'He _grew_,'--not '_shall_ grow.' The whole is cast into the form of
history, and to begin the description with a future tense is not only
an error in grammar but gratuitously introduces an incongruity. The
word rendered 'tender plant' means a sucker, and 'root' probably would
more properly be taken as a shoot from a root, the tree having been
felled, and nothing left but the stump. There is here, then, at the
outset, an unmistakable reference to the prophecy in ch. xi. 1, which
is Messianic prophecy, and therefore there is a presumption that this
too has a Messianic reference. In the original passage the stump or
'stock' is explained as being the humiliated house of David, and it is
only following the indications supplied by the fact of the second
Isaiah's quotation of the first, if we take the implication in his
words to be the same. Royal descent, but from a royal house fallen on
evil days, is the plain meaning here.
And the eclipse of its glory is further brought out in that not only
does the shoot spring from a tree, all whose leafy honours have long
been lopped away, but which is 'in a dry ground.' Surely we do not
force a profounder meaning than is legitimate into this feature of the
picture when we think of the Carpenter's Son 'of the house and lineage
of David,' of the Son of God 'who was found in fashion as a man,' of
Him who was born in a stable, and grew up in a tiny village hidden away
among the hills of Galilee, who, as it were, stole into the world 'not
with observation,' and opened out, as He grew, the wondrous blossom of
a perfect humanity such as had never before been evolved from any root,
nor grown on the most sedulously cultured plant. Is this part of the
prophet's ideal realised in any of the other suggested realisations of
it?
But there is still another point in regard to the origin and growth of
the lowly shoot from the felled stump--it is 'before Him.' Then the
unnoticed growth is noticed by Jehovah, and, though cared for by no
others, is cared for, tended, and guarded, by Him.