23 And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.
25 “I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. 26 And I will make them and the places all round my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. 27 And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. 28 They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. They shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. 29 And I will provide for them renowned plantations so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the reproach of the nations. 30 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord God. 31 And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Lord God.”
We are given in these verses a picture of the Messianic Shepherd, and a description of the new covenant. The reference in 23 to David is neither to be taken literally - i.e. the historical David resurrected and re-appointed as king, as some take it to mean - nor to a descendant of David's royal line. Rather, it is the Messiah Himself who is in view. A brief glance at 37:25 will show that this is the necessary and inevitable interpretation, since what is said there is something that one could not properly say of a merely human David. It is David's greater Son that Ezekiel sees. David was the man after God's own heart, by whose genius the nation extended its borders in all directions and the whole nation was united. This ideal is what Ezekiel has in mind. An ordinary king is excluded as a possibility by the judgment spoken of in 1-10. Also, it is surely not without significance that Ezekiel carefully avoids using the word 'king' in 24. This was to be something quite different from the monarchy. What is said in 25 serves to confirm this interpretation, for the language used to describe the conditions obtaining during the 'covenant of peace' is all eschatological in tone, speaking of the rejuvenation of the physical universe 'in the times of restitution of all things' (Acts 3:21). Just as we are told in Genesis 3 that the ground was cursed for man's sake, because of his sin, so also the whole creation will be brought into a new experience of liberation when man's redemption is completed in the coming of Christ. It is this idea that Ezekiel is touching upon.