cause the Sprout of righteousness to grow up unto David," may at once and plainly be considered as an _interpretation_ of the passage before us, and as a commentary upon it; and that so much the more that there, as well as here, all salvation is connected with this Sprout of Jehovah; comp. Jer. xxiii. 6: "In His days Judah [Pg 14] shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is His name whereby he shall be called: The Lord our righteousness." The two other passages, Zech. iii. 8: "Behold, I bring my servant _Zemach_," and vi. 12: "Behold, a man whose name is _Zemach_" are of so much the greater consequence that in them _Zemach_ (_i.e._, Sprout) occurs as a kind of _nomen proprium_, the sense of which is supposed as being known from former prophecies to which the Prophet all but expressly refers; or as _Vitringa_ remarks on these passages: "That man who, in the oracles of the preceding Prophets (Is. and Jer.) bears 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 צבי and תפארת 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 Erfüllung._ Th. 1, S. 214): "צמח is an intransitive verb, so that צֶמַח 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 צמח 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