22 Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.23 On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. 24 And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”
In these last three verses, we have the promise of better days. The prophet had spoken about the two eagles, Babylon and Egypt, and now God says, 'I too will take a slip from the lofty crown of the cedar, and set it in the soil; I will pluck a tender shoot from the topmost branch and plant it. This is a word of promise and hope to the captives by the river Chebar, if only they have ears to hear it and eyes to see it'. Ezekiel has repeatedly said, 'The future of our people rests with you in exile, not with those in Jerusalem'. It is these that are referred to in these verses. The slip from the lofty crown of the cedar is the remnant - the remnant within that remnant, since only a minority of the exiles returned, under Zerubabbel, Ezra and Nehemiah. They were the shoot that God was to plant - and indeed the tender shoot from the topmost branch has a shadowy reference to the coming Messiah. One recalls how Isaiah speaks of a 'root out of the dry ground' in his wonderful 53rd chapter, and how Jesus Himself spoke of the kingdom of heaven being 'like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field: which is indeed the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof'. Was Jesus thinking of Ezekiel's words here in 23, when He spoke that parable? Such, then, is the parable of the eagles and of what God will do. Perhaps the most important lesson for us here is that over against the two great eagles, God comes and says 'I too will do something'. And it is very significant that God's 'doing' is so much less ostentatious than Nebuchadnezzar's or Pharaoh's. When God works, His is almost an unobtrusive action. He chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty.