Refuge Under the Branch

The planted sprig becomes a noble cedar, and under it will dwell every kind of bird - in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest.
Those birds are the nations. And the nations are precisely the ones currently under the jurisdiction of lesser powers, allotted at Babel. The image is a transfer of jurisdiction, completed.
Notice what it is not. The endpoint is not a local temple on Zion but a world-sheltering canopy. And it stands deliberately against the empire-trees elsewhere in Ezekiel and Daniel - Assyria and Nebuchadnezzar each pictured as the great tree. Here God's Messiah is the tree.
Scripture links:
- Ezekiel 17:23 - birds of every sort will nest in the shade of its branches.
- Deuteronomy 32:8-9 - the nations divided among the sons of God.
Empires kept casting themselves as the tree that shelters the world. One of them was telling the truth about somebody else.