2. By your fickleness ; when a man embraceth a thing upon wrong grounds, he will leave it upon wrong grounds : Gal. i. 6, ' I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel ;' 2 Tlies. ii. 2, ' I beseech you, brethren, be not soon shaken in mind.'
3. By the dissonancy of our practice, and inconstant resolutions. This is called, 2 Peter ii. 1, a 'denying Christ that bought us.' Though they profess him in words, yet in deeds they deny him. It were better to renounce the profession of Christ than to keep it with these resolutions : Mat. vi. 31-33, ' Take no thought what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewith ye shall be clothed ; for after all these things do the Gentiles seek ; but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'
THE SECOND VEPvSE.
For he shall groio up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor comeliness : and ivhen ice shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
I AM now to make entrance upon the cause and ground of the Jews' unbelief, namely, Christ's meanness and sufferings. His meanness is described : —
220 A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION UPON [IsA. LIII. 2.
1. In regard of liis birth.
2. In regard of his manner of life, and outward appearance in the world, which are the two thinj^s the prophet prosecutes in divers ex- pressions. I shall take notice of them in this and the following verses.
My method shall be : —
1. To open the phrases to you as they lie in the order of the words.
2. To ap})ly them to Jesus Christ, and to give you some helps for your meditation.
3. Because Christ's life holdeth forth much matter of observation for the guiding of our lives, I shall give some more general and prac- tical points, that so what is said of Christ may be useful for us.
First, For the phrases, and these respect : —
Fiist, His birth and original ; and here three expressions are to be explained.
1. He shall (jroio up as a tender plant. What is meant by that ?
The Septuagint (because the word for tender p)lant signifieth also a sucker) have translated it co? iraihiov. We have spoken of him as a sucking child. But I conceive it is not put here to signify the infancy of Christ, so much as the low and mean manner of the original that he would take upon himself. He would be as a tender plant, not as a tall tree full of limbs and branches. For it is usual in scripture to set forth the several conditions of men by trees and plants : thus Ne- buchadnezzar's greatness and strength are represented, Dan. iv. 21, 22, by the tree whose leaves were fair, whose fruits were much, and the branches thereof reaching to heaven and shading the earth. So the Psalmist'describes the wicked's prosperity, Ps, xxxvii. 35, ' I have seen the wicked great in power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree.' And on the contrary, miseiy is expressed by the heath in the desert, a low mean shrub, Jer. xvii. 6. So here, Christ's meanness and poverty are held forth by a tender plant, newly sprouted forth, and come up above the earth, which a man would tread upon rather than cherish. And indeed it is observable that Christ is often represented by the ex- pression of a tender plant, or as a branch: thus Isa. xi. 1, 'There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.' I shall touch upon it again. So it is said, Zecli. iii. 8, ' I will bring forth my servant the branch.' So chap. vi. 12, ' The man whose name is The Branch : ' Jer. xxiii. 5, ' Behold the days shall come that I will raise unto David the righteous branch ; ' Jer. xxxiii. 15, ' Behold, I will cause the branch of righteousness to grow up unto David.' And I conceive this expression holdeth forth two things: —
[1.] Christ's present meanness, what he was in the world's eye, wiiich was no more than a branch or twig.
[2] His future glory. He should be a tree : Ezek. xvii. 22-24, ' Tims saith the Lord, I will also take of the liigliest branch of the liigh cedar, and I will crop oif from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain and eminent; and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fair fruit, and become a goodly cedar ; and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing ; in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell' Thus it was a tender plant, yet such a one as might become a spacious and goodly tree.
i. A root out of a dry (/round; that is, not only a tender branch,
ISA. LIII. 2.] THE FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER OF ISAIAH. 221
but a branch that hath little verdure and freshness. But why a root? And why out of a dry ground ? The root does not come up, but the branches. I may answer — Root is put figuratively, the cause for the effect, the root for the sprigs ; or else to denote the dryness of the branch ; it was not fresh and green : even like a root, or like heath in the wilderness, which is a branch and root too. Or more properly it may be to show that Christ is such a branch as that he is a root like- wise. And I the rather take notice of this, because the scripture doth so: Kev. v. 5, ' Tlie Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book ; ' and chap. xxii. 16, ' I am the root and offspring of David.' Mark, not the branch, but the root. Christ was David's son and David's Lord, Mat. xxii. 45, yet ' a root out of a dry ground.' Some triHers understand by this is meant the womb of the virgin ; but it is rather the dead and withered stock of David's house. For though that family was obscure, and all the glorious branches cut off to the very stump, yet even then shall sprout out the last and greatest ornament of it, like a root out of a dry ground. Therefore it is observable it is said, Isa. xi. 1, 'A rod .shall come out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots.' He doth not say, out of the stem of David, who was the first king and honour of that family, but Jesse, whose name was more obscure, imply- ing that at this time this house should be reduced to its first mean- ness, or that it should not be the house of David so much as the house of Jesse. Out of his decayed roots should spring up this tender branch,