The shoot of Jesse: the Spirit-filled king and a peaceable world

Isaiah 11 belongs to the first major section of the book (chapters 1 to 39), set in Jerusalem in the late eighth century BC while Assyria dominated the region. Chapter 10 ends with a picture of Assyria as a forest of tall trees that the LORD will cut down (10:33-34), after Assyria has been used as his rod against Judah and then punished for its pride. Chapter 11 opens with a contrast. The Assyrian forest is felled and finished, but out of the stump of Jesse a shoot will grow.

The chapter is usually dated to Isaiah's own time, perhaps in the days of Ahaz or Hezekiah, though the date cannot be fixed with certainty. Some critical scholars treat verses 10 to 16, with their mention of Elam and Shinar (Babylonia), the gathering of exiles from the four corners of the earth, and a second return, as later additions from the exile or after it. Others point out that Isaiah had already spoken of a returning remnant (7:3; 10:20-22) and see no reason to deny the passage to him. This class reads the chapter as it stands, as a single prophetic poem followed by a short song of praise in chapter 12.

The first hearers lived in a kingdom whose royal house had failed. Ahaz was faithless, and the line of David stood under constant threat. The mention of Jesse, David's father, not David himself, is deliberate. It takes the reader back to the family before the kingship, to a shepherd's household in Bethlehem (1 Samuel 16), and implies that God will begin again with a king as humble as David was at first.

Isaiah 11 is Hebrew poetry, with its pairs of parallel lines, and it is full of figures: a shoot, a rod, a belt, wolves and lambs, a banner, a sea. Poetry about the future uses images drawn from the world the first hearers knew, and the rules for reading it are about what the images mean before asking how they will be fulfilled. A 'rod of His mouth' is a ruler whose spoken verdict carries authority, not a weapon in the hand.

The chapter divides into three parts that are linked by phrases. The first (verses 1 to 5) is about the king, the second (verses 6 to 9) about the world he rules, and the third (verses 10 to 16) about the nations and the scattered people. 'On that day' in verses 10 and 11 marks the shift into the future of the Lord's final action.

There is a real question about how to read the peaceable animals of verses 6 to 8. Some read them as a literal picture of a renewed creation, to which Isaiah 65:25 and Romans 8:19-21 point. Some read them as a figure for the end of violence among people, with the 'wolf' and the 'lamb' representing the strong and the weak, or hostile nations. Many hold that the picture is literal in intention and also carries a moral meaning for how humans and nations live. The verses themselves keep both open, and the class does not need to decide.

Finally, the chapter should be read with 9:6-7, where the child on David's throne is described, and with 7:14. These form a single sequence of promise about the royal son.

Verse 1

'A shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.' Isaiah uses two Hebrew words for the growth: choter, a shoot or twig, and netser, a branch. The picture is of a tree that has been cut down. Once the royal line was a tall tree, and now it is a stump, yet the roots are alive and a new growth appears. This also continues the imagery of 6:13, the holy seed as a stump. The netser may be connected to the town name Nazareth, as is sometimes suggested in connection with Matthew 2:23, though the link is not certain.

Verse 2

'The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him.' The Spirit will not come for a moment, as it often did with the judges, but will rest. Then the Spirit is described in three pairs: wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and the fear of the LORD. That makes seven names, counting the Spirit of the LORD as the first, and the number points to completeness. Wisdom and understanding belong to rule at the level of judgment, counsel and strength to planning and execution, and knowledge and the fear of the LORD to the king's relation to God. Solomon asked for wisdom to govern (1 Kings 3), and here the king has it by the Spirit.

Verses 3–5

His delight is in the fear of the LORD. A common king judges by what he sees and hears, which is what the powerful can arrange to be seen and heard. This king will not. He will judge the poor with righteousness (tsedeq) and decide for the humble of the earth with equity. He will strike the earth with 'the rod of His mouth' and slay the wicked 'with the breath of His lips'. His word is his weapon. Righteousness and faithfulness are his belt and sash, the garments that he is never without.

Verses 6–9

The peace of the kingdom reaches the animal world. The wolf lives with the lamb, the leopard lies with the young goat, a calf and young lion together, 'and a little child will lead them'. The predator eats straw. A child plays by a cobra's hole. The pairs are of predators and prey, and the point is that the harm is gone. The reason is stated in verse 9: they will neither harm nor destroy on all God's holy mountain, 'for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the sea is full of water'. The sea does not run out of water, and so the knowledge of God leaves no corner of the world untouched. Habakkuk 2:14 uses the same image.

Verse 10

A new title appears: 'the Root of Jesse', who 'will stand as a banner for the peoples'. A banner is a rallying point for an army. This is no longer a king of Judah only, since the nations will seek him, and 'His place of rest will be glorious'.

Verses 11–12

'On that day the Lord will extend His hand a second time.' The first time was the exodus from Egypt. Now the remnant is gathered from the places of exile named in verse 11: Assyria, Egypt, Pathros (Upper Egypt), Cush (south of Egypt), Elam, Shinar (Babylonia), Hamath and the islands of the sea. The list covers the compass. The banner of verse 10 is raised again in verse 12.

Verses 13–16

The old divisions end: Ephraim will no longer envy Judah, nor Judah harass Ephraim. The two halves of the old kingdom are reconciled. Verse 14 pictures a united people overcoming old enemies, Philistines, Edom, Moab and Ammon. Verse 15 recalls the sea and the river: the LORD will dry up the gulf of the Sea of Egypt and strike the Euphrates into seven streams so that people may cross in sandals. Verse 16 states the point: a highway for the remnant from Assyria, 'as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt'. The final exodus follows the pattern of the first.

The chapter develops the promise to David (2 Samuel 7:12-16) in a form that makes the king the bearer of God's Spirit. The Spirit's permanent rest on the king is a theme that returns in 42:1, where the Servant is given the Spirit, and in 61:1. The mention of the knowledge of the LORD filling the earth belongs with the creation-wide hope of the Bible, from the garden in Genesis to the new heavens and new earth in Revelation 21 and 22. It is a doctrine of redemption which includes the whole created order, not only people.

The chapter also teaches that justice is central to what kingship is for. The king is measured by how he treats the poor, and his power lies in a righteous word. The prophets repeatedly judge kings by this standard. And the second exodus gives the pattern for the way the Old Testament speaks of salvation: God does again, on a greater scale, what he did at the beginning. The reunion of Ephraim and Judah belongs to the same hope that Ezekiel 37:15-28 expresses.

The New Testament presents the full realization of this chapter as partly accomplished and partly still awaited. The king has come and the Spirit has been given, but the peace of verses 6 to 9 has not yet reached the world, and Paul speaks of creation as still groaning, waiting for its freedom (Romans 8:19-23).

The New Testament uses this chapter repeatedly. Near the close of Romans, Paul cites Isaiah 11:10, that the Root of Jesse will arise to rule the nations and that the Gentiles will hope in him (Romans 15:12), as a promise that the nations would come to the king of David's line. That is fulfillment, stated by Paul himself. In Revelation 5:5, the elder tells John to weep no more because 'the Root of David' has triumphed, and in 22:16 Jesus calls himself the Root and the Offspring of David.

The Spirit on the king is seen at Jesus' baptism, when the Spirit descends and remains on him (Matthew 3:16; John 1:32-33). The slaying of the wicked by the breath of the mouth is echoed in Paul's picture of the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by the breath of his mouth (2 Thessalonians 2:8) and in the sword that comes out of the mouth of the rider in Revelation 19:15. The kingdom at rest on God's holy mountain finds an echo in the new creation of Revelation 21 and 22, where nothing harmful is found.

The type of connection is therefore mixed. The shoot and root are promise and fulfillment, because the New Testament says so directly. The sevenfold Spirit is possibly taken up in the seven Spirits of Revelation 1:4 and 5:6, which is an echo, though readers differ on what 'seven spirits' means there.