s the name of 'Sprout.'" Of
no less consequence, _finally_, is the parallel passage, chap. xxviii.
5: "In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and
for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people." The words
[Hebrew: cbi] and [Hebrew: tpart] there meet us again. The same is
there ascribed to the Lord which is here attributed to the Sprout of
the Lord. That can be readily accounted for, only if the Sprout of the
Lord be the Messiah. For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel
through which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His
blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the very
threshold of the Old Testament: "I dwell in the midst of them," is most
perfectly realized. "This is the name whereby He shall be called: The
Lord our righteousness," says Jeremiah, in the passage quoted.--The
"Sprout of the Lord" may designate either him whom the Lord causes to
sprout, or him who has sprouted forth from the Lord, _i.e._, the Son of
God. Against the latter interpretation it is objected by _Hoffmann_
(_Weissagung und Erfuellung._ Th. 1, S. 214): "[Hebrew: cmH] is an
intransitive verb, so that [Hebrew: cmH] may be as well connected with
a noun which says, who causes to sprout forth, as with one which says,
whence the thing sprouts forth. Now it is quite obvious that, in the
passage before us, the former case applies, and not the latter,
inasmuch as one cannot say that something, or even some one, sprouts
forth from Jehovah; it is only with a thing, not with a person, that
[Hebrew: cmH] can be connected." But it is impossible to admit that
this objection is well founded. The person may very well be conceived
of as the soil from which the sprout goes forth. Yet we must, indeed,
acknowledge that the Messiah is nowhere called a Sprout of David. But
what decides in favour of the first view are the [Pg 15] parallel
passages. In Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, the Lord raises up to David a
righteous Sprout, and causes Him to grow up unto David. Hence here,
too, the Sprout will in that sense only be the Lord's, that he does not
sprout forth out of Him, but through Him. In Zech. iii. 8 the Lord
brings his servant _Zemach_; in Ps. cxxxii. 17, it is said: "There I
cause a horn to sprout to David," and already in the fundamental
passage, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, which contains the first germ of our passage,
David says: "For all my salvation and all my pleasure should He not
make it to _sprout_ fort