Isaiah 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah describes a shoot growing from the stump of Jesse, a ruler on whom the Spirit of the LORD rests, who judges with righteousness and fairness for the poor and lowly and strikes the wicked with the word of his mouth. Under him, predator and prey live together without harm on God's holy mountain, and the earth is full of the knowledge of the LORD. The chapter then turns to that day when the root of Jesse stands as a banner for the nations, and the LORD gathers the remnant of Israel and Judah from Assyria, Egypt, and other lands, ending the old rivalry between Ephraim and Judah and opening a highway home like the one Israel had when it came out of Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • A shoot will come out from the stump of Jesse.
   • A branch will grow out of Jesse's roots.
   • The branch will bear fruit.
2. 11:2
   • The spirit of the LORD will rest upon him.
   • That spirit is a spirit of wisdom and understanding.
   • That spirit is a spirit of counsel and might.
   • That spirit is a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
3. 11:3
   • His delight will be in the fear of the LORD.
   • He will not judge by what his eyes see.
   • He will not decide by what his ears hear.
4. 11:4
   • He will judge the poor with righteousness.
   • He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
   • He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.
   • He will kill the wicked with the breath of his lips.
5. 11:5
   • Righteousness will be the belt around his waist.
   • Faithfulness will be the belt around his hips.
6. 11:6
   • The wolf will dwell with the lamb.
   • The leopard will lie down with the young goat.
   • The calf, the young lion, and the fatling will be together.
   • A little child will lead them.
7. 11:7
   • The cow and the bear will graze.
   • Their young will lie down together.
   • The lion will eat straw like the ox.
8. 11:8
   • The nursing child will play over the hole of the cobra.
   • The weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den.
9. 11:9
   • They will not hurt or destroy anywhere on the LORD's holy mountain.
   • The earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD.
   • That knowledge will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
10. 11:10
    • In that day there will be a root of Jesse.
    • The root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples.
    • The nations will seek him.
    • His resting place will be glorious.
11. 11:11
    • In that day the Lord will put out his hand a second time.
    • He will do so to recover the remnant of his people who are left.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Assyria.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Egypt.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Pathros.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Cush.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Elam.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Shinar.
    • The remnant will be recovered from Hamath.
    • The remnant will be recovered from the islands of the sea.
12. 11:12
    • He will raise a banner for the nations.
    • He will assemble the outcasts of Israel.
    • He will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
13. 11:13
    • The envy of Ephraim will depart.
    • The adversaries of Judah will be cut off.
    • Ephraim will not envy Judah.
    • Judah will not harass Ephraim.
14. 11:14
    • They will swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines toward the west.
    • Together they will plunder the people of the east.
    • They will lay their hand on Edom and Moab.
    • The Ammonites will be subject to them.
15. 11:15
    • The LORD will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt.
    • He will wave his hand over the River with his scorching wind.
    • He will strike it into seven streams.
    • He will make men cross it in sandals.
16. 11:16
    • There will be a highway for the remnant of his people who are left from Assyria.
    • That highway will be like the one there was for Israel on the day Israel came up out of the land of Egypt.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

Jesse was the father of King David, so "the stump of Jesse" points to David's royal family. A stump is what is left when a tree is cut down: the image assumes the dynasty has been felled, and says new growth will come from the remaining roots. "Branch" here translates a Hebrew word for a green shoot; in Isaiah and later prophets it hardens into a title for a coming king of David's line.

11:2

"The fear of the LORD" in Hebrew means reverence and awe before God, the attitude of someone who takes God seriously, not fright. The same phrase runs through verses 2 and 3.

11:3

The Hebrew verb behind "take delight" is built on the word for smelling, so the line literally reads something like "his scenting will be in the fear of the LORD." Translators differ: the King James took it as quickness of perception ("quick understanding"), most modern versions as delight or pleasure. "Judge by what his eyes see" and "by what his ears hear" describe a judge who decides on appearances and hearsay rather than on the facts.

11:4

"The lowly" translates a Hebrew word for the poor and powerless, people with no standing in court, rather than people who are mild-mannered; the King James "meek" has drifted toward the second sense. The "rod" is a ruler's staff, used both as a symbol of authority and as a stick for striking; "the rod of his mouth" means his spoken verdict acts as the weapon. "Breath of his lips" is the same idea: he executes sentence by speaking it.

11:5

Men wore long robes; a belt pulled the robe tight so a person could work, run, or fight. To be belted was to be ready for action, and what a man wore at his waist (a sword, a badge of office) showed who he was. The verse says righteousness and faithfulness are what this ruler straps on.

11:6

The "fattened animal" is livestock deliberately fed up for slaughter, the prize meat at a feast, and normally the first thing a predator would take.

11:7

Lions eat meat, never straw. Straw is dry stalks that cows and oxen eat.

11:8

Both animals are venomous snakes. The King James "cockatrice" was a legendary serpent in medieval lore, used by the 1611 translators as a name for a deadly snake; the Hebrew word means an ordinary viper or adder. The two children named are at the two most helpless ages: still nursing, and just weaned.

11:9

"My holy mountain" is Zion, the temple hill in Jerusalem, standing here for the whole land God rules.

11:10

A banner (the King James "ensign") was a pole or standard raised on a high place as a rallying signal, armies and scattered people gathered to it and knew where to go. "The nations" translates the word the King James renders "Gentiles": it means the peoples other than Israel.

11:11

"A second time" measures against the first rescue, the exodus out of Egypt. The "remnant" is the survivors, the fraction of the people left after war and deportation. The place names sweep from one end of the known world to the other: Pathros is southern (Upper) Egypt; Cush is the region up the Nile beyond Egypt, roughly modern Sudan; Elam lay east of Babylon in what is now southwestern Iran; Shinar is an old name for Babylonia; Hamath was a city-state in Syria to the north; "the islands of the sea" means the islands and coastlands of the Mediterranean.

11:12

"The four corners of the earth" is an idiom for every direction, the way we say "the ends of the earth." Israel and Judah are named separately because the kingdom had split in two (see the note on verse 13), and both halves had been carried off.

11:13

After Solomon the kingdom split: the ten northern tribes became Israel, often called Ephraim after its dominant tribe, and the south became Judah, ruled from Jerusalem. The two were rivals and at times fought each other outright. The verse promises the end of that feud.

11:14

These are Israel's immediate neighbors: the Philistines on the coastal plain to the west, and Edom, Moab and Ammon east and southeast across the Jordan and the Dead Sea. "Slopes" translates a Hebrew word meaning "shoulder," used for the flank of a range of hills, here the hill country running down to Philistine territory.

11:15

"The gulf of the Egyptian sea" is the narrow arm of water at the head of the Red Sea, the barrier crossed in the exodus; "the river" in the King James is the Euphrates, the far boundary in the other direction, and splitting it into seven shallow channels makes it fordable on foot. The whole picture replays the escape from Egypt on a larger map.

11:16

A highway meant a road built up and cleared of stones for travel, a made road rather than a track. Assyria is named because it was Assyria that had destroyed the northern kingdom and deported its people, in 722 BC.