O
Root of Jesse, Who
dost stand for an ensign of the people, before Whom kings shall keep silence,
and unto Whom the Gentiles shall make their supplication: come to deliver us,
and tarry not.
The House of Jesse was a stump. That’s where this majestic passage from
Isaiah 11 begins. God had revealed this
to Isaiah, when to all outward appearances, it seemed likely to have a fairly
secure future. He’s talking about the
royal house, Israel’s line of kings.
Jesse was the father of David, the greatest of kings, and it was David’s
descendants who ruled in Jerusalem in Isaiah’s time. It will become a stump, Isaiah begins, cut
off violently after so many warnings went unheeded. The patience of God would be exhausted, and
it would fall like a great tree in the forest.
And great trees, generally, do not rise again. The ruin of
what once was, the death of a promising future.
It’s the natural lesson of this time of year, of course, when the
greenery of summer is dying off. The
trees have shed their leaves, and the wind whips through the branches, and the
sap moves very slowly if it moves at all.
It’s dark and cold, and life seems chased from the earth.
