O Come, O Come, Emmanuel has always been a favorite Advent hymn.  I remember singing it when I was a child, fervently hoping that we would not sing all eight verses. (To be honest, I’d still hope for the same.)  Each verse refers to the coming Emmanuel by a different name.  A few of them were bewildering, including Branch of Jesse.  I didn’t know who Jesse was or how Jesus could be his branch.

It turned out to be pretty simple.  Jesse was the father of King David.  So anyone who was a descendant of David would be a descendant of Jesse.  If we look at the genealogical tree for Jesus, we find Jesse at the base, and Mary and Jesus at the top.   All of which explained that oft quoted phrase that Jesus was “of the house and lineage of David.”  Now I’ll give you credit for knowing all of that already, but to a ten-year-old it was perplexing.

I was also confused by reading that Jesus was the root of Jesse, and then also the branch of Jesse.  I wondered how one could be both root and branch.  The explanation I found was that “root” of Jesse refers to a descendant of Jesse, therefore a branch of the family stock. 

Jesus was true God and true man.  This is yet another indication of Jesus’ humanness.  He descended from a family.  Like us, he had a family tree.  Like us, some of those names represent fine men and women, but others, well maybe not so exemplary.  Jesus was born from the family of David, a very human family.

I invite you to read the beautiful words of prophecy in Isaiah 11:1-10, beginning with “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”  They’re words worth contemplating as we move through these weeks of Advent, pondering the unconditional love that came forth from that root.

Judy