men and all his troops will fall by the sword. There's going to be mass death of the Jewish people and the survivors will be scattered to the wind. The nation will no longer exist in the land. A very graphic, very severe message. Yet our God, right in the midst of a very graphic, very severe message, gives a prediction of hope. Steve, can you read from verses 22 to 24?
Speaker 2:Thus says the Lord God, and bear fruit and become a stately cedar and birds of every kind will nest under it. They will nest in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I am the Lord. I will bring down the high tree, exalt the low tree, bring up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord, I have spoken and I will perform it.
Speaker 1:We said we were going to have a forestry lesson. So God's telling him what kind of trees he's going to grow, because he changes now the tone of what we just read. Remember, earlier in the chapter these eagles come and take off the topmost part of a cedar tree. Well, in verse 22, what we just read, god says I will also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar. Now, steve, what does he say he's going to do this?
Speaker 2:grow into a stately cedar tree where all of the other birds and others are going to flock to it and have safety through it.
Speaker 1:The contrast is quite dramatic. Wicked, unclean eagles take the best part of Israel to a foreign land. It turns into a lowly vine that can't even hold itself up. But God's ultimately going to change things. He, he says now I will notice there's no birds involved here at all. God says I will take the top part of a cedar tree. He's going to take a remnant and plant it, and it's going to grow into a very stately tree. Nevertheless, what's interesting? He's going to make a cedar tree that bears fruit. Now, normally cedar trees don't bear fruit, but this one will. God's going to make this one bear fruit. He's going to make it bear fruit, and Jerusalem is really what he's talking about here in the theme of the book. Jerusalem did not normally bear fruit, just like the cedar tree by itself didn't normally bear fruit. But God says he's going to make Jerusalem bear fruit. He's going to take a sprig or a shoot or a twig from the top of a tree and he's going to continue.
Speaker 1:That line, steve, I take it to be. This is the descendants of David. The sprigs were the king. The stately line. The that line, steve, I take it to be. This is the descendants of David. The Sprigs were the king, the stately line, the royal line. He's going to take that and there will be a descendant of David that will grow and make a kingdom that birds will nest in. Where over in the New Testament do we see and talk about a kingdom that's going to grow up and have birds in it? What was that kingdom over in the Gospels?
Speaker 2:Well, we see that talk about through Jesus when he talks about the parable of the mustard seed and some of the other parables, and it's talking about the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of Jesus, the restored kingdom of Israel. That's the kingdom that is depicted there. We've talked about that many times when we went through Matthew and Mark as well, and we've also seen it in some of the other prophets, or whenever the prophets were dealing with Zerubbabel, they gave him an encouragement. He was there rebuilding the temple, but they gave him encouragement that God was going to restore the kingly line of David.
Speaker 2:Zerubbabel wasn't the king, but he was in the line of the king David. But, glenn, we actually don't see the line of David show back up until Jesus is born. Jesus is born and we have the lineage that is given there that he's in the line of David and that he is going to be the king of the kingdom. Now, the kingdom restoration of Israel is on pause right now, but it is going to be established one day and we're going to see that glorious reign of Jesus Christ. He's going to rule all the nations with an iron rod. We saw that depicted in Zechariah. We're going to see it depicted here in Ezekiel, other prophets talk about this establishment of the kingdom of Israel, the land restored to them.
Speaker 1:Jesus, who we now know is the Messiah, ruling from Jerusalem and ruling all the other nations there In 2 Samuel 7, god promised David that he would have a descendant that would be on the throne of Israel forever. And here we are at the time of Ezekiel. Many centuries later, at the end of the time of the kings, they had disobeyed so much that the message is in Ezekiel 17, I'm going to send these eagles Babylon and Egypt and they're going to come and take away the best, the topmost branches and take them away, and the remainder are going to be scattered and put to the sword. So there's going to be a mass wrath poured out on the people of Israel and taken to another country. But in these last verses in the chapter, god says I, I will come and also take a branch and I'm going to plant it and it's going to grow and be a stately tree and bear fruit. God says I'm going to take part of Israel and maintain it. That will be the line that King David comes from Over.
Speaker 1:In Revelation 22, 16, jesus said about himself I am the root and descendant of David. He was both the root and the branch, the ancestor and the descendant. You can only do that when you're both eternal and a man. Only Jesus can fulfill that. The fulfillment is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:He said in Matthew 13, 32, in the parable of the mustard seed, that the smallest seed will then grow and the kingdom will have birds in it. Well, again, we always have to look at the animals in the parables and say are these clean or unclean? Well, birds to an orchardist were always evil because they would come and eat the fruit. We talked about this when we went through Matthew, but when the kingdom has birds in it, it's showing that there's going to be unclean things in the church. There's going to be some nonbelievers in the kingdom. There's going to be a kingdom on earth and a church that is made up of people that have some unsaved people benefiting from it. And that's still the way it is today. People that are unsaved benefit from the good influence of the church, but I think it would also mean that we're going to have some unsaved people on the earth in the millennial kingdom. Would you not agree, Steve?
Speaker 2:We do, because there's going to be people that are going to come out of the tribulation, going into the millennial kingdom. We have that judgment of the sheep and the goats that was spoken about in Matthew. Again, we went through all of that in detail when we went through Matthew and that's going to be a judgment based upon how they have treated Israel. These are people that are going to go into the kingdom based on that. From them they're also going to have offspring in the millennial kingdom. All of those people are going to have to make a decision on whether or not to follow Jesus, just like we have had to make a decision, and others as well. We see that we and our glorified bodies will be ruling with Jesus as well. But there are going to be people that come out of the tribulation, going into the millennial time frame, that will live at that time.
Speaker 2:Isaiah 65, 20 says at that time, the person that dies at the age of 100 will be talked about as far as why did they die at such a young age? Our length of days are going to be restored. The earth is going to be restored somewhat. Creation is going to be restored. The nations are going to be restored during that time period, but there's still going to be people that are going to have a choice on whether to follow Jesus or not. That's manifested itself at the very end of the millennial kingdom, whenever Satan is released just for a little while and then we see a final battle that takes place there at the end of the millennial kingdom. Then we have that great white throne judgment there of all of the lost. That's going to happen. Then we go into a new heavens and a new earth and that'll be a glorious time.
Speaker 1:Here in Ezekiel 17, 23,. God says he's going to take this branch and plant it and it's going to grow up and be a stately tree that the birds will be able to nest under it. Jesus over in the Gospels picked up that theme when he talked about the kingdom having birds that would nest in its shade. And the Jewish leaders would have immediately realized that he was adapting this passage from back here in Ezekiel and therefore Jesus was very clearly communicating to the Jewish people and the Jewish leaders that he was indeed the fulfillment of this, that he's bringing in this kingdom, this kingdom that God was going to plant not man, but God was going to plant and it would grow up and bear fruit and that even non-believers would benefit from this kingdom. Also notice here in this passage he says, at the end of verse 22 and the beginning of verse 23,. He repeats it high and lofty mountain, singular mountain, and the high and lofty mountain, singular, is in Jerusalem. So he's going to plant this branch in the mountain of Jerusalem, which is the Temple Mount.
Speaker 1:So very clear language here that's communicating to the Jewish people that this new line, this new branch, is going to grow up and be a stately tree and it's going to rule from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This could only be fulfilled in Jesus. Then, in verse 24, all the trees of the field will know that I am the Lord. Well, in the parable, trees are nations. So all the trees are all the nations. Steve, if there's going to be a kingdom in Jerusalem that grows up and all the trees know that God is the fulfillment of this, that realize that God is God, have we seen a time in history where all the nations see that God is ruling from Jerusalem?
Speaker 2:No, we haven't, and that's still something that's going to happen in the future. In fact, in the time frame that we're making this recording, all the nations are against the nation of Israel itself and they despise it and they make resolutions against it for all of the things that they're doing. So no, we haven't seen that. Glenn, you also mentioned that God himself says I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2:Daniel is a contemporary of Ezekiel.
Speaker 2:He's dealing with Nebuchadnezzar there and in chapter 2 of Daniel, nebuchadnezzar has this dream of a statue and at the very last part of that statue there is a stone that comes that is uncut by human hands is how it's described, and it rolls down and it hits the feet of the statue and destroys the statue.
Speaker 2:The statue is a depiction of all the nations, the four major empires of the time. In that, daniel telling the vision to Nebuchadnezzar that he has been given the interpretation from God that Nebuchadnezzar, the head of gold, is Babylon itself, it's also God being consistent. In that case, he's letting Nebuchadnezzar and the other Gentile nations know that at some point there's going to be a stone uncut by human hands. In other words, he's going to establish it himself and that's going to crush all the other nations. So we see God being consistent through his prophets, in different ways and with different depictions, but he is consistent as far as what's going to happen in the future. There's going to be this kingdom that's going to be established by God, not by man. It's going to happen from the Messiah. We know the Messiah is Jesus. That's still yet to come.
Speaker 1:So to summarize what this is saying, to draw an application here, it was quite clear from the parable of the two eagles and God's divine interpretation of it. He said specifically Babylon and Egypt and he's going to be taking away the best of Israel. When he says in verses 22 to 24, I will take a branch and put it on the high mountain of Israel and it will grow and I will bless it, he's very clearly saying I'm going to take a remnant of Israel and I'm going to put it on a specific spot, the mountain, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and it's going to grow and it's going to be stately and I'm going to cause it to bear fruit. He says in verse 24, all the trees of the field, all the other nations are going to recognize that he is God. And if we take that, draw some conclusions from that. These verses cannot be fulfilled in a spiritual sense in the church simply because all the trees of the field do not recognize the church as being of God. All the nations on earth do not recognize who God is.
Speaker 1:The church is also not established on the high mountain in Jerusalem. It was not fulfilled at or before the time of Christ because Jesus condemned Israel for not bearing fruit. He came to the Jewish leaders, who were corrupt. They were not bearing fruit and all the nations weren't recognizing that God is. There was not a time in between, when people returned from the Babylonian captivity up to Jesus' time, that there wasn't either Greece or Rome I mean other than very brief periods of time where they were in battles but there was not an extended kingdom where all the other nations realized who the true God was. Therefore, this will be fulfilled it is yet to be fulfilled in the future, when Jesus, the root and branch of David, returns to the high mountain in Jerusalem, sets up his millennial kingdom, and at that point we will see all the blessings.
Speaker 1:The clear meaning of the language in many of these passages is that of Israel, not the church. There's really no other way to interpret this, steve, without skipping over parts. We always kind of point that out, but if we just deal with what the text says, then we're going to come up with a very clear, very plain explanation of what God is telling us.
Speaker 2:Zedekiah is the last king over the southern kingdom of Judah and really specifically Jerusalem. That's the last king. After that, when they come back from the exile they're under the Persian occupation. From that it goes to Greece and then to Rome. Then in the first century they're dispersed out of it in 70 AD and they really don't come back until the mid-20th century. So from this time, zedekiah is really the last king of a really small part of the overall nation that had been promised to them. So you're exactly right, glenn, and I concur with it this kingdom has not yet happened. It's still something that's going to happen in the future and we can't take the church out of that and say that's the kingdom that's being talked about here in these Old Testament prophets hear in these Old Testament prophets.
Speaker 1:If we just read these passages back here, these much-neglected passages in the Old Testament, we get such rich teaching out of it. Especially there, at the last verse of the chapter, where God says I'm the one that controls the trees. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I'm the one in control of all the nations, and all we can say is amen. And amen.
Speaker 2:He said I have spoken it and I'll perform it. Thank you so much for watching and listening. We hope that you'll be back with us next time as we continue to reason through the book of Ezekiel. As always, may God bless you.
