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ISAIAH CHAPTER 11
Christ, a Branch out of the root of Jesse, endued with the Spirit of the Lord, should set up a kingdom by the preaching of his word, Isa_19:1-5. The members of his church should live in peace and unity, Isa_19:6-9; and be victorious over their enemies; and to him should the Gentiles seek, Isa_11:10-16.
The prophet having despatched the Assyrian, and comforted God’s people with the promise of their deliverance from that formidable enemy, now he proceeds further, and declares that God will do greater things than that for them, that he will give them their long-expected and much desired Messiah, and by him will work wonders of mercy for them. For this is the manner of the prophets, to take the occasion of particular deliverances, to fix the people’s minds upon their great and everlasting deliverance from all their enemies by the Messiah. And having said that the Assyrian yoke should be destroyed because of the anointing, Isa_10:27, he now more particularly explains who that anointed person was. A rod, or twig, called a Branch in the next clause. Parents are oft compared to roots or trees, and their children to branches. He speaks of the most eminent Branch, of that famous Son of a virgin, Isa_7:14, of that wonderful Child, Isa_9:6; not of Hezekiah, as some of the Jews and judaizing Christians conceit; but of the Messiah, as will evidently appear from the following description. The stem, or trunk; or rather, stump; for the word properly signifies a trunk cut off from the root; or, root, as the LXX. here render the word, and as it is explained in the next clause. By which he clearly implies that the Messiah should be born of the royal house of David, at that lime when it was in a most forlorn and contemptible condition, like a tree cut down, and whereof nothing is left but a stump or root under ground; which really was the state of David’s family when Christ was born, as is notoriously known, but was in a far better condition when Hezekiah was born. Of Jesse; he doth not say of David, but
of Jesse, who was a private and mean person, 1Sa_18:18,23 20:30, to intimate, that at the time of Christ’s birth the royal family should be reduced to its primitive obscurity.
A Branch shall grow: he speaks of one not yet born, and therefore not of Hezekiah, who was born divers years before his father Ahaz (in whose time this prophecy was delivered) was king, by comparing 2Ki_16:2 18:2; but of the Messiah.
Out of his roots; out of one of his roots, i.e. branches, as this word root is sometimes used, by a very usual figure called a metonymy, as it is here below, Isa_11:10 Isa_53:2 Hos_14:5.