“And when the children of your people speak to you saying, ‘Will you not show what you mean by these?', you say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh. Behold I will take the stick of Joseph which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his companions, and I will put them with it, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they will be one in my hand.' And the sticks on which you write will be in your hand before their eyes.”
The sight of the two sticks ‘made one' in their eyes was to be a vivid message. Just as the sticks were ‘made one' in Ezekiel's hand so Yahweh intended both peoples to be taken into His hand and become one. Tribal jealousies were to become a thing of the past. We can compare the similar idea in Zechariah 11:7-14, which was probably based on this prophecy, where the unity was broken because of sin.