It is a strange title, that goes with the fourth verse of O Come O come – at least in the first version I came across online. I think it is more usual to have ‘rod of Jesse’, but branch of Jesse’s stem has the benefit of being a clear reference to one particular OT passage.

O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem,
unto your own and rescue them!
From depths of hell your people save,
and give them victory o’er the grave

The passage in question is Isaiah’s vision of the Messianic age in Isaiah 11. It is worth reading in full:

11 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
² The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
³ and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
    or decide by what he hears with his ears;
⁴ but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
    with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
⁵ Righteousness will be his belt
    and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

⁶ The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling^[a] together;
    and a little child will lead them.
⁷ The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
⁹ They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah 11:1-9

The passage divides into two main sections – v1-5 show us what sort of a king the shoot from Jesse’s stem will be, and v6-9 show us what his kingdom will be like.

The idea of a Branch coming out of Jesse’ stem is used in the prophets (here, and in Jeremiah and Zechariah) of the one who will come, who will be descended from David, but will bring God’s kingdom in its fullness.

In Isaiah’s day the line of kings descended from David was of very variable quality, and by Jeremiah and then Zechariah’s day that line had completely failed. Yet the prophetic hope is that there will one day be one from that line on whom the Spirit of Yahweh will rest. It is a hope that waits for the coming of Jesus – the promised perfect Son of David.

Isaiah’s vision here is worth pausing on a little longer:

² The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
³ and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

This is a beautiful picture of how the Spirit and God’s King relate. The Spirit rests upon God’s anointed King. The Spirit is a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and of might and of the knowledge and fear of Yahweh.

With this Spirit resting on him the King to come is one who will have complete wisdom and understanding – knowing how to live and rule in any given situation. He will have counsel and might – he will know how he should rule, and will be able to do it – there will be no limits holding him back from his good purposes.

He will know and fear Yahweh, two of the key ways in which God’s relationship with people is described in the Bible. This knowledge is much more than knowing facts about, it is a relational knowing, an intimate knowledge – the word ‘know’ can be used of sexual relations. This intimate knowledge is combined with reverence. Fear here is not used in the sense of terror, but in the sense of right reverence and respect for a holy God who is above and beyond our understanding.

The text then goes on to describe how he will judge (rule) with perfect righteousness and justice. This means that he will put right what has gone wrong, and in particular that he will put an end to injustice and poverty. That is something that most of us, at least in theory, would be very happy to sign up to.

It is the next half of the verse that is more uncomfortable reading:

He will strike the earth
with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips
he will slay the wicked.

Not only will he do away with injustice and poverty – he will do away with the perpetrators of injustice. The wicked will be done away with. He will do it with the ‘breath of his lips’ and the ‘rod of his mouth’. This imagery runs right through the Bible. Here is Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:

⁸ And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.

And here is John’s vision in Revelation 19:

¹¹ I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. ¹² His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. ¹³ He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. ¹⁴ The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. ¹⁵ Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”^[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.

Jesus comes to bring judgement, and he does it simply by a word. It is somewhat misleading to think of a final ‘battle’, for in Revelation while there may be armies gathered, there is no fighting – simply the authoritative words of the King delivering final judgement.

He will deliver that judgement with perfect faithfulness and righteousness.
As we think about that, it may well make us uncomfortable.
For too often we have not sided with the powerless.
Too often we have used power for our own advantage.
Too often we have acted like the wicked Jesus comes to destroy.

The first response to hearing of Jesus’ coming as judge must be repentance. We need to read through these words which describe Jesus’ kingship and repent of how far short we fall.

When we do that there is forgiveness, for the King who comes with perfect righteousness and faithfulness has found a way for us to come into a right relationship with God. Paul uses both these terms in his letter to the Romans, chapter 3:

²¹ But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²² This righteousness is given through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to all who believe.

God’s righteousness comes to us through Jesus’ faithfulness – Jesus’ faithful obedience to God’s calling that led him to the cross to lay his life down that we might live a life of faithful obedience showing God’s righteousness to his broken world.

The pattern is something like this:

God’s righteousness leads to him seeking to save his broken world by coming in the person of Jesus Christ, the faithful one who lives out a life of perfect faithfulness culminating in the cross and resurrection, through which the Spirit is poured out.

This enables us to turn to Christ, and receive God’s righteousness, enabling us to walk faithfully by the Spirit showing God’s righteousness to the world and pointing to the day when Jesus will return and make all things new, in perfect conformity to God’s righteousness.

{small footnote here: most translations say ‘faith in Jesus’ rather than faithfulness of Jesus – but the NIV has ‘faithfulness of Jesus’ as an alternative in a footnote because many scholars (from the various different schools of thought in NT theology), think that is a better way of translating the particular Greek phrase – and when we read these sort of descriptions in the OT it makes me think they might be right}.

There is a path to a new life offered.
A life characterised by knowledge of the LORD and fear of the LORD
– by intimate relationship and reverent devotion to our faithful and righteous King.
A life entered into because of the King’s life laid down for us,
and a life sustained by his Spirit poured out in us.

This new life begins now, but finds its ultimate fulfillment and meaning in a new world, ruled by this perfect King. This new world will be one where old enmity will be done away with:

⁶ The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
⁷ The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
⁹ They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

It struck me that it might be thought somewhat odd to begin a bible section of the blog with reflections on a hymn, even one with such a majestic tradition as O come O come. More regularly the idea here will be to put a weekly post focusing on a particular text of Scripture, hopefully for your refreshment and refocusing.

However, we were keen to get this blog up and running and a good seasonal way into the Bible section seemed to be reflections on this hymn. It is utterly saturated with the biblical text, and with the connections within the biblical text. It is my conviction that it is utterly vital in today’s world, and especially in our modern Christian cultures to go learn from ancient texts like this hymn to recapature a vision for reading Scripture.

This vision means that we should not simply aim to master exegesis of one particular text on its own terms, but should seek to place it not only in its context within its book, but then to place it in the wider context of Scripture, and see how it relates to everything else that God says.

The hymn O come O come brings together a vast array of scriptural allusions within one poem that so often we barely hear about at Christmas time, and includes them all in one prayer for Jesus to come to us. We need to use this hymn as a way to drive us to reflect on all of Scripture – to see the connections, and how those connections illuminate and deeper our understanding.

And so we come to the verse which, at least in my head, can sometimes feel most jarring to our ears in the midst of Christmas preparations:

O come, O come, great Lord of might,
who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times did give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe.

This verse is striking in the context of a hymn addressed to Jesus. In an Advent hymn it seems almost jarring to be referring to the coming of Yahweh to his people at Mount Sinai. The events it refers to are described in the book of Exodus 19-20, which describe Israel’s arrival at Sinai and the way in which Yahweh meets with us there:

¹⁶ On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. ¹⁷ Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. ¹⁸ Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. ¹⁹ As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

²⁰ The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up ²¹ and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. ²² Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”

Exodus 19:16-22

¹⁸ When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance ¹⁹ and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

²⁰ Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

²¹ The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

Exodus 20:18-21

There are those in the Christian church today who would tell us that we need to leave behind this thunder and lightning, this darkness and smoke, when we come to Jesus. This fierce OT deity needs to be left behind, and the OT unhitched and left behind somewhere safely out of sight.

Needless to say the writer of O come O come Emmanuel would not have agreed, and more importantly the writers of the NT do not agree. We turn the pages of the OT to the NT and are immediately confronted by a list of OT names and Jesus birth is explained by references to OT events and prophets.

Skip forward from Matthew to Mark and John the Baptist is understood as the voice of Isaiah 40 crying in the wilderness, announcing the end of exile. Jesus is presented as Yahweh himself, healing the sick, casting out demons, controlling the seas, drowning demonic opposition and raising the dead.

In Luke the attentive reader should be struck the way in which the birth announcement of the angel to Zechariah and Mary remind us of the birth announcements of saviours and prophets in the OT.

And in John we are taken back to the beginning of creation, and then reminded of the Exodus events as John reminds us that Jesus is God ‘tabernaclling’ among us, showing us grace and truth – two key words in God’s self revelation to Moses in Exodus 34. We cannot read the NT without understanding the OT, and seeing that we see the same God.

Neither does Jesus seem to lessen the demands of this God on us. Read Exodus 20, and then read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus doesn’t remove a single command – but he does intensify their demands. It is not enough to avoid murder, we must avoid anger. It is not enough to avoid adultery, every lustful thought must be shunned.

In his commentary on Exodus biblical theologian and scholar Brevard Childs wrote insightfully:

“The new covenant is not a substitution of a friendly God for the terror of Sinai, but rather a gracious message of an open access to the same God whose presence still calls forth awe and reverence”

Brevard Childs (Exodus commentary)

It is this awe and reverence that this verse of O come O come Emmanuel reminds us of the need for. I am reading the Chronicles of Narnia once more to our children this year and, as the children in the stories are constantly reminded, Aslan is not a tame lion. Our God is not a tame God.

Take time this Advent to pause in the stillness and consider the God who comes to us in the manger.

Take some time to read passages like Exodus 19 and Isaiah 40 that will refresh your pespective on our God.

Remember the wonder that the God who shook the mountain is the God who comes as a baby.

Then remember the wonder that the God who came as a baby will come and shake the earth.

And so we make those words our prayer:

O come, O come, great Lord of might,
who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times did give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe.

The second verse of O come O come Emmanuel, at least in a relatively long version I found online is this:

O come, O Wisdom from on high,
who ordered all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show
and teach us in its ways to go. 

This struck me because I’m not used to associating Advent with the Jesus coming as wisdom, or even thinking much of Jesus as Wisdom. This highlights a value of hymns from ancient times. They may well cause us to think of things we have neglected.

It made me think of the biblical wisdom literature, and the place given to wisdom in the bible. Wisdom makes its first appearance in the story of Joseph, where we see the contrast between the ‘wise men’ of Pharaoh’s court who cannot interpret his dreams, and Joseph who is shown to a wise and discerning man by his God-given ability to interpret the dreams, and give Pharaoh appropriate advice in how to act on them.

This story is vital to the biblical understanding of wisdom. The themes contained in it are seen frequently in the biblical story.

We see the folly of pagan wisdom in the wise men of Pharaoh’s court who cannot interpret his dreams. They are like the wise men of a later Pharaoh who cannot replicate Moses and Aaron’s signs. They are like the wise men of Babylon who cannot interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams.

The God given nature of wisdom is seen here in that Joseph’s ability, like Daniel’s later, to interpret dreams comes from God. We also see that the God given interpretation of the dream is applied wisely by Joseph. Wisdom is not passive. Wisdom uses God given insight to think through situations and reach conclusions.

In the OT we have a collection of books called ‘wisdom’ literature. It includes proverbs to guide thinking and behaviour (Proverbs), it includes poetry to challenge superficial views of how to react to suffering (Job), proverbs that challenge superficial views of order and meaning in the world (Ecclesiastes), and songs that celebrate physical love between a man and a woman (Song of Songs).

Wisdom also appears in the worship of God. Moses chooses ‘skillful’ (‘wise’) designers and craftsmen & women to make clothes for the priests and to build the tabernacle. Wise people are appointed as judges and officials over the people (Deut. 1) to help in the ruling of the people. Solomon famously prays for wisdom to rule over God’s people.

When we come to the NT Jesus is described as becoming for us wisdom from God (1 Corinthians 1). He is the truly wise Son of David, who shows the way to real life, and who brings wisdom for life. He is the one who was the word of God at creation, perhaps wisdom incarnate, ordering all things in their proper place.

Jesus does not abolish this strand of wisdom teaching from the OT, rather he fills it out with his example and teaching. He is the supremely wise teacher, who shows his disciples how to live a truly wise life – think of the Sermon on the Mount with its climax showing wisdom vs folly.

Following Jesus is not about a life that loses touch with earthly realities. God’s wisdom is for all of life. It is God given, and yet requires our effort and thought to live it and understand it.

This verse of O come O come Emmanuel challenged me this year because more than ever we have been shown vividly our lack of wisdom.

The Covid pandemic has shattered our illusions of control. We can see that we need wisdom.

In our churches we need wisdom. Wisdom at the practical level of how to live within the guidelines. Wisdom on what to restart and how when the guidelines allow. Wisdom on how to help those who are shielding. Wisdom in how to hear well the voices urging speed, and those begging for caution. Wisdom in how to give practical help to those most in need.

Those Covid realities also jostle with other factors in our churches and in our society. We need wisdom as leaders in how to come alongside people and help them see God’s particular path of wisdom in their lives.

We need wisdom and, the hymn continues, we need knowledge – we need the “way of knowledge” shown to us. Not simply a book of facts, but the way of life characterised by knowledge. Yet even simply knowing that way is not enough – we also need Christ to come as wisdom to teach us how to walk in that way.

So often we know what we should be doing. We know we need to give time to God and his word. To listen to what he has to say to us. To pray for the Spirit to empower us. Yet it is all too easy not to do that, and instead rely on our own strength and understanding.

This verse of O come O come Emmanuel needs to remind us that we are weak and foolish left to our own devices, and that it is in those very times when we think we are strong that we need to remember our own need of wisdom from on high.

The good news, as James reminds us, is that God is good, and gives generously to all who ask him:

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

James 1:5

It is this wisdom that we need to ask for from God. We need to remember that he gives generously to all without finding fault. These are astonishing words to allow to penetrate deep into our souls. Whatever the situation we find ourselves in, however complex, however much we are to blame for the mess in which we find ourselves, God is the God who is willing to give wisdom without saying “I told you so, if only you had listened in the first place this would never have happened.

The situation will still be messy. Our decisions and choices will not be erased, but God is ready and willing, even eager, to give his wisdom if we will only ask.

So let us make this verse our prayer for this time of Advent in this most complex of years. As we do let us remember that Advent starts a new year. The coming of Christ brings a new start and a new season.

O come, O Wisdom from on high,
who ordered all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show
and teach us in its ways to go.