Isaiah 11:1-2, 9, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse…And the Spirit of YHWH shall rest upon him…[and] the earth shall be full of the knowledge of YHWH as the waters cover the sea.”
First, the chapter begins with an anticipation of the “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” the “Branch.” This arboreal imagery is an extension from the end of chapter 10 where the Lord says that—in His judgment exerted through Assyria—He will “lop the boughs with terrifying power…He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an axe…” (10:33-34). So, the idea seems to be that the Branch / Messiah will rise up from the ashes of judgment, as it were.
Next we see that this Branch figure will bear the Spirit of God in a unique way. The Spirit will “rest upon him” (11:2), and will be—in some sense—a sevenfold Spirit: the Spirit of YHWH, of Wisdom, of Understanding, of Counsel, of Might, of Knowledge, and of the Fear of YHWH. The Branch will be a sort of living Menorah, the true Tree of Life and of Knowledge, lit with the perfect, sevenfold light of YHWH’s Spirit.
And by this light, streaming from the anointed Branch, “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of YHWH as the waters cover the sea” (v.9). As the sevenfold Spirit of the Lord shines forth from the exalted Branch of the Lord, the knowledge of the Lord will permeate and so transfigure all reality.
The NT teaches that this creation-transforming, YHWH-revealing, Spiritual light is already shining into all the earth…..where do we see it? Paul tells us in 2 Cor.4:6, it is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shines to us in and from the face of Jesus Christ.
He—the crucified and risen Jesus—HE is the Branch, raised up from and so revealed upon the judgment tree of Calvary, HE is the remnant of God’s people preserved beyond death in whom alone anyone will be preserved, and HE is the True Menorah on whom rests the sevenfold Spirit of YHWH and from whom the light of the knowledge of the glory of YHWH fills all the earth.
