The word “rod” occurs in one other Old Testament passage (“a rod of pride,” Prov. 14:3) and there it carries the idea of “a twig, a shoot such as starts up from the roots of a cut-down tree.” Isaiah gives us a clear prophecy of God taking a man with no standing—a mere “stump” of a tree cut down—and engrafting new life into it. Jesse was an unknown person; he was not even the head of a royal family, but God made him the father of a king, thereby placing him in the royal, messianic line. The prophecy