Like a grain of mustard seed

This tree in the Mosaic Paradise was allegorical of the wood in the apocalyptic. The original phrase here suffers a sort of transposition. Lives is changed into life, and tree into wood; that is, the idea of plurality is found in the wood, and the oneness in the life. Thus, the Spirit in Jesus said, "I am the life;" "I am the Vine, and ye (my apostles) are the branches." Here was a tree consisting of fourteen living persons, all animated by one and the same life-principle; namely, the Spirit, Jesus, and the Twelve Apostles. Now let this idea be extended so as to embrace "the multitude which no man can number" — all IN Jesus Anointed" — and we have a tree, which in the beginning was "as a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden, and it grew and waxed a great tree, and the fowls of the air came and lodged in the branches of it" (Luke 13:18) — a tree, which with its feathered songsters of the aerial, is apocalyptically symbolized by a Wood of trees in the Garden, or Paradise of the Deity.

As Jesus anointed with holy spirit was a vine-tree, so are all his brethren trees also. Speaking of the man who delights in the instruction of Yahweh, the Spirit in David says, "He shall be as a tree planted by the channels of waters, which shall yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf shall not fade; and whatsoever he shall work shall prosper." This is a perennial tree which lives for ever; for "its leaf shall not fade" which is affirmable only of a tree incapable of decay.

The Spirit also in Isaiah, speaking of the same class, informs us, that Messiah's mission is, among other things, "to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he might be glorified" (61:3).

"As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved among the Sons" (Song 2:3). In this, the Messiah is likened to an apple tree, and his brethren, the Sons of Deity, to "the trees of the wood."