The root of Jesse

O Radix

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,

Rose from a root invisible to all.

We knew the virtues once of every weed,

But, severed from the roots of ritual,

We surf the surface of a wide-screen world

And find no virtue in the virtual.

We shrivel on the edges of a wood

Whose heart we once inhabited in love,

Now we have need of you, forgotten Root

The stock and stem of every living thing

Whom once we worshipped in the sacred grove,

For now is winter, now is withering

Unless we let you root us deep within,

Under the ground of being, graft us in.

Malcolm Guite.

It will also come about in that day
that the root of Jesse will stand
    as a banner for the peoples.
The nations will seek for Him,
and His resting place will be glorious.
11 It will also come about in that day that my Lord will again redeem—a second time with His hand—the remnant of His people Isaiah 11:11

There is a glorious line that stretches from Adam to Christ, from the first to the second Adam. All the while the serpent has been trying to destroy that line, by one ploy or another but always he is frustrated a remnant remains. He remembers the prophecy that: 
  On your belly will you go,

    and dust will you eat all the days of your life. I will put animosity  between you and the woman—between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel   .

Cain murdered Abel, but God replaced Abel by giving Eve another son, another seed, Seth.

So a pattern was set right down the ages through to Christ. That wily old serpent always busily at work through the hands of wicked men and women. Trying to wipe out the chosen seed. Causing such evil on earth that God is left no option but to wipe out that evil. However He still finds one righteous family the obedient Noah who is cast out on the flood in the very precarious ark, the remnant that remains to repopulate the world, through righteous Shem.

Finally the people of God demand a king and Handsome Saul is chosen, but sadly not the man after God's own heart who would be that chosen root.

 Samuel is sent to Jesse's sons to anoint a true king but is disappointed by all where is that root that will carry redemption? Out in the fields feeding sheep. David spent most of his life evading people wanting to destroy him but miraculously manages to escape on every occasion. Towards the end of his life David offers to build a temple for God but his request is denied in favour of Solomon who would succeed him. However he receives a promise that one of his descendants would sit on his throne forever. Solomon's reign started started on a high note but sadly his love for foreign wives and their God proved his ruin and sadly the kings following him with some notable exceptions went from bad to worse bringing in the worship of foreign gods.
Finally God lost patience with His wayward people and the only way to bring them back was fifty years of exile in Babylon.
That was the end of the kingdom and the king the serpent had won the kings sons were killed before his eyes which were then burned with hot irons and he went blinded into captivity.
However God looked after his people in Babylon and God had not forgotten his promise, there was to be a return to the land under king Cyrus the Persian who overthrew the Babylonians and established his own empire.

 Once again root of Jesse is renewed under Zerubbabel to be the Lords signet ring.
Finally the root springs up into a fertile tree in Mary and Joseph, but Oh the fury of the serpent then as he sends a massacre down on all the babes in Bethlehem, but once again the root hides in Egypt to suddenly appear heralded by John as King of Kings Lord and Saviour.