Isaiah 11:1

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,.... By which is meant, not Hezekiah, as R.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: Isaiah 11:1-16.-From the local and temporary national deliverance the prophet passes, by the law

ISAIAH CHAPTER 11 Christ, a Branch out of the root of Jesse, endued with the Spirit of the Lord, should set up a kingdom by the preaching of his word, . The members of his church should live in peace and unity, ; and be victorious over their enemies; and to him should the Gentiles seek, . The prophet having despatched the Assyrian, and comforted God’ s people with the promise of their deliverance from that formidable enemy, now he proceeds further, and declares that God will do greater things than that for them, that he will give them their long-expected and much desired Messiah, and by him will work wonders of mercy for them. For this is the manner of the prophets, to take the occasion of particular deliverances, to fix the people’ s minds upon their great and everlasting deliverance from all their enemies by the Messiah. And having said that the Assyrian yoke should be destroyed because of the anointing, , he now more particularly explains who that anointed person was. A rod, or twig, called a Branch in the next clause. Parents are oft compared to roots or trees, and their children to branches. He speaks of the most eminent Branch, of that famous Son of a virgin, , of that wonderful Child, ; not of Hezekiah, as some of the Jews and judaizing Christians conceit; but of the Messiah, as will evidently appear from the following description. The stem, or trunk; or rather, stump; for the word properly signifies a trunk cut off from the root; or, root, as the LXX. here render the word, and as it is explained in the next clause. By which he clearly implies that the Messiah should be born of the royal house of David, at that lime when it was in a most forlorn and contemptible condition, like a tree cut down, and whereof nothing is left but a stump or root under ground; which really was the state of David’ s family when Christ was born, as is notoriously known, but was in a far better condition when Hezekiah was born. Of Jesse; he doth not say of David, but of Jesse, who was a private and mean person, ,23 20:30, to intimate, that at the time of Christ’ s birth the royal family should be reduced to its primitive obscurity. A Branch shall grow: he speaks of one not yet born, and therefore not of Hezekiah, who was born divers years before his father Ahaz (in whose time this prophecy was delivered) was king, by comparing 18:2; but of the Messiah. Out of his roots; out of one of his roots, i.e. branches, as this word root is sometimes used, by a very usual figure called a metonymy, as it is here below, .

Isaiah 11:1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:Ver. 1. And there shall come forth a rod,] i.e., Christ shall be born; whom our prophet having called "the anointing" or Messiah, maketh him and his kingdom henceforward the chief matter of his discourse, to the end of his book. Here he beginneth with his nativity, calling him a rod or twig, springing, not out of the stock of David, but out of the stump of Jesse, a mean man, and that then, when the royal family was sunk so low as from David the king to Joseph the carpenter. Well might Chrysostom say that the foundation of our philosophy was humility. And another, that at Bethlehem brake forth that well of salvation which, in the type, once David so thirsted after. And a Branch.] Or, The Nazarene born at Nazareth, saith Junius, which signifieth "a branch"; for so it was generally deemed; and our Saviour styleth himself Jesus of Nazareth; and on his cross they wrote Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, wherein that prodigy, saith A. Lapide, seemeth to have fallen out concerning which the poet inquireth - “ Dic quibus in terris inscripti nomine Regis Nascantur flores. ” Tell who is noted in the earth by the name of a King, Let him in flowers. For Nazareth he interpreteth a flower, or something flowery; and for shall grow, others render shall bud, or bear fruit. Scultet.

CHAPTER XI The Messiah represented as a slender twig shooting up from the root of an old withered stem, which tender plant, so extremely weak in its first appearance, should nevertheless become fruitful and mighty, 1-4. Great equity of the Messiah's government, 5. Beautiful assemblages of images by which the great peace and happiness of his kingdom are set forth, 6-8. The extent of his dominion shall be ultimately that of the whole habitable globe, 9. The prophet, borrowing his imagery from the exodus from Egypt, predicts, with great majesty of language, the future restoration of the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah, (viz., the whole of the twelve tribes of Israel,) from their several dispersions, and also that blessed period when both Jews and Gentiles shall assemble under the banner of Jesus, and zealously unite in extending the limits of his kingdom, 10-16. NOTES ON CHAP. XI The prophet had described the destruction of the Assyrian army under the image of a mighty forest, consisting of flourishing trees growing thick together, and of a great height; of Lebanon itself crowned with lofty cedars, but cut down and laid level with the ground by the axe wielded by the hand of some powerful and illustrious agent. In opposition to this image he represents the great Person who makes the subject of this chapter as a slender twig shooting out from the trunk of an old tree, cut down, lopped to the very root, and decayed; which tender plant, so weak in appearance, should nevertheless become fruitful and prosper. This contrast shows plainly the connexion between this and the preceding chapter, which is moreover expressed by the connecting particle; and we have here a remarkable instance of that method so common with the prophets, and particularly with Isaiah, of taking occasion, from the mention of some great temporal deliverance, to launch out into the display of the spiritual deliverance of God's people by the Messiah; for that this prophecy relates to the Messiah we have the express authority of St. Paul, Romans 15:12. 'He joins this paragraph, with respect to the days of the Messiah, with the fidelity that was in the days of Hezekiah." - Kimchi, in Isaiah 11:1. Thus in the latter part of Isaiah's prophecies the subject of the great redemption, and of the glories of the Messiah's kingdom, arises out of the restoration of Judah by the deliverance from the captivity of Babylon, and is all along connected and intermixed with it.

Ch. Isaiah 11:1-9. The Messiah and His KingdomIt is interesting to compare this passage with ch. Isaiah 9:1-7. There the delineation of the Messianic age starts from its broadest and most general features—the light breaking on the land, the universally diffused joy of the redeemed nation—and only at the end centres itself in the person of the Wonderful Child who is born to ascend the throne. Here the person of the Messiah comes first, and then the healing and regenerating influences of which he is the channel. To what period of Isaiah’s career the prophecy belongs cannot be determined. The affinity with ch. Isaiah 9:1-7 suggests the reign of Ahaz, to which it is assigned by Guthe in accordance with a particular theory of the development of Isaiah’s eschatology. But since there is no evidence that the idea of the Messianic King ever lost its significance to the prophet’s mind, it might with equal propriety be referred to any subsequent period of his ministry. Duhm places this and the companion oracles of Isa 2:2-4, Isaiah 32:1-5 in the evening of Isaiah’s long life. In its present setting the passage is no doubt intended as a sequel to ch. Isaiah 10:5-34 and it might even belong to the same date.

And there shall come forth a rod - In the previous chapter, the prophet had represented the Assyrian monarch and his army under the image of a dense and flourishing forest, with all its glory and grandeur.

1. There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse — The “rod” is a branch, a shoot, a sucker. The “stem” is a stump, or a nucleus of rootlets, either below or above ground.