For many ages their wise men and poets had told the Jews that their Lord and their Redeemer, the Messiah for whom they waited, would come among them exhibiting great power. As a conquering hero, He would lead them into battle which in every case would be victorious, and would thus subdue all Judah's foes. When that long-awaited day should come, Jerusalem, the beloved city of the Jews, would be the capital of the world, and they would rule the nations of the earth in regal splendor.
The Messiah would be their king, and they would be His loyal subjects. He was to be of noble parentage, a "Son" of King David; of a family whose great name was "like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth." (2 Sam. 7:9) His emissaries, they were told, would be princes and nobles.
But, when Christ was born in Bethlehem, He came of a family whose home was with the despised inhabitants of the Roman Province of Galilee. His father was a carpenter, and most of His relations were fishermen. He was born in a manger, the only lodging obtainable in the city where Joseph, His father, went to pay taxes. Jesus' birth, however, brought to pass a prophecy uttered many hundred years before, "But, thou, Bethlehem, Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." (Micah 5:2)
The humble birth of Jesus was not what the Jews expected of the Messiah. And Nazareth by the blue waters of Galilee, where, as a child, He played, grew to manhood, and studied, was of such little repute that when Philip told Nathaniel, "We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph," Nathaniel replied, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:45-46)
Truly, Christ's fathers were of the kingly and illustrious "House of David," but when He came, its glory had long since departed, and its splendor was remembered only in song.
As a root out of dry ground. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots." (Acts 2:30) Christ, was raised up to sit on David's throne, the age of prophecy had passed. The Jews had rejected any new Word coming from God; many of His servants were slain, and the laws given by Him, through Moses, had been changed to meet the ambitious purposes of priests and kings.
As a nation, the Jews were apostate. There appeared to be a famine in the land. "... not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." (Ps. 23)
The voice of God's holy prophets had been stilled. The Jews roamed in the twilight of a brilliant past. As a "watered garden" when prophets and patriarchs ministered to them, now, desert and stones were in the place where formerly were fields of grain and fountains of water. Out of "dry ground" means out of "spiritual dearth," a starving spiritual environment.
He hath no form nor comeliness. "He hath no form, nor any beauty, that we should regard him; nor is his countenance such that we should desire him." (Symmachus, an ancient historian and translator who reduced the Old Testament into idiomatic Greek, and who it seems, many scholars have noted, has interpreted this passage "rightly.")
He shall grow up as a tender plant. He shall grow up under the watchful care of God, and not before men; in the nurture of a tender and loving Father, the Servant, who is Christ, our Lord, will go from strength to strength, from infancy to manhood, always waxing greater in knowledge and wisdom.
As a tender plant, whose beauty is often seen in a desert place and sometimes growing out of the rocky soil, His Father, the great Multi-florist of the universe, will hedge it about, will water it, and will protect it. He will preserve it at all times.