By Tim Trainor
Isaiah 11:5 draws attention to the messianic king’s fidelity and loyalty to God’s covenant. It does this by ”justice and faithfulness” being His clothing, thus revealing the importance of them, as we read, “It is justice and faithfulness that will gird him,” and us by implication, if we are to live and work in His kingdom!
Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10
Luke 10:21-24
What is the strange expression found in our reading from Romans, “from faith to faith?”
The Stump of Jesse & Return of the Seventy-Two
Every Advent, we hear about the “stump of Jesse” and the lion lying down with the lamb, but what does all of this mean? It is easy for biblical prophecies to sound like nice religious talk with some poetic flourish, but they give us little meat on the bone! However, prophecies like this one from Isaiah 11 are essential to our understanding of who Jesus is and what kind of victory He wins by His coming into the world. He is not just a nice religious teacher, but the king who brings justice for the poor and strikes the wicked with “the rod of His mouth.” His coming is a fierce arrival of judgment and the blossoming of a new era of hope and salvation. He conquers injustice and brings us into an age of perfect peace!
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. (Isaiah 11:6)
I bet that upon first reading of this passage, the old joke came to your mind, ‘that the leopard might lie down with the kid goat, but the kid goat won’t get much sleep’!
We chuckle at this because Isaiah gives us an image that runs counter to all our experience and expectations. Take note, though: the kingdom of God will not be what we expect! Assumptions about natural friends and enemies are no longer going to be true in the Kingdom of God. What is the modern, urban equivalent of Isaiah’s pastoral image of lamb and wolf? Black and white folks breaking bread and worshiping together? A teenage Muslim boy and an old Jewish man sharing a cup of tea? “The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb…” Wow!
But also note something new here: What is so new about the promised “mountain of the Lord” is not that the wolf and the lamb are both there, but that the wolf remains a wolf and the lamb a lamb, and yet they dwell together without harm or hurt in God’s Kingdom. Under God’s rule, conversion and obedience do not mean the loss of identity but the discovery of our true identities as one in Christ!
A Shoot from a Stump
The prophecy we read this morning begins with a botanical reference, a shoot sprouting from a stump. This image comes from the cultivation of olive trees, an image also referred to in Psalm 128, which pictures sons, as olive shoots, around their father's table. The basic idea here is that old olive trees cease producing fruit from the main trunk and instead sprout fruit-bearing shoots from the base of the stump, which grow up around the fruitless central trunk. One olive trunk could have three, four, or more mature shoots spring up around it, like “sons” around their “father’s” table. The “stump” is not necessarily cut down; it is just unfruitful. Here in Isaiah 11, the messianic king is pictured as a shoot and Jesse (David’s father) as the stump. This is significant in that Isaiah invites us to see the Messiah not as another of David’s heirs, who have failed to be faithful to the Lord, but as ‘another David’, that is, a new son of Jesse!
My Catholic Study Bible picks up on this thought as it has a note in it which reads: “The imagery of “stump” suggests the bankruptcy of the monarchy as embodied in the historical kings, along with the need for a new beginning, to spring from the very origin from which David and his dynasty arose, that is: Jesse: David’s father.” Thus, the use of the term stump here.
Gifts of the Spirit
The second verse mentions seven attributes of the Messiah, which the Church has adopted as the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (see Catechism, 1831). These gifts are characteristics of Christ, and are given to us, the baptized, as change agents that bring these same seven Christ-like virtues to completion in us.
Isaiah tells us that the Messiah, like David (1 Sam 16:13), will have the spirit of the Lord. Also, the picture of an ideal messianic king recalls the prophecy of Isaiah 9:1-9. In this passage, the gifts of the Holy Spirit lay the groundwork for the messianic king’s just judgment. The three pairs of ideas in 11:2 (wisdom/understanding; counsel/strength; knowledge/fear of the Lord) are the foundations of messianic rule. The second half of v. 4 indicates the power the messianic king possesses: the power to punish evildoers and bring about justice for the oppressed. The Messiah does not just bring peace, but also judgments which set things right. The “rod of his mouth” in v. 4 is like the sword in the Messiah's mouth at the Second Coming (Rev 19:15), a symbol of His judgment.
Isaiah 11:5 draws attention to the messianic king's fidelity and loyalty to God’s covenant. It does this by”justice and faithfulness” being His clothing, thus revealing the importance of them, as we read, “It is justice and faithfulness that will gird him,” and us by implication, if we are to live and work in His kingdom!
The Messianic Age of Peace
As mentioned, jokingly in my opening, Isaiah paints a very idyllic, hard-to-believe scene that depicts the Messiah's reign through the behavior of animals. Once his reign is established, the carnivores will become herbivores; the predators and their prey will lie down peaceably together. It may seem that a bizarre turn has taken place: we were talking about the new David’s just judgment and equitable rule, and now we’re in a Fairy book type setting, looking at the cute animals behaving in strange ways. But the point is more symbolic than literal. The predators (wolf, leopard, lion, bear, cobra, adder) symbolize the oppressors, and the prey (lamb, kid, child, calf, cow) symbolize the oppressed. Those who had been enemies will now be friends! The oppressors will be at peace with the oppressed. After the messianic king executes His judgment, an era of peace will be ushered in. Note that in v. 9, the prophet explains that the reason that peace will reign on “all my holy mountain” (Jerusalem) is that “knowledge of the Lord” will have spread to the whole world. More about this later in my Gospel comments. The lesson here is that knowledge of God brings about peace. Of course, this final peace has only begun to be brought about through the life and proclamation of Jesus, but will come to its lasting form/fulfillment at the final judgment!
Lastly, Isaiah tells us that this messianic shoot will become a point of in-gathering, both for the dispersed people of Israel (v. 11:11-12) and for the Gentiles (v. 11:10).
Now to our Gospel reading from Luke
To fully understand what’s going on here in this morning’s speech of Our Lord’s (Luke 10:1-13, 17-20), we must go back and read the immediately preceding verses. There, we read that Our Lord has gathered back together the seventy-two of his disciples, whom He sent out to preach repentance for the coming Kingdom. He had sent them out with nothing: no sack, no money bag, not even sandals. He wanted them to rely on his strength, not their own. They experienced great success! Results like: “Even the demons are subject to us because of your name …”(Luke 10:17).
The Joy of Jesus
So, when the 72 who had gone out, return, they share with Jesus the joy of their experience (Lk 10: 17, 21).
We read of Jesus’ own profound joy, which came from seeing the joy of His friends as He saw their faces and listened to their experiences when they returned.
It is not a superficial joy. It came from the Holy Spirit as a major transition had occurred! The disciples have shared in Jesus’ own God given mission after their return from a daring missionary venture.
The result of the 72 should remind each of us that: No matter how weak or unprepared we think we are, with Jesus, we have everything we need to joyfully accomplish whatever He asks us to do!
About The Little Ones
Jesus mentions “ Little Children”. Who are the “Little Children here? I believe that they are the seventy-two disciples who return from the mission. They are not like the Pharisee. They are simple fishermen, farmers, and everyday people with little education. But the ‘Little Children’ are people, like us, who have a relationship with and understand the things and workings of God!
In Luke 10:22, Jesus says: “Yes, Father, for such has been Your gracious will ...” I believe that this is a very important phrase. It pleases the Father because the other little ones, out in the world, understood the 72 who were sent to them! Therefore, if the great of the world want to understand the things of the Kingdom, they should become the students of these 72, or their follow-on ‘little ones’ who will present through the ages Jesus’ teachings! Do you sense a ‘Torch’ being passed here among current and future ‘Little Ones’? I do!
Then, Jesus looks at them and says, “Blessed are you!” And why are they blessed? Because they are seeing things which the prophets would have liked to see, but did not see. And what did they get to see? They saw the Kingdom (which we pray for every time in the Our Father prayer when we say: “... Thy Kingdom come ...”) as the 72 went about the countryside curing the sick, consoling the afflicted, teaching truth, and expelling evil.
Three Saint Augustine, Church Father & Doctor of the Church Comments on the 72 Sent Forth by Jesus
Prophecy Fulfillment: Augustine saw the 72’s mission as the fulfillment of prophecies, particularly from the Psalms, such as “In his presence shall fall down the Ethiopians, and his enemies shall lick the earth” (Psalm 72:9, which was Psalm 71 in the Vulgate used by Augustine). He interpreted “Ethiopians” as a people from the “ends of the earth,” to represent ALL distant nations that would come to adore Christ.
Apostolic Authority: Augustine saw the mission of the disciples, including the 72, as a work of Christ, as they were performing all their good works “in the name of (that is ‘authority of’) Jesus”; thereby, they affirmed Jesus’ words that: “Without me [Christ] you can do nothing”. He highlights that they, the 72, were given power to heal and preach the Kingdom of God, and their joy upon return was rooted in their connection to Christ and His earthly mission given to Him by His Father, which He then passed on through the Apostles to the Christian Church!
Number Symbolism: Augustine discussed how the number of disciples sent out (cited here as 72), signifies, per the ‘Table of Nations’ found in Genesis 10, all the 72 nations of the Earth known at that time. Their mission, therefore, foreshadowed the spread of the Gospel to all humanity, just as Isaiah had prophesied in our reading this morning from Isaiah 11!