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© 2016 John D. Brey.

Because of its preternatural symmetry with the Christian Gospels, modern Jews have tried to imply that Isaiah 53 isn't messianic. . . How can it be messianic when it speaks of a suffering, dying, atoning-sacrifice sort of messiah, who fits too nicely with that bloody Christianizing fella in the first century?

The Rabbis said: His [Messiah's] name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely he hath borne our grief, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.

BT Sanhedrin 98b.

We have it on no less authority than the Babylonian Talmud that Isaiah 53 is a picture of Messiah. Midrash Rabbah (Ruth) concurs:

The fifth interpretation [of Ruth 2:14] makes it refer to the Messiah. Come hither: approach to royal state. And eat of the BREAD refers to the bread of royalty; AND DIP THY MORSEL IN THE VINEGAR refers to his sufferings, as it is said, But he was wounded because of our transgressions. (Isa. LIII, 5).

Likewise we have it on the authority of Maimonides, Nachmanides, and the Zohar (to name a few), that Isaiah 53 is speaking of Messiah. -----Here’s what the Zohar says in Daniel Matt's recent interpretation of Va-Yaqhel, 2:21a:

In the Garden of Eden there is one chamber called the Chamber of the Ill. The Messiah then enters that chamber and calls for all the illnesses, all the pains, and all the sufferings of Israel to come upon him, and they all do so. And if he did not ease them off of Israel, taking them upon himself, no one could endure the suffering of Israel from the punishments of Torah, as is written: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, [our pains that he endured] (Isaiah 53:4).

Once it's conceded that Isaiah 53 is messianic, and it seems like an unbiased exegete can't help but acknowledge the context of the chapter (nestled as it is among messianic passages), then it becomes an extremely meaningful task to look at the symbols used in that important chapter both to hide, and reveal, the identity of Messiah.

Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the [messianic] arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground.

Isaiah 53:1-2.

I don't think anyone would assume it's taking exegetical liberties to say the passage above is stating fairly candidly that Messiah will grow up before the Lord as "a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground." -----But what's the prophetic inference associated with "a tender plant," and a "root out of dry ground"? The question is particularly important since the prophet links the "tender plant," and the "root out of dry ground," directly to the question concerning to whom Messiah will be revealed thus implying that Messiah will be revealed to him for whom the analogy of a "tender plant" and a "root out of dry ground" makes sense.

The word translated "tender plant" יונק (yoneq) is said, in numerous lexicons, including Gesenius, and the Dictionary of Biblical Languages, to speak of a plant "sucker."

You are probably thinking, “What is a plant sucker?” Essentially, a plant sucker is an effort by the tree to grow more branches, especially if the tree is under stress. But you have taken perfect care of your plant and it wasn’t under any stress. Besides, that does not explain why your tree has suddenly switched varieties. Chances are, your tree is actually two trees spliced or grafted together. With many ornamental or fruiting trees, the desirable tree, for instance a key lime, is grafted onto the rootstock of an inferior but hardier related variety. The top of the tree is perfectly happy, but the lower half of the tree is under a certain amount of stress and biologically will try to reproduce itself. It does this by growing suckers from the root or lower stem. Tree suckers can also grow on non-grafted trees, but are most common on grafted ones. This explains what is a plant sucker.

Gardening Know How.

"Suckers" typically grow out of "rootstock":

A rootstock is part of a plant, often an underground part, from which new above-ground growth can be produced. . . In grafting, it refers to a plant, sometimes just a stump, which already has an established, healthy root system, onto which a cutting or a bud from another plant is grafted. . .The plant part grafted onto the rootstock is usually called the scion. The scion is the plant that has the properties that propagator desires above ground, including the photosynthetic activity and the fruit or decorative properties. The rootstock is selected for its interaction with the soil, providing the roots and the stem to support the new plant, obtaining the necessary soil water and minerals, and resisting the relevant pests and diseases. After a few weeks the tissues of the two parts will have grown together, eventually forming a single plant. After some years it may be difficult to detect the site of the graft although the product always contains the components of two genetically different plants.

Wikipedia, Rootstock.

What does this have to do with the identity of Messiah? What possible connection could there be between Messiah, and a "sucker"? What connection could there be between Messiah, and "rootstock"?

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him . . ..

Isaiah 11:1.

The Dictionary of Biblical Languages says this about the word translated "shoot" (Heb. חטר hoter):

shoot, twig, i.e., new growth sprouting from a root-stock stump, as a figurative extension for a progeny from a particular lineage.

And on the word translated "stump" of Jesse (Heb. גזע geza) it says:

root-stock, stump, i.e., the part of a cut-off tree or plant in the dirt, from which new stock will grow (Job 14:8+); 2. LN 3.47–3.59 shoot sprouting from a root-stock stump (Isa 40:24+); 3. LN 13.104–13.163 source, formally, root-stock, i.e., the figurative extension of a person as a genealogical source, implying a renewal or resumption of a dynastic reign (Isa 11:1+).

Finally, on the "Branch" (Heb. נצר neser) that grows out of the "stump" (Heb. גזע geza) of Jesse:

shoot, scion, i.e., the shoot, slip, or twig for planting, which may rise from root-stock or a stump, implying a plant of the same kind of the next generation (Isa 11:1; 60:21+); 3. LN 10.14–10.48 unit: נֵצֶר שֹׁרֶשׁ (nē·ṣěr šō·rěš) family line, formally, a shoot from the root, i.e., persons of successive generations related by birth (Da 11:7+)

The "shoot" and "branch" Isaiah 11:1 has growing out of the stump of Jesse (analogous to the tender plant and root out of dry ground in 53:2) is what's called a “basal shoot”:

Basal shoots, root sprouts, adventitious shoots, water sprouts and suckers are various types of shoots which grow from a bud at the base of a tree or shrub or from adventitious buds in its roots . . . This is a phenomenon of natural asexual spread, also known in plants as vegetative reproduction. It is a plant propagation strategy and the complex of individuals formed by a mother plant and all its clones produced form a single genetic individual, a genet. The plant suckers are clones from the mother plant. The plant will have a genome identical to that from which it arose.

Wikipedia: Basal Shoot.

Messiah is a clone produced from asexual vegetative reproduction. The "root" he sprouts from, as a "sucker," is the body of Adam prior to the grafting of the phallus and testes (Gen. 2:21) onto that perfect body.  Adam's pre-Fall body is used as the "rootstock" that supports the fruit-tree of the human race produced through the sexual reproduction associated with the flesh grafted onto Adam's original body (Gen. 2:21).

Adam's pre-Fall body (his non-phallic body as it existed prior to Gen. 2:21) is the rootstock into which the phallic-flesh and subsequent sexually produced human race arises. 

But as is the case in botany, when a particular crisis, or stress factor is introduced to the organism grafted onto the rootstock, then a "sucker" or "basal shoot" can suddenly appear without the natural sexual fertilization and propagation necessary for the grafted plant to reproduce.

Jesus of Nazareth is a "sucker." As is everyone who believes in him. They're both, all of them, what's known as a "genet": organisms that are genetically identical. They're discrete parts of one genetically homogeneous Body.

Until the arrival of the "sucker" Jesus of Nazareth, and the suckers who are branches from the original basal shoot, the fact that the human race was grafted onto the rootstock of a different organism was completely unknown. It wasn't until the asexual appearance of Jesus of Nazareth that the human race was made aware of the fact that every single man and woman born of phallic-sex are not in fact products of Adam's original body, but of a tree of sexual knowledge grafted onto the rootstock of Adam's body (Gen. 2:21). The grafting of the flesh onto Adam’s pre-phallic body hides the nature of the crime that is the original production of phallic-sex. This production of phallic-sex occurs from a formerly asexual rootstock leading to the Fall of mankind, the rising of the evil inclination, death, disease, and all the things the arrival of Messiah will bring to an end.

If not for Adam's sin, all mankind would have had the status of Israel. . . To some degree, circumcision restored Abraham and his descendants to the status of Adam before his sin.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of Jewish Thought, p. 39, 47.

The phallus is the "tree of knowledge" grafted onto a formerly perfect (non-gendered) human body. The grafting of the phallus onto the rootstock of the Tree of Life (Adam's perfect body) created the desecration that led to the Fall of mankind. Ritual emasculation, i.e., circumcision, pictures, ritually, a return to the original rootstock that is the non-genital, non-gendered, human body. 

Therefore, as stated by Rabbi Kaplan, circumcision (ritual emasculation) emblematically returns the Jewish body to the state of humanity prior to the desecration that is the grafting of the phallus (the tree of knowledge) onto the perfect rootstock of the Tree of Life: Adam's pre-desecration (pre-Gen. 2:21) body. -----Since the desecration of Adam's body was hidden in the text of the Torah, it wasn't until a "shoot" or a "tender plant" grew out of the very stump of the human race apart from sexual propagation that there was anything but an inkling (so to say) that a desecration had taken place.

The fact of the asexual arrival of a Jewish male who had to open the womb of the stump of the human race (the female body) apart from the services of the phallic tree or its seed, allowed Jewish sages to make sense of all the agricultural metaphors strewn throughout the messianic passages of Isaiah. -----Isaiah chapter 11 and 53 both point out that the death, sin, and suffering, associated with the desecration of the human genome through the advent of the phallus, the tree of knowledge, will be undone with the arrival of the Messiah who will be a "sucker" or "basal shoot" growing miraculously (asexually) out of the stump of Jesse, which is to say a Jewish maiden in the line of Jesse.

In a very general Judeo/Christian sense, Messiah is the man who undoes what Adam did when he first sinned in a manner that brought about the expulsion from Eden (where there was no death, disease, or want). In this general sense, Messiah is a sort of second Adam, who, rather than sinning in a manner that causes the evil inclination, and death, and disease, instead reverses the very act that brought these menaces upon the human race.

In the deepest psychic caverns of Jewish thought nothing is so well known, if hidden, than the fact that the phallus is the flesh whose grafting onto the pure and perfect rootstock (Adam's pre-sin body) caused all the disease, evil, and death, that contaminate this world. . . Thus, we shouldn't think it strange in the least that the foundational act that symbolizes being a Jew, or as Rabbi Hirsch says, entering into the Jewish mission, is bleeding  (symbolically removing) the very flesh, whose grafting onto a formerly sinless and perfect body (worthy of living in Eden) creates the original sin, and thus the Fall of mankind into the realm of the evil-inclination.

No prophet so clearly prophesies the nature and essence of the arrival of Messiah as does the prophet Isaiah. -----He cries that no one will receive his and his fellow prophets prophesy of the arrival of Messiah. "Who has believed our report!" ----For Messiah shall sprout up before the Lord as a basal shoot grown out of the original rootstock of Adam.

Isaiah's agricultural analogy is miraculous. Too perfect. Adam allows sinful flesh, the phallus and testes, to be grafted onto a perfect body, such that the phallus becomes the tree and every one of Adam's post desecration offspring become the fruit of that sinful tree, grafted, as it was, and were, onto the perfect rootstock created by God.

As any good gardener knows, when the rootstock feels threatened, it can sometimes ignore the sexual reproductive habits of the tree grafted onto its rootstock and send a shoot, a basal sprout, out of the stump of Jesse, through asexual mechanisms, virgin propagation, in order to begin again what was conceived in the mind of God from the very beginning.

Messiah is not just another man grown out of the sinful flesh grafted onto the rootstock of the first Adam. Messiah is the second Adam, the true Son of the first Adam, as that Son was conceived to be propagated prior to the desecration that takes place in Genesis 2:21 when the false flesh is grafted on to Adam’s body in order to grow a species of sinners in the very Garden of God. Messiah is not part of that sinful species grafted onto God's original rootstock. Messiah is a sprout shooting out of the stump of that stock proclaiming to all the world the nature of the desecration and sin through which all men and women, save one, Jesus of Nazareth, are conceived and then born of the sinful tree grafted onto the very rootstock of God, the pre-sin body of Adam, in the very Garden of God.

Every iota of Jewish thought and scripture screams out to the world to open their eyes and see that the Salvation of Messiah has come into the world. He was propagated asexually, as the true firstborn Son of Adam, as a sprout from the rootstock of God. He was in the body of Adam, in Adam's roots, before the grafting on of the flesh that’s the father of all sinners.

Everyone who recognizes Jesus as Adam, as the second Adam, is part and parcel of the new creation. They’re new in relation to the flesh that propagated after the sinful flesh was grafted onto the rootstock of God to steal God's vineyard away from him. Any person who takes part in the stealing of God's vineyard, by glorying in their sinful flesh, as though that sinful flesh can appease God for the theft of his vineyard, by performing fleshly mitzvot, righteous acts performed through the sinful flesh, must assume that God will look the other way concerning the fact that the very flesh performing the mitzvot is the sign of the desecration that is the theft of his vineyard.

In two important messianic passage, Isaiah 11, and 53, we're given the analogy of a basal-sprout growing out of a root. Isaiah 53 adds that the sprout (growing out of the root) will grow in dry ground. In biblical terminology rain represents the male seed in sexual reproduction while the earth represents the female body. When rain enters the earth life sprouts. But in Isaiah 53, which is messianic, not only does the Messianic branch grow out of a rootstock through an asexual process akin to cloning, but there's no rain, no male seed. He sprouts out of the side of a stump in dry ground. The two analogies, dry ground, and a basal-sprout growing out of a root, are speaking of the birth of Messiah; and they both speak of an asexual conception and birth.

Jesus was born of an asexual conception. He fits the analogy in Isaiah 11 and 53 perfectly. 

Rashi, Redak, and any number of other expositors know good and well, and say so, that Isaiah is speaking of a basal-shoot (sprout) coming out of a cut off stump. If they had any knowledge of the fact that a basal-shoot is a clone of the stump, and not a product of natural sexual reproduction, they ignore that fact since it says plain and clear that Messiah will be born a clone of his mother, from an asexual conception. Any expositor worth his salt knows what Isaiah is getting at when he give the analogy of a basal-shoot coming out of dry ground, by means of a cut off stump, a rootstock. He's talking about an asexual birth, a cloning, where the offspring is a clone of the mother (his identity is wholly matrilineal).

How convenient that a Jewish male, said to have been a clone of his mother, conceived of the root of Jesse, through his mother, is considered, by persons from every corner of the earth, to include Jews, to be the Messiah. What an amazing little coincidence that Isaiah, speaking of the birth of Messiah, gives the absolutely perfect agricultural analogy of a virgin conception and birth. There's no better analogy of what Jesus' conception and birth amounts to than what Isaiah says in two separate messianic passages.

The statement that Messiah, the arm of the Lord, sprouts from a "basal-shoot," and that that "shoot" or "branch," comes from the dead root-stock of Jesse, can rightly be considered the key to the entire Tanakh. Isaiah is using an agricultural metaphor of incredible precision and nuance placed as it is in the context of Isaiah 53 since a "basal-shoot" is asexual and thus a clone of the root-system from whence it sprouts.

 

All we need to know to appreciate the brilliant nuance of chapter 53 of Isaiah is the knowledge that God chose Abraham not to establish a new covenant with mankind, but to reinstate the original covenant he established with Adam, and that the rituals related to the reestablishment of the original covenant are eschatological, prophetic, symbolic, and not, as modern Judaism suspects, the thing-in-itself (the deed being the reality, rather than merely an eschatological symbol of a future reality). We need merely notice the fundamental, quintessential, ritual, associated with the reestablishment of the original covenant between God and mankind in order to make perfect sense of what's going on in Isaiah 53.

The quintessential ritual, founding the reestablishment (with Abraham) of the original covenant between God and mankind (between God and Adam) is brit milah, ritual circumcision, ritual emasculation. . . How that ties into Isaiah 53 requires merely that we understand why and how the original covenant between God and mankind was rescinded in the first place, i.e. the Garden? It turns out that the original covenant was rescinded when Adam, who was created asexual wanted to be sexual. He saw the animals mating in the garden and wanted to mate like an animal. . . Problem was, not only could he not find an animal quite like him (to mate with), but more problematic, he wasn't even fitted like an animal (Midrash Rabbah Bereshith, XVII, 6.). -----He didn't have genitalia.

Both of these problems are remedied in Genesis 2:21 when a mate is fashioned through the desecration of his formerly perfect flesh such that the wound associated with the desecration is closed (sagar) creating the penis necessary for him to sexually engage his new bride. The phallus is the tree of knowledge grafted onto the original root-stem of the human race: Adam's pre-phallic body. The first produce of the tree of knowledge, grafted onto the original root-stock, is Cain. He's the first liar, the first murderer, the first-fruit of the tree grafted onto Adam’s original body.

We're all born through the same pedigree as Cain, since we're all conceived through the tree of knowledge grafted onto the original root-stock of Adam.

When God decides to reinstate the original covenant with Adam he has Abraham ritually remove the very tree of knowledge that was grafted onto the original root-stock to begin the current epoch of human history. Abraham ritually removes the tree of knowledge so that in the ritual Isaac is conceived as a basal-shoot out of the original root-stock of Adam since Abraham has, ritually at least, removed the tree that was grafted onto the root-stock to produce Cain, and every other born-sinner.

But honest Abe’s cutting down of the cherry tree grafted onto the messianic stump of Adam is only symbolic. He doesn't cut clear through to the bone of the truth which would require him to completely emasculate himself and still father Isaac rather than merely symbolizing what will happen in God's good eschatological time. ----When Jesus is born of a virgin, God has chosen, really, rather than ritually, to re-establish the original covenant with mankind. Jesus of Nazareth is Adam's pre-lapse son. Jesus is the only human being who is a clone of Adam prior to the desecration of Adam's body. That desecration is directly associated with the grafting of the testes and phallus (the tree of knowledge) onto the Tree of Life, Adam's original body.

Jesus is the first actual fruit of the Tree of Life since Adam produced no offspring prior to the grafting on of the phallus and testes which led to the current epoch of humanity. As a clone of Adam prior to the desecration of the Tree of Life, which was desecrated by the grafting on of the tree of knowledge (onto the root of prelapsarian Adam), Jesus is born, as Adam was created, a perfect human being. 

  

In Isaiah's conceptual framework Mary functions as Adam prior to Genesis 2:21. Adam is created asexual from the earth. His body is earthen. The seed from whence he was created was in the earth, and not placed in the earth after it was tilled. Water from underground streams within the earth affected Adam's conception. Not rain. Which enters the earth from a strange place, heaven, and thus a strange god. Rain symbolizes phallic-sex, post-Fall reproduction.

Every female body contains one cell that’s the root-stock from whence every human being is conceived. There’s one cell in the human body that’s a facsimile of Adam's cell-structure prior to Genesis 2:21 when his body was desecrated by the addition of the rain-maker, the phallus, and the rain, the testes. ----Eve was pulled from Adam's body prior to the desecration. Therefore, until the semen added to Adam's cell structure infected Eve, she was a facsimile of Adam's pre-desecration flesh and blood (DNA).

When Adam tills the perfect soil of Eve's perfect body, he infects her with slime, with zohama. Her seed is contaminated, and Cain is the result, as are you and I the sad result. We're born already contaminated with the evil-inclination that originated in the testes, which originated in Genesis 2:21. ----Every time phallic-sex takes place, a genus of humanity related to the semen, the evil inclination, sin, and death, the tree of knowledge, is grafted onto the perfect cell of the female ovum therein seeing to it that the perfect ovum (post-meiotic cleansing) is used as the root-stock into which the tree of knowledge is grafted in.

But, per Isaiah 53:1-2, under enough stress, the root-stock, the unfertilized ovum, can cause a basal-shoot which is a clone of the unfertilized ovum. This basal-shoot is actually a clone of Adam prior to the desecration of human flesh that occurred in Genesis 2:21. Every female contains one cell that’s identical to every cell of Adam's entire body prior to the Fall. Phallic-procreation recapitulates the Fall in the Garden. After meiosis and polar body, every unfertilized female ovum is the one cell in the human body that’s exactly like every cell in Adam's prelapse body (his body prior to Genesis 2:21).

Isaiah merely points out that the protection of that one perfect cell, through the process of meiosis and polar body, is God's way of saying that at some point he would reestablish the first-fruit of Adam's pre-Fall body, and that this reestablishment would be the salvation of all those born under the Fallen regime associated with the original sin of phallic-sex.

A reasonable proof-text of all the foregoing is found at Job 14:7-9:

For there is hope of a tree, If it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch (yoneq) will not cease. Though the root (sores) thereof wax old in the earth, And the stock (geza) thereof die in the ground; Yet through the breath of water it will bud, and bring forth branches like a normal plant.

Three words used in Isaiah 11 and 53 are used here (yoneq, sores, and geza). And the reference is nearly identical. The writer of Job is saying that even if a tree die, even if its stock (geza) is dead, still, if there be but water, a "sucker" can rise out of the still living root-stock. . . . . . But only a "sucker" can rise out of the root-stock. The root-stock can't be fertilized sexually, as a living tree can. If it's ever to have a living branch again that branch must sprout as a basal-shoot, an asexual clone, out of the root-stock.

Only one thing is required. Water. . . In biblical symbolism, water is from heaven (above), and represents semen (the male side of sexual reproduction), while the earth represents the mother-land, Jerusalem. Isaiah 11 and 53 give a near parallel with Job 14:7-9, minus one thing, water. Isaiah says the "sucker" will rise out of "dry" land. A non-fertilized mother/motherland.

In the Tanakh the word "yonek" always, save one, speaks of a young mammal that still gets its sustenance from "sucking" that life-source from the mother. The "suckling" is still attached to the mother at the breast. ----- In a sense the mammalian-sucker is still a discrete appendage of the mother, through the breast. Only when the mammal can acquire its own nourishment does it become an independent life such that it's no longer a "sucker" or "suckling" -- (yonek).

Whereas in the mammalian world it's commonplace for the offspring to be a "sucker" suckling its nourishment from the mother until it enters it's own individual existence, that's not the case in the plant world. In the plant world, only a very specific kind of offspring "suckles" from the mother plant to get its nourishment. A plant "suckling" or "sucker" is a “basal-shoot” that shoots up not from a sexual seed that's been fertilized through normal sexual reproduction (as in the case of the mammalian suckling), but as an asexual clone of the mother-root. No plant sucker is conceived through normal plant sex. All plant suckers are asexual clones of the mother root (Sanskrit "yoni").

When the Tanakh is speaking of a plant "sucker" a tav is always added to the word for a mammalian "suckling" (yonek) except for one time. There's only one time when the word used for a mammalian suckling ("yonek" without the tav) is used for a plant sucker.

Isaiah 53:2.

It seems rather ironic, if not miraculous, that the one time the word used to speak of a mammalian suckling ("yonek") is used to speak of a plant-sucker is in a passage of scripture using a plant-sucker as the analogy for a particular mammalian suckling? An objective examiner of these things would likely be dumbfounded by the irony that the one time a word used exclusively to speak of a mammalian suckling is instead used for a plant sucker is in a verse of scripture that's using a plant sucker as the analogy of a mammalian birth.

Job 14:7-9 uses the word "yoneq" with the tav suffix, in a manner almost exactly like Isaiah 53:2 uses the word "yoneq" without the tav suffix. The Job passage notes that a yoneq can grow out of a root even if it's old so long as it gets water. Isaiah 53:2 makes the exact point of Job 14:7-9 except for two strange changes. Whereas Job uses the yoneq with the tav suffix, and uses water to affect the conception of the sucker, Isaiah eliminates the water, and uses the word for a mammalian sucker (yoneq without the tav suffix) to speak of a plant sucker (representing the utterly unique mammalian birth of all time).

   

Every single human being conceived after the Fall in the Garden was conceived through sexual mechanisms, save one. Since Messiah is conceived as the end of the reign of the phallus, the end of phallic-sex, which is the original sin, and the death passed on through the original sin of phallic-sex, it's important that he be rightly conceived as a clone of Adam before the first instance of phallic-sex, a clone of Adam before the original sin.

Every human being since Cain is conceived as a genus of human flesh infected with sin, and thus death. Therefore a new humanity, a new covenant, a new Man, must rise out of the stump not of fallen mankind, but the dead stump of Adam's original body.

The "substance" of Adam's pre-fall (pre-genital) body exists in one cell of the human race; the one cell that undergoes a mysterious cleansing of sin (meiosis and polar body) leaving it uncontaminated and ready to be re-contaminated by the very act, phallic-sex, that recapitulates the Fall in the Garden each and every time a new human being is conceived through phallic-sex.

But if that unfertilized ovum were to sprout like a basal-shoot from "dry" ground (unfertilized cell material), then the human being so born is a clone not of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob . . . or any other symbolic metaphor for un-fallen flesh, non-phallic flesh, non-gendered flesh, non-genital flesh, Jewish flesh . . . but of Adam's flesh and blood prior to Genesis 2:21 when the epoch of the fallen branch of mankind began.

Job 14:7 is clearly the perfect parallel passage to appreciate what Isaiah means since it speaks of a dead plant growing from an aged root-stock. The Job passage even laments the fact that a man can't rise from death like the basal-shoot of a plant’s root-stock can. Job 14:7 is almost a precursor to Isaiah 53:2 where Isaiah almost seem to be responding to Job that a man can, and will, rise up in a manner parallel to a basal-shoot of a plant.

 

Job is suffering a living-death, and the death of his once live offspring. And his suffering, and the death of his offspring, are not, as Job knows (though his companions don't), a result of any personal sin in Job's life, or the life of his offspring (Job's life really is blameless). -----Job's companions can't believe that all of this death and suffering could just come out of nowhere. They think Job is hiding something. . . For if he isn't, then their understanding of God, his motives, and actions, will have to be rethought (since the written Torah implies that what Job is suffering is the reward of a sinner not the prize of a blameless man).

Job's dialogue in chapter 14 is so perfectly situated to explain Isaiah 53:2 that it's no wonder that Job 14:7 is almost identical to Isaiah 53:2. ----Job knows something about the original sin that's being hidden from Judaism. Job's companions are like modern Jews. They have no theological context in which to understand either Job's suffering, as a blameless man, nor what he's getting at in verse seven of chapter fourteen. For this reason they ignore Isaiah 53:2 and its clear meaning.

Job understands that his undeserved suffering is impossible if a just God reigns unless some taint from Adam's original sin gives the attribute of God's Judgment free reign to justly affect retribution for Adam's sin from any and all of his (Adam's) offspring. Since all of Adam's offspring are subject to suffering and death, and not always in a parallel, or equal measure, to their own personal blamelessness or sin, Job links his suffering to Adam's sin, and the willy-nilly nature of the recompense for that sin, as it appears to be meted out by the Judgment attribute of God.

Job is brilliant. He goes right to the source of his own suffering, and laments that it can't be fixed since Adam's sin frees the Judgment attribute of God to affix blame here or there, willy-nilly (so it seems), and remain perfectly just since every son of Adam is part and parcel of the mess Adam created.

Worse, every son of Adam is born of the very sin that caused the Fall, phallic-sex. 

And right there Job shows his brilliance. He actually realizes that since all of Adam's offspring grow from sexual procreation, like all regular trees grow from the sexual fertilization of tree seeds, man will ever be subject to death, and the occasional holocaust that innocent men and women often entertain, with no recourse to rise above the Judgment attribute of the Godhead.

But Job knows that the original Adamic tree was not tainted with sin, was not designed for phallic-reproduction, was not situated in a gendered manner. He wonders out loud if there's a way that some root, or branch, or cell, of that original Adamic body, could, like the apparently dead root of a tree, sprout anew, such that that tree would not be the result of sexual reproduction, but would be a true facsimile, like a clone, of Adam's pre-sexual, pre-gendered, pre-phallic body?

The root cannot sprout a basal-shoot if it's dead. It can have been in the ground for ages, and be dead so far as anyone is concerned, but if a basal-shoot arises from it, it wasn't really dead. It just seemed that way. Isaiah is speaking backwards in time to Job. He’s telling Job, and all of us, that the original root of Adam's perfect, sinless, death-defying body, is not dead. It merely appears that way until the asexual sprouting of a human body from the one cell of the original adamic body that still existed, dormant, within the human genome. 

Isaiah uses Job's analogy to speak of the birth of Messiah. Messiah is the second Adam, the first true Son of pre-lapse Adam (conceived from Adam's prelapsarian flesh prior to the epoch of phallic-sex), hidden, no doubt, in the genome of a sexually-reproducing, and thus spiritually-dead, genus, that's been sinfully grafted onto Adam's once genderless body.

At the end of the book of Job God reveals Isaiah's basal-shoot to Job as a just recompense for what Job has endured. Job considers all the suffering he has endured a small recompense for the glorious privilege of being one of the first human beings to see the glory of God's wisdom and might in his solution to Adam's sin through the birth of Jesus of Nazareth who really and truly is the first son of the Adamic flesh as that flesh existed prior to the Fall, and thus rightly and truly the original, firstborn, "Son of Man."

There’s a root of intrinsic good within the human genome. Unfortunately the sin of Adam and Eve was that they allowed phallic-sex, which is for animals, and is subject to the death-penalty, to take place between non-animals (Jews). When Abraham learned of it, he immediately tried to remove the source of mankind's death, disease, and sin. But God forbade it and told him only to mark it for extinction. He (God) would determine the time and the place where it would formally be put to its utter end.

Since Isaac was born of the renewed covenant with God, Abraham believed Isaac wasn't subject to death. His understanding of death as a product of the rescinding of the original covenant between God and Adam, because of Genesis 2:21, the erection of the phallus, convinced him that Isaac, as the firstborn of the renewed covenant, wasn't subject to death.

The idea ate away at Abraham until finally he had Isaac get up early with him one day to offer sacrifice to God. But in truth Abraham was resolved to resolve his faith in the new covenant. He was going to show that Isaac was no longer subject to the penalty of the sin of Adam that caused the rescinding of the original covenant, and thus the need for a renewal, or new, covenant.

Abraham raised the knife, and immediately the angel of the Lord appeared. "No Abraham!" -----"Remember, you only marked the sign of the renewal of the original covenant in your flesh. You didn't actually remove it prior to the birth of Isaac . . . as will be the case when God truly reinstates the original covenant. Put the knife away. The day will come when the proof of the covenant will be revealed to all the Gentiles per a prophet named Isaiah whom God will call on in days to come. . . . You and Isaac return home. The true proof that the original covenant has been renewed, and death rescinded, is still a way off my good friend." "One of your future sons will indeed come under the blade and rise again." "He will be called `The Son of Adam'" [a.k.a. The Son of Man].

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, and his rest shall be glorious.

Isaiah 11:10.

The shoot of Jesse sprouted miraculously from his root will stand as an "ensign" for the people; and to it the Gentiles will seek? Naturally the meaning of "ensign" is crucial to understanding what's going on. The Hebrew word is "nes"(נס). It means a "flag" or "banner." ----But in what way can the shoot of Jesse, the promised son of David, be thought of as a "flag" or "banner" to which the Gentiles will seek?

If we connect the dots in the book of Isaiah (6:13, 11:1, 53:2), we get the seemingly unmistakable idea that according to the prophet, the royal stump ---analogous to Jesse's line (through David) ----is going to be completely cut off. No one will be able to legitimately authenticate their genealogical heritage in a manner that would allow them to claim, with legal authority, that they're from the tribe of Judah, the line of David.

After the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the time of the first Temple 10 tribes were lost such that there's no trace of them. All that remained were Judah and Benjamin, the Levites and the Cohanim. Thus, the line of Judah was not a stump below ground during the second Temple period. There was record during this period of those from the tribe of Judah, Benjamin, and recognition of the Levites and Cohanim. 

After the destruction of the second temple, CE 70, records of all tribes, to include Judah and Benjamin, were lost to the ravishes of war and exile. Today only the Levites and Cohanim have even a reasonable certainty of their precise lineage. Not only do these historical facts create a problem for establishing Messiah according to scripture and Jewish law, but, they provide the basis for interpreting and understanding the most prominent imagery in the most prominent prophet in the entire word of God.

Isaiah 6:13 implies that if even a 10th of the tree remains alive, it will again be laid waste. Not until all that remains is a dead trunk, and its stump (root) below ground, and that reckoned dead, will the singular event related to the global revelation of the Messianic arm of the Lord be understandable, and understood. ----So what's the singular even related to the global revelation of the Messianic arm of the Lord? Isaiah says that the stump, the dead stump, through whose roots a basal-shoot will rise (asexually), will become a "banner" (Hebrew nes) which the Gentiles will seek after.

So what's Isaiah saying?

He's implying that the dead stump of the Davidic-line will retain life within the roots that are buried in the earth (though the stump itself is clearly dead). He's saying that the dead stump itself, attached to the roots of Jesse, will become a "banner," a symbol, lifted up from one end of the earth to the other, that will draw the Gentiles all over the globe to Jerusalem, and Judaism.

Yeshua of Nazareth is the last firstborn male from the tribe of Judah, the line of David, who had a legal, authentic, claim to the Messianic-throne since less than a generation after his death, the second Temple was destroyed, Israel exiled, and all legal records lost or destroyed. As such, Yeshua of Nazareth was the last messianic branch, or the last life in the stump of Jesse, through which the messianic line could establish itself legally, scripturally, really.

By the manner of his death Yeshua of Nazareth was lifted up as the last life in the stump of Jesse. He was nailed to the dead stump of an olive tree forming a banner the like of which has never existed in the history of mankind. A banner found throughout the world, all over the globe. A banner that hangs between the breast of brides the world over such that this arm of the Lord literally-figuratively suckles from the breasts of kings, and queens, from one end of the planet to the next.

You will drink the milk of nations and be nursed at royal breasts . . . (60:16).

[You're descendants will be] clothed with Yeshua as a garment . . . as a bride adorns herself with her jewels . . .  (61:10-11).

"As surely as I live," declares the Lord, "they will wear you as ornaments; they will put you on like a bride puts on her jewels (49:18).