A Shoot from Jesse's Stump

A forest has been cut down. Nothing is left but stumps, grey and dead. But look closely at one of them. Right at the edge of the old wood, something tiny and green is pushing through.

The prophet Isaiah lived in Jerusalem about seven hundred years before Jesus. He had warned that the mighty Assyrian army would sweep through the land like a woodcutter through a forest. Just before chapter eleven, he describes God himself lopping off the great trees, the proud and powerful, until they fall. And Isaiah knew that even the royal family of David would not escape judgement. One day the great tree of David's kingdom would be cut down too. So he speaks of it not as David's tree, but as Jesse's stump. Jesse was David's father, a farmer in the little town of Bethlehem. It is as if the family is back to where it started: small, ordinary, almost nothing.

But listen. “A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit.” Life from a stump. A new king from the old family. And what will he be like? “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” Not just a little of God's Spirit, but God's Spirit resting on him, staying, filling him. Wise. Strong. Knowing God and loving to honour him. His delight will be in the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah describes how this king will rule. He will not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by what he hears with his ears. In other words, he won't be fooled by appearances or rumours. He will see the truth. “But with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the humble of the earth.” The ones who usually get pushed aside will get justice from him. Righteousness will be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his hips. He wears goodness the way a worker wears a belt, ready for action.

And then Isaiah paints one of the most beautiful pictures in the whole Bible. “The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; the calf, the young lion, and the fattened calf together; and a little child will lead them.” A cow and a bear grazing side by side. A lion eating straw like an ox. A baby playing near a cobra's hole, and no one gets hurt. “They will not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” And the nations? They will come looking for him. The root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, and his resting place will be glorious. Centuries later, a baby was born in Jesse's town of Bethlehem, into David's family, which by then had no throne at all. A green shoot from a stump.

This passage inspired one of the loveliest Christmas carols. The German song Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, in English Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming, was printed in a hymn book in Speyer in fifteen ninety-nine. Its words speak of a tender shoot sprung from Jesse's lineage, just as Isaiah foretold. The composer Michael Praetorius published the harmony most choirs still sing in sixteen hundred and nine.

A shoot from Jesse's stump. You'll find it in Isaiah chapter eleven, verses one to ten. When everything looked cut down and finished, God promised new life and a King of peace. So here is a question to carry with you. Is there something that feels like a dead stump in your life, where you could ask God for new growth?