What do the teil and oak trees have to do with anything? 2 Nephi 16:13 and Isaiah 6:13

What do the teil and oak trees have to do with anything? 2 Nephi 16:13 and Isaiah 6:13

Isaiah is talking to Jesus Christ in the temple. He asks, "How long [will people fail to see, hear, understand, and be healed]?"

The Lord answers something like, "Until everything is destroyed - all the people wasted, the houses empty, the land desolate, and people removed far away, and a great forsaking. But even though almost everybody will forsake me, a tenth part will return to me. Like a big tree stump that seems dead, but then a branch springs out of it and revives the tree's seed."

I had to go to a non-Latter-day-saint source to find anything written about this, which is kind of odd because to me it really seems to be a clear prophesy about the apostasy and the restoration. But hey, there are a lot of those, and this one is a little bit veiled in parable language.

I learned through reading this that the Catholic translations of the Bible get the tree name correct, while the King James Version generally doesn't. A teil tree is actually a linden tree which does not grow in that part of the world, apparently. But sometimes the translators (including Joseph Smith here. Hmm!) mixed up teil trees and terebinth trees.

Apparently terebinth trees had some kind of special connection to idolatry. Hmm.

Some guy named Elliott has this to say about these verses:

(13) But yet in it shall be a tenth . . .--Better, And though there should be a tenth in it, yet this shall be again devoured (with fire). What the prophet is led to expect is a series of successive chastisements sifting the people, till the remnant of the chosen ones alone is left. (Comp. the same thought under a different imagery in Ezekiel 5:12 : Zechariah 13:8-9.) The "tenth" is taken, as in Leviticus 27:30, for an ideally consecrated portion.

As a teil tree.--Better, terebinth; and for "when they cast their leaves" read, when they are cut down. The "teil tree" of the Authorised Version is probably meant for the "lime" (tilier, tilleul). The thought of this verse is that embodied in the name of his son Shear-jashub (see Note on Isaiah 7:3), and constantly reappears (Isaiah 1:27; Isaiah 4:2-3; Isaiah 10:20; Isaiah 29:17; Isaiah 30:15, &c). The tree might be stripped of its leaves, and its branches lopped off, and nothing but the stump left; but from that seemingly dead and decayed stock, pruned by the chastisements of God (John 15:2), a young shoot should spring, holy, as consecrated to Jehovah, and carry on the continuity of the nation's life. The same thought is dominant in St. Paul's hope for his people. At first the "remnant," and then "all Israel," should be saved (Romans 11:5; Romans 11:26). In Isaiah 10:33 to Isaiah 11:1 the same image is specially applied to the house of David, and becomes, therefore, essentially Messianic.

From a Latter-day Saint perspective, this looks like a metaphor for the apostasy and the restoration of the gospel. The church is the tree. It grows and grows but then it dies. The leaves fall off. The branches are lopped off. Then it is cut down. It seems like it is impossibly dead - nothing but a stump. But then a young shoot grows out of that stump and preserves the tree's original seed, saving the entire fate of the tree.

I really love this metaphor.