Project 119: Heaven and Nature Sing | Isaiah 11:1-10
| Project 119 | Amy Hirsch
Reading for Tuesday, December 1: Isaiah 11:1-10
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
-"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"
This summer, I was given an evening primrose. Unfortunately, I don’t have a green thumb, so the plant quickly withered. I should have pulled it up, but I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of it, so I left it in the pot, neglected watering it, and tried to ignore its decay when I would walk past it on our patio. After traveling one weekend, we returned and I noticed yellow blooms on the plant. What I thought was dead was actually alive!
This is a picture of the prophecy we read in Isaiah 11:1-10, given during a time when all hope seemed lost for David’s lineage, as God’s people suffered because of their personal sin, the unfaithfulness of their leaders, and the brokenness of the world. The lineage that God promised would forever rule (2 Samuel 7) was like a tree cut down by an axe. Only a stump remained as the prospect of exile, of foreign rule and oppression, became more certain. Yet from this stump, a shoot would come. Like my evening primrose, new life would be born out of what seemed to be dead.
Isaiah tells us that this shoot, this deliverer, would come from Jesse’s lineage, mentioning nothing about David. Why not mention Jesse’s son, the king beloved by Israel, a man after God’s own heart? David began his life as Jesse’s youngest son, as a humble shepherd. By invoking Jesse’s name, Isaiah reminds us that God is in the business of working in ways we don’t expect. When all hope seemed lost, God would continue David’s line, sending forth a shoot from the seemingly lifeless stump of Jesse to blossom—another king who would come in an unexpected way, born to a poor family, in David’s town, Bethlehem, but slumbering in a stable rather than a palace.
And yet God’s Spirit would rest on this king, in a way that God’s people had never experienced before—not even during David’s rule. He would judge with righteousness, and through His judgments, all that has been wrong, all of the havoc sin has wreaked for thousands of years, would finally be made right. In verses 6-10, Isaiah pictures this king reigning over a new Eden, in a place where there is no more sin, sorrow, or discord. God would indeed breathe new life into what seemed to be dead, by sending a better King, a better David, the only one uniquely qualified to usher in true peace, to draw the nations to Himself, to save us from the depths of hell, to give us victory over the grave.
Rejoice, for God has come to us in Christ, and He will surely come again—and on that day, the minor keys of this hymn will give way to the sure and certain hope that God has defeated sin, death, and the grave once and for all, through this humble shoot, Jesus Christ.