A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. – Isaiah 11:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 10, 2020): Isaiah 11

It is a sad thing to drive through the mountains and notice that there are places where it seems that only the dead remain. Usually, the death is because of fire, but sometimes it is because of disease. But it doesn’t take long after a disaster to see the cycle of life begin once again. Green starts to appear between the old, dead trees. Sometimes, a dead tree weakens and falls over, becoming a nursery for small growth. But given enough time, the forest will recover. It is the way that the forest has been designed to replicate. Fire is an essential tool that is needed to recreate the forest once again, destroying the old to allow the new to begin to grow.

Isaiah continues to tell his story. He prophecies of a massive fire that has swept through the forest, leaving nothing in its wake but the dead. Trees have weakened and fallen, leaving only ugly broken stumps pointing at the sky. But then, on one stump, thought to be long dead, green appears. A shoot starts to grow out of the dead, a shoot that, one day, will be a tree, and will someday bear fruit.

Isaiah calls the stump, Jesse. He could have called it David, but he opts to name the stump after David’s father. All of the kings of Judah had come from the line of David. And that was probably the point. The Davidic line was a royal line, a line of kings. The lineage of Jesse was not. Jesse was just a rancher from Bethlehem, whose son would one day become king. By calling the stump Jesse, and not David, Isaiah is going back to a more everyday reality. Generations later, another Isaiah would revisit these words of the prophet and talk about a “Suffering Servant.”

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him (Isaiah 53:2).

The words of this Isaiah do not match that of the Stump of David. There was beauty found in that stump. The Messiah was expected from the Stump of David. He would come and, with his power and authority, would restore Israel to its proper place among the nations. But the stump of Jesse? What kind of fruit might a shoot from that stump produce?

The answer lies in the life of Jesus. Jesus was of the Davidic line, but Isaiah describes him correctly as coming from the stump of Jesse. He was not what was expected of a Messiah. Jesus was a king, and yet at the same time, he wasn’t. Jesus was a priest. He came as a simple shepherd, and not as a glorious general. He came to save his people, not to destroy his enemies. Jesus was different from what was expected, and that was exactly what we needed. Because out of the stump of Jesse grew a life that could envelop us all, and not just the select few.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 12 & 13