O Radix Jesse (19th December)
O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt
reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam
noli tardare.
O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom
kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come
and deliver us, and tarry not.
'Radix Jesse' derives from Isaiah 11:1,
Et egredietur virga de radice Iesse,
Et flos de radice eius ascendet.
'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a
branch shall grow out of his roots.'
Jesse was the father of King David, founder of the Davidic dynasty of
the Kings of Judah. To see the force of the image we must indulge in a
little arboriculture. At the end of my garden is the stump of a
horse-chestnut tree, cut down years ago by I know not whom. That, one
might have thought, would have been the end of that tree; but no, new
shoots, new branches, grow up from that stump. It is very much alive.
The Davidic dynasty came to a sticky and apparently final end when
Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, was taken prisoner by the King of
Babylon:
'And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the
eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and carried him
to Babylon' [2 Kings 25: 7] where he subsequently died. Nasty; and
apparently the end of the line for David. But the Jews believed that
God would send a Messiah, an 'Anointed one' (Greek 'Christ'), a king is
succession to David, a new branch growing up from that truncated tree.
Our antiphon salutes Jesus as that new shoot, growing from the stump of
Jesse.
If we move on to Isaiah 11:10 we find more of our antiphon:
In die illa radix Iesse, Qui stat in signum populorum, Ipsum gentes
deprecabuntur.
'And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for
an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek.'
the remaining portion of our antiphon we find at Isaiah 52:15,
Super ipsum continebunt reges os suum,
'The kings shall shut their mouths at him'.
For Christians, this is a 'key' passage of Isaiah, for it occurs at the
beginning of one of the 'suffering servant' passages, which Christians
have always understood as referring to Christ:
'He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was
despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon
him; and with his stripes we are healed' (Isaiah 53:3-5).
Our O-antiphons, as we have seen, begin with Christ as the God of
Creation (O Sapientia), then of the Exodus and the Law (O Adonai). Now
we move on to Christ as Son of David, with a hint of his role as
suffering servant.
Oriens.
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