A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
Question 1: What does this "stump" refer to?
Question 2: I think it is referring to that the trunk of the Messianic line from David was detrunciated. But that happens later, during the Babylonian captivity. If the stump is referring to what I believe, how come that Isaiah is talking about it as detrunciated when it really is not (at least not yet)?
Isaiah has been prophesying about judgment coming upon Israel as a result of her wickedness. Dr. Constable has this to say:
The prophet had just described Assyria cut down like a forest of trees (10:15-19, 33-34). Likewise, Israel would have only a remnant left after God finished judging her (10:20-23; cf. 6:11-13). Now he pictured a shoot (Heb. nezer) sprouting from one of the stumps left after Israel's harvesting (cf. 4:2; 6:13; 53:1-3; Job 14:7). A shoot would sprout from Jesse's family tree stump.
Isaiah has been prophesying that Israel would be judged, but that a remnant would survive it. By using the imagery of a chopped tree to describe Jesse, the author relates the judgment coming upon Israel to that coming upon Assyria.
The first wave of the judgment would come at the hands of Assyria. Isaiah's audience would experience that in very short time, hence his focus on Assyria as God's instrument, and the judgment coming upon Assyria as a result of their evil.
Isaiah does not simply leave his audience with a promise of judgment, and then judgment of the instrument of judgment. He (like a good prophet) goes on to prophesy about Israel's Messianic hope.
Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse,
And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
Isaiah 11:1
The language that follows makes it clear that this "shoot" / "branch" is the Messiah.
As God's mouthpiece, Isaiah wants his audience to know that judgment is coming upon Israel, and they (the audience) would experience it at the hands of the Assyrians. With that said, they should rest assured that the Assyrians would get what was coming to them, and the Messiah would one day come through Jesse's line. He would come after the judgment, which should remind them of the hope they had from God of a remnant surviving the judgment.
The focus is on the judgment coming upon Israel, and specifically, that which Isaiah's audience would experience. The reason Jesse's stump is mentioned here (when the Babylonian oppression wouldn't take place until much later) is that it is linked to the post-judgment Messianic hope.
“The HOUSE OF JUDAH shall again take root”
Whatever messianic hopes were later read into Isaiah’s message, the image of the ‘stump of Jesse,’ in its original time and original context, did not foretell the death of their righteous king but was a picture of Jerusalem’s current crisis. Though the ‘godless’ nation to the north, the Kingdom of Israel, had already been destroyed by Assyria and it’s ‘root’ dried up, and though their own nation, the southern Kingdom of Judah, was also now besieged and cut-off, Isaiah assured the king and people that Jerusalem would survive – their ‘root’ was still alive! The ‘sprouting stump’ reassured them that the remnant of Judah, Jerusalem itself, would survive Assyria’s siege. They could still become the nation God had hoped for them.
Interpreting the ‘stump’ metaphor is complicated for some interpreters today by knowledge of later events. But hearing this sermon as Isaiah intended is made easier by two things:
Historical Setting: the Assyrian Siege of 701 BCE
Over about 20 years the voracious Neo-Assyrian Empire had diminished and then conquered the once-wealthy northern Kingdom of Israel, reducing it to rubble. After taking Samaria, Israel’s capital city, in 722 BCE, Assyria deported a large portion of Israel’s population. Refugees, just a ‘remnant’ of Israel (aka the 'House of Jacob'), fled to the southern Kingdom of Judah which was still independent, though as a tributary vassal state of the Empire. The prophet Hosea described the ‘root’ of the former kingdom as “dried up”, never to bear fruit again (Hos.9:16).
The story varies in its telling in Kings, Isaiah, and Chronicles, but a few years later the pious King Hezekiah of Judah – after strengthening Jerusalem’s defenses and allying with his neighbors – stopped paying tribute to Assyria. King Sennacherib responded by crushing the coastal allies, defeating Egypt, and marching on Judah. On the way to Jerusalem Sennacherib destroyed 46 Judean towns and fortified cities and took over 200,000 prisoners. In 701 BCE Assyrian army generals reached Jerusalem’s doorstep and began taunting the people inside for their reliance on YHWH, demanding their surrender. The people were terrorized, and the king was trapped “like a bird in a cage,” Sennacherib later wrote. Hezekiah turned to Isaiah.
Isaiah told the king that the Lord had heard Assyria’s taunts, but it was the Lord who had used Assyria as an instrument of his judgment, on Israel and now on Judah and Jerusalem. But the Lord would now turn Assyria back; the enemy would not shoot even one arrow into the city. Though the kingdom had suffered, Judah would live:
The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (2Ki.19:30-31, RSV, emphasis added)
And so it was: either because Sennacherib was satisfied by the ransom Hezekiah paid (18:14-16), he was distracted by another battle (19:7-8), or 185,000 of his soldiers were killed overnight by an angel (19:35-36), Sennacherib left Jerusalem unscathed. And Judah recovered, prospering as a vassal state – and independently for a time – under Davidic kings for another century.
Isaiah’s Sermon
The longer version of Isaiah’s three-part message of courage and hope – including the image of rebirth from “the stump of Jesse” – is in Isaiah 10:5-12:6.
Even as Assyria bangs on the door, Isaiah declares the city is safe, and he imagines the rebirth of a unified kingdom, of Israel and Judah reunited against their old foes and recovering all that was lost. He rekindles the vision of the ‘peaceable kingdom’ as God originally intended, a people for whom “the Lord, the LORD himself,” would be their strength and might (12:2; cf. Is.33:22).
The 'Stump of Jesse'
The image of the ‘sprouting stump’ and ‘branching root’ is therefore a picture of survival for a king and people under imminent threat. Isaiah uses the ‘tree’ metaphor first to symbolize Assyria’s current strength and future cutting-down and then to symbolize Judah’s apparent death but future rebirth. The long version’s “shoot from the stump of Jesse / and branch from his root” (Is.11:1,10) exactly mirrors the short version’s “surviving remnant of the house of Judah takes root” / “from Jerusalem a remnant goes out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors” (2Ki.19:30-31; cf. Is.37:31-32). In both cases this is the ‘sign’ that follows Assyria’s withdrawal (Is.11:10,12; 2Ki.19:29). For Isaiah and his first audience, the ‘stump of Jesse’ was the surviving ‘house of Judah.’
And why Jesse? Who better to serve as the figurative patriarch of the southern kingdom, even of Jerusalem, the City of David, itself. Within the sermon, Jesse is to Judah what Jacob is to Israel. Though never kings themselves, their sons founded nations.
There are several truths revealed by "shoot from the stump of Jesse"
Starting with the revelation of Christ, we understand that all fall short of the glory of God. Rom 3:23. A stump is much shorter than a fully grown tree. The Israelites consider David, who is a shoot, or offspring of Jesse, one of their Greatest Kings in their history. However, Israel's greatest perceived king who is by their understanding David, pales in comparison to the authority and the Glory of Christ who is the eternal King.
As to question 1: to John Wesley, the Hebrew word (גֶּזַע, geza) that you see as "stump" in the NIV figuratively refers to a tree stump. That Hebrew word implies:
"the Messiah should be born of the royal house of David, at that time when it was in a most forlorn condition, like a tree cut down, and whereof nothing is left but a stump or root under ground"[1].
As to question 2: Christians orthodoxly believe the writer of the Matthew Gospel had an image of a sprouting twig[2] in mind when he penned that:
Does this info help to answer your concern about "the Messianic line from David was detrunciated"?
1: see John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible entry at Isa. 11:1; cp. G. Campbell Morgan, Exposition on the Whole Bible, 2010, ibid; Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge (TSK) entry at Isa. 11:1.
2: i.e., sprouting from one of the stumps remaining after Israel's "harvesting" (Constable, loc. cit.) by the Assyrians.
3: the Messiah promised to be sent to Israel by YHVH-JeHoVaH.
The stump of Jesse and the mention of the nazarene are both talking about the Christians . the esseens talk about this in the dead sea scrolls and Jesus was an esseens. They are prophesizing about a time in which the ego can be destroyed . that will happen when there's an equitable system of governance that has the general welfare of people and the planet as its purpose . were supposed to have 1000 years of peace after . the prophecy is playing out . the economic negotiations could fulfill the war scroll prophecy and isaiahs as well . it means the ego oriented abrahamic faith people elk have evolved the material world to a point at which we no linger need the ego , we can manifest our natural self . There's supposed to be 6 years in the final battle .Jesus said there would be two at a handmilk then suddenly one . two people dint run a handmilk one person does and his talking about labor . the load will be halved , the person will no longer waste their lives living g to enrich others . they will work for eachother as theirselves . its the merging of east and west and the matter and spirit individual and cilkective. Its the return of the great infinity the end to the cycle of suffering unconsciously
