Comfort from the Stump that Sprouts
When suffering prunes life down to a stump, the Spirit of God can still cause comfort to sprout.
But a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse,A twig shall sprout from his stock. The spirit of GOD shall alight upon him:A spirit of wisdom and insight,A spirit of counsel and valor,A spirit of devotion and reverence for GOD. He shall sense the truth by his reverence for GOD:He shall not judge by what his eyes behold,Nor decide by what his ears perceive. Thus he shall judge the poor with equityAnd decide with justice for the lowly of the land.He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouthAnd slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Justice shall be the girdle of his loins,And faithfulness the girdle of his waist. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,The leopard lie down with the kid;The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together,With a little child to herd them. The cow and the bear shall graze,Their young shall lie down together;And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw. A babe shall playOver a viper’s hole,And an infant pass its handOver an adder’s den. In all of My sacred mount Nothing evil or vile shall be done;For the land shall be filled with devotion to GOD As water covers the sea. In that day,The stock of Jesse that has remained standingShall become a standard to peoples—Nations shall seek his counselAnd his abode shall be honored. In that day, my Sovereign will apply the divine hand again to redeeming the other part of this people from Assyria—as also from Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the coastlands. [God] will hold up a signal to the nationsAnd assemble the banished of Israel,And gather the dispersed of JudahFrom the four corners of the earth. Then Ephraim’s envy shall ceaseAnd Judah’s harassment shall end;Ephraim shall not envy Judah,And Judah shall not harass Ephraim. They shall pounce on the back of Philistia to the west,And together plunder the peoples of the east;Edom and Moab shall be subject to themAnd the children of Ammon shall obey them. GOD will dry up the tongue of the Egyptian sea—and will raise a hand over the Euphrates with a mighty wind and break it into seven wadis, so that it can be trodden dry-shod. Thus there shall be a highway for the other part of Israel out of Assyria, such as there was for this people when it left the land of Egypt.
Isaiah 11 paints a portrait of hope rising from ruin: a tender shoot from the stump of Jesse bears the sevenfold Spirit, judges the poor with equity, and gathers the banished of Israel from the four corners of the earth. Comfort here is not the absence of suffering but the presence of a righteous, Spirit-anointed King who turns enemy into neighbor.