chapters xi. and xii.
This is one of the visions that Isaiah saw (chap. i. 1, ii. 1, &c.). He was a dreamer of dreams. With a keen perception, not surpassed, of the men and things actually surrounding him, much of his life was passed in an ideal and future world. There he found comfort and strength to endure the sorrows that otherwise would have crushed him. At the outset of his ministry, when the great king who had done so much to restore the prosperity of the nation was about to be removed, there was vouchsafed to him a vision of the King immortal, eternal, invisible, throned in the temple, and surrounded by the exalted intelligences who do His will (chap. vi. 1–4); and now, at the close of the wicked and disastrous reign of Ahaz, when his hopes concerning his race would naturally have failed, there was granted him a vision of a King of righteousness and peace, who on earth would rule over a kingdom such as the world had never seen. His soul had been stirred and appalled by a vision of disaster and woe. He was the king of Assyria, then the terror of the earth, utterly broken, his vast armies hewn down as forests fall before the axes of the woodmen (chap. x. 33, 34); a vision of blood and terror which may well have filled him with trembling. But just as sometimes the sweetest daylight follows a night of storm, this vision of terror fades away, and he sees—
I. A King (chap. xi. 1–5). 1. Royally descended, “a rod out of the stem of Jesse.” A simple farmer on the hills of Bethlehem, and yet a father of kings. Not an accident. We are here confronted with the mystery of blood, of race. No common man was he from whom sprang David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, and a long line of kings. In his ordinary hours, Isaiah may well have derived assurance that the vision that gladdened him was given him from above, from the fact that it was in harmony with God’s promise (2 Sam. vii. 12–16). Without dismay he could view the royal house lapsing into the obscurity from which it sprang—becoming merely a house of Jesse once more—assured that in His own time God would again raise it up to glory.[1] It is always well when our hopes rest upon the Word of God. 2. Royally endowed; a King by truest “right divine,” because possessed of royal qualities of heart and mind (chap. xi. 2, 3). Of the thousands who have sat on thrones, how few have possessed them! How many have ruled over the miserable wretches subject to their sway merely by the craft of the serpent or the cruelty of the tiger! Of those who have been popular, how many have owed their popularity to mere physical prowess and politic good-nature (Richard I., Charles II.)! How few have endeavoured to approach the Biblical conception of what a ruler ought to be (Deut. xvii. 14–20; 2 Sam. xxiii. 3; Ps. lxxii. 4; Prov. xx. 28)! In the marvellous superiority of that conception to anything that has prevailed among men, have we not another proof that the sacred writers were indeed inspired by the Spirit of God? 3. Ruling in righteousness; using His marvellous endowments for the welfare of those subjected to His authority (chap. xi. 3–5); not judging of things or men by their mere appearance, nor by common report; caring for the poor, befriending the shrinking and helpless, fearless in His dispensation of justice; His very words being swords that smote and overthrew the arrogant oppressor; made strong by the very righteousness which merely politic men would have feared to display in view of the might of iniquity in this disordered world; a Hero of the truest and divinest kind, in actual life setting forth the ideal to which the noblest knights in the purest days of chivalry strove to conform. Such was the King whom the prophet “saw” in an age when “ruler” was merely another word for tyrant and oppressor. Surely the vision so fair and wondrous was given him from above!
II. He also saw the kingdom. 1. A kingdom of righteousness (chap. xi. 9). The kingdom necessarily resembles the king. Appalling is the influence of a court upon a nation. Correspondingly great is the responsibility of those who sit in high places. 2. A kingdom of peace. Set forth by the most beautiful symbolism (chap. xi. 6–10, 13). 3. A kingdom of prosperity. Those included in it are no longer miserable exiles and bond slaves; rather they rule over those by whom they were spoiled and oppressed (chap. xi. 14). This is the true interpretation of a symbol that is in itself harsh and repulsive. The coarseness of the symbol is due to the coarseness of the minds it was first intended to touch. 4. A kingdom of gladness and joy. There pervades it the gladness of exiles who have been restored to their own land (chap. xi. 15, 16); the true and religious joy of men who recognise that the deliverances which inspire their songs have been wrought for them by God (chap. xii. 1–5); the joy of men who are absolutely assured of continual safety (chap. xii. 2, 6).
Was all this merely a bright vision? 1. It has been already fulfilled in part. 2. In our own day it is being fulfilled more completely than ever before. 3. It shall yet be fulfilled triumphantly.[2] Let us then, 1. Recognise and rejoice in the fact that we are living under the rule of this righteous King. This is at least the dawning of the “day” which Isaiah saw (Matt. xiii. 16). 2. Exult in view of the certain future of our race. The kingdom of God shall come generation after generation with mightier power (H. E. I., 3421–3423). 3. Labour as well as pray that future may be hastened.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The image is now transferred to the state and king of Israel, which is also to be cut down to the stump, like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. But out of that stump, and from its living roots, shall grow up a scion—one of those slender shoots which we see springing up from, and immediately around, the stock of a truncated tree. A king of the race of Jesse shall sit on the throne of his fathers, in accordance with the covenant made with David (Ps. lxxxix. 3, 4).—Strachey.
When the axe is laid to the imperial power of the world, it falls without hope (chap. x. 33, 34). But in Israel spring is returning (chap. xi. 1). The world-power resembles the cedar-forest of Lebanon; the house of David, on the other hand, because of its apostasy, is like the stump of a felled tree, like a root without stem, branches, or crown. The world-kingdom, at the height of its power, presents the most striking contrast to Israel and the house of David in the uttermost depth announced in chapter vi., fin., mutilated and reduced to the lowliness of its Bethlehemitish origin. But whereas the Lebanon of the imperial power is thrown down, to remain prostrate, the house of David renews its youth. . . . Out of the stump of Jesse—i.e., out of the remnant of the chosen royal family, which has sunk down to the insignificance of the house from which it sprang—there comes forth a twig (choter), which promises to supply the place of the trunk and crown; and down below, in the roots covered with earth, and only rising a little above it there shows itself a nētzer, i.e., a fresh, green shoot. In the historical account of the fulfilment, even the ring of the words of the prophecy is noticed: the nētzer, at first so humble and insignificant, was a poor despised Nazarene (Matt. ii. 23).—Delitzsch.
[2] For additional suggestions on this part of the subject, see outlines on pages 71–73 ([Isaiah’s Vision of the Last Days,] [The Latter-Day Glory,] [The Future Triumphs of the Gospel]), 101 ([The Divine Ideal of Israel Realised]), 182 ([The Remedy of the World’s Misery]), 186 ([The Government of Christ]), 191–194 ([The Prince of Peace,] [The Empire of Christ,] [The Security for the Fulfilment of God’s Promises,] [The Outstretched Hand of God]).