This covenant in force toward the Davidic dynasty provided further evidence of the outworking of God’s Edenic promise for his Kingdom by the foretold “seed” (Ge 3:15) and supplied additional means for identifying that “seed” when he should come. (Compare Isa 9:6, 7; 1Pe 1:11.) The kings appointed by God were anointed for their office, hence the term “messiah,” meaning “anointed one,” applied to them. (1Sa 16:1; Ps 132:13, 17) Clearly, then, the earthly kingdom Jehovah established over Israel served as a type or small-scale representation of the coming Kingdom by the Messiah, Jesus Christ, “son of David.”​—Mt 1:1.

Toward the close of Babylon’s international dominance, Daniel saw prophetic visions of successive empires, beastlike in their characteristics; he saw also Jehovah’s majestic heavenly Court in session, passing judgment on the world powers, decreeing them unworthy of rulership; and he beheld “someone like a son of man . . . [being] given rulership and dignity and kingdom, that the peoples, national groups and languages should all serve even him” in his “indefinitely lasting rulership that will not pass away.” He witnessed as well the war waged against “the holy ones” by the final world power, calling for its annihilation, and the giving of “the kingdom and the rulership and the grandeur of the kingdoms under all the heavens . . . to the people who are the holy ones of the Supreme One,” Jehovah God. (Da 7, 8) Thus, it became evident that the promised “seed” would involve a governmental body with not only a kingly head, the “son of man,” but also associate rulers, “the holy ones of the Supreme One.”