This Sunday’s Old Testament text, Isaiah 11:1-10, the prophetic lesson for the second Sunday of Advent, has way more than a single sermon in it. There are at least four distinct parts which each merit full expository treatment: 1) the first verse by itself; 2) verses 2-3a; 3) verses 3b-5; and 4) verses 6-10. Though I’ve chosen to focus on the last of these, the prophecy of a “peaceable kingdom” (to use an older style of speaking), I’ll be trying to show how the the first five verses support and lead into our expectation of that peaceful kingdom.
That first verse expresses an expectation for a descendant of King David, whose father was named Jesse. That “shoot… from the stump of Jesse,” that “branch… out of his roots,” we understand to be Jesus Christ, born in His human nature into the Davidic lineage. As Isaiah calls Him elsewhere, He is the Prince of Peace, the source and founder of a kingdom eventually meant to look like what is described in verses 6-10.
The second piece of the text, verse 2 and the first part of 3, has a special place in Catholic theology. While Protestants have fixated on what are termed “spiritual gifts” in the New Testament, the church fathers early on saw in this text seven “gifts of the Holy Spirit” poured out on Jesus and intended for every Christian. There is a little confusion in that in Hebrew there are only six distinct correlates here to “spirit of,” with “fear of the Lord” being mentioned again at the beginning of verse 3. But in the Septuagint (Greek translation), which basically was the Old Testament for the early church, “fear of the Lord” at the end of verse 2 is replaced with “piety” or “godliness.”
Those seven (or six if you must) spiritual gifts are pretty much intellectual qualities which empower what comes in the third section, the ability of “Jesse’s branch” to judge and instruct with perfect justice. That justice then becomes the foundation of the peaceful kingdom painted in gorgeous imagery by perfect harmony in the natural order.
Note that the end of verse 9 and then verse 10 bring us back around to the recognition that the peaceful kingdom arrives as those spiritual gifts of the mind are made present in human beings. Thus “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord,” and “the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him…”
Thus we realize that the peaceable kingdom arrives among us as we are instructed by Christ, receive the Holy Spirit’s gifts of grasping that instruction, and put it into action in our own lives. While that kingdom is as yet incomplete, certainly not yet wholly peaceful, we wait in hope for that day when He will come back to dwell with us forever, “and his dwelling shall be glorious.”