Christ directs a servant toward His scattered sheep. Artistic illustration of this article’s reading of Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34; the servant is left unidentified.
CFM-07 · Jeremiah 1–29 · Full lesson collection
Jeremiah 23:5 and 33:15, Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, and D&C 113: why we read the Branch as the Lord’s servant from David’s line, held in the hand of Christ
In the middle of Jeremiah’s hardest chapter on the kings, a promise breaks through:
"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." (Jeremiah 23:5–6)
Ten chapters later, Jeremiah says it again, almost word for word: "In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David" (33:15).
And he ties the promise to the sunrise. If you can break "my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night," then "may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne" (33:20–21).
Then he tells us when we’ll understand it: "in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly" (23:20). And again, at the turn of the book: "in the latter days ye shall consider it" (30:24).
So who is the Branch?
Two readings
The reading in the Church’s study helps. The chapter headings and this month’s Scripture Helps read the Branch of righteousness as "a reference to Jesus Christ, a descendant of David." It’s a respected reading.
Our reading. The Lord already told us directly through the Prophet Joseph who the Stem is. Isaiah wrote, "there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots" (Isaiah 11:1). When Joseph asked who the Stem of Jesse is, the answer came back in three words: "It is Christ" (D&C 113:2). And the Rod that comes out of the Stem? "It is a servant in the hands of Christ" (113:4).
Christ is the Stem, and the Branch is not the Stem.
Zechariah names him outright: "my servant the BRANCH" (Zechariah 3:8). So we read the Branch as a servant from David’s line, raised up in the latter days and held in the hand of Christ.
Here is the text behind that reading.
The Lord and David stand side by side
Read the promises slowly. Every time, there are two figures: the Lord, and David.
"But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them." (Jeremiah 30:9)
"And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them." (Ezekiel 34:24)
"Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king… in the latter days." (Hosea 3:5)
The LORD their God, and David their king.
Not one figure with two titles, but two: the God they worship, and the servant-king He raises up. King David had been dead for nearly four hundred years when Jeremiah wrote, so "whom I will raise up" points to someone still to come.
Ezekiel says it twice more: "I will set up one shepherd over them… even my servant David" (34:23), and "David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd" (37:24).
Isaiah 11: four figures, and only one of them hidden
Look again at Isaiah 11, and then read on to verse 10:
"And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people." (Isaiah 11:10)
Now count.
The Stem. The Rod. The Branch. The Root.
Four figures, not one. In 1838 the Lord described three of them to the Prophet Joseph, plainly:
The Stem is Christ. "Who is the Stem of Jesse spoken of in the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th verses of the 11th chapter of Isaiah? Verily thus saith the Lord: It is Christ" (D&C 113:1–2). The spirit of the LORD rests on Him, and He judges the poor with righteousness (Isaiah 11:2–5).
The Rod is a servant. "It is a servant in the hands of Christ, who is partly a descendant of Jesse as well as of Ephraim, or of the house of Joseph, on whom there is laid much power" (D&C 113:4).
The Root is a descendant of Jesse and of Joseph, "unto whom rightly belongs the priesthood, and the keys of the kingdom, for an ensign, and for the gathering of my people in the last days" (113:6).
And the Branch? Section 113 doesn’t say a word.
The Stem, the Rod and the Root each get a clear description. The Branch gets none. That isn’t an oversight. It’s the promise of Isaiah 49 kept: "in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me… in his quiver hath he hid me" (Isaiah 49:2).
So the Branch isn’t the Stem. If the Branch were Christ, Jeremiah’s promise of a servant raised up to David would fold back into the Stem, and the latter-day servant would disappear from the text.
Christ is the Stem, and every other figure in the chapter serves Him.
Isaiah 11:1 uses one Hebrew word for "Branch," netzer. Jeremiah and Zechariah use another, tsemach, the same word Isaiah uses for "the branch of the LORD" (Isaiah 4:2). We read them together because Zechariah gives the tsemach its title, "my servant," and because every one of these verses promises the same thing: a servant from David’s line, in the latter days.
Zerubbabel and Joshua: types of the Branch, not the Branch
Zechariah gives the Branch his title and his work:
"For, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH." (Zechariah 3:8)
"Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD." (Zechariah 6:12)
In Zechariah’s own day, Zerubbabel was already building that temple: "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it" (Zechariah 4:9). He was "governor of Judah" (Haggai 1:1) and a grandson of King Jeconiah (Matthew 1:12; 1 Chronicles 3:17–19), of David’s line.
And still the Lord spoke of the Branch as someone yet to come.
"I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH" is future tense, spoken while Zerubbabel’s hands were on the stones. In the same verse the Lord tells Joshua the high priest and his companions that "they are men wondered at." The Hebrew word is mopheth, a sign: men set up to point at something still ahead.
In chapter 6 the crowns go on Joshua’s head, and the Lord says, "Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH" (6:11–12). Joshua wears the crown as the sign. The Branch is the one it points to.
Zerubbabel carries one more sign. In Jeremiah 22 the Lord pulls the signet ring off His own hand: "Though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence" (22:24), and "no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David" (22:30). Coniah’s grandson was Zerubbabel, and to him the Lord said:
"In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, my servant… and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee." (Haggai 2:23)
The signet comes back, but not as a king on the throne. It comes back on a servant who builds the house.
Zerubbabel and Joshua are types of the Branch, but not the Branch.
The Branch himself is one servant, still to come.
"THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" is a name given, not a claim
The strongest argument for the other reading is the Branch’s name: "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah 23:6). Doesn’t that make him the Lord?
Read chapter 33. Jeremiah gives the very same name to a city:
"In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness." (33:16)
Jerusalem isn’t the Lord. The name is bestowed. It says whose righteousness this is.
Isaiah keeps the two words apart: "My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth" (Isaiah 51:5). In his code, "righteousness" names the Servant, and "salvation" names Jehovah, who is Christ.
The King, and the Servant
None of this makes the Servant greater than his Lord. "The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him" (John 13:16).
Christ holds David’s throne. Gabriel told Mary, "the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32). He’s the King of kings, the Stem of Jesse, the One who paid.
The Servant is called, puts on strength, is held, and is sent. Christ alone redeems.
The Servant’s strength isn’t his own. In his song he says it himself: "my God shall be my strength" (Isaiah 49:5). It’s the strength Isaiah’s three awakes call for, ending with Zion’s: "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion" (52:1).
When Elias Higbee asked the Prophet Joseph what that command meant and "what people had Isaiah reference to," the Lord answered in full:
"He had reference to those whom God should call in the last days, who should hold the power of priesthood to bring again Zion, and the redemption of Israel; and to put on her strength is to put on the authority of the priesthood, which she, Zion, has a right to by lineage; also to return to that power which she had lost." (D&C 113:7–8)
Read it slowly.
Who: those God calls in the last days.
What: the power of the priesthood.
For what: to bring again Zion, and to redeem Israel.
By what right: lineage.
And what it restores: a power Zion once had and lost.
That’s the same chapter that describes the Rod, "on whom there is laid much power" (113:4), and the Root, "unto whom rightly belongs the priesthood" (113:6). Rightly belongs. A right by lineage.
The strength the Servant puts on is the priesthood that was always his by birth, returned in the last days.
The Lord said the same to the Saints in Kirtland: "thus saith the Lord unto you, with whom the priesthood hath continued through the lineage of your fathers—For ye are lawful heirs, according to the flesh, and have been hid from the world with Christ in God" (D&C 86:8–9).
Lawful heirs, hid with Christ in God. The Servant is hidden in the shadow of His hand, and the heirs are hidden with Christ in God.
And the Servant is promised hardship: "my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man" (Isaiah 52:13–14).
Marred more than any man.
Hold on to that word. The Lord comes back to it.
The first forerunner
The Lord has done this before.
And He tells us to watch for it: "I will give unto you a pattern in all things, that ye may not be deceived" (D&C 52:14). "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been" (Ecclesiastes 3:15). Nephi promised that whoever diligently seeks will see it, "as well in these times as in times of old… wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round" (1 Nephi 10:19).
Learn the pattern, and you won’t be deceived when it comes around again.
That’s the promise beneath the pattern, the heart of our Covenant Hypothesis: the Lord repeats Himself on purpose, so His people can recognize Him when He comes again.
And the pattern of the first coming is the pattern of the second.
Before His first coming, He sent an Elias, a forerunner:
"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me." (Malachi 3:1)
Jesus named him: "For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face" (Matthew 11:10). It was John the Baptist, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" (Matthew 3:3).
John never claimed to be the One. When the priests and Levites came from Jerusalem and asked him, "Who art thou?", "he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ" (John 1:19–20). He pointed away from himself: "Behold the Lamb of God" (1:29).
"He must increase, but I must decrease" (3:30).
And almost no one saw who either of them was.
John told the leaders, "there standeth one among you, whom ye know not" (John 1:26). The Pharisees and lawyers "rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him" (Luke 7:30). And of Jesus Himself:
"He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1:11)
They didn’t only miss them. They killed them.
Herod "sent, and beheaded John in the prison" (Matthew 14:10). Jesus said it plainly:
"Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them." (Matthew 17:12)
Peter told Jerusalem to its face: "ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain" (Acts 2:23). And Stephen named the whole pattern before they stoned him for it:
"Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." (Acts 7:52)
The forerunner came, and they knew him not, and they killed him.
The Lord came, and His own received Him not, and they killed Him.
It’s Jeremiah 26 all over again: "Thou shalt surely die."
President Brigham Young warned that it would happen again:
"…the Gentiles will be as much mistaken in regard to his second advent as the Jews were in relation to the first." (Journal of Discourses 8:115, July 8, 1860)
John came before the first coming.
The Lord’s servant from David’s line comes before the second.
He’ll be as easy to miss as John was. And the people surest they’d recognize him are the ones most likely to walk past him, or worse.
They’ll run the same play again.
Isaiah already said the Servant would be "marred more than any man." But this time the Lord has told us how it ends.
Standing among the Nephites, the risen Christ quoted that very verse (3 Nephi 20:44), in the most important sermon in the most important book of our day. A few breaths later, speaking of the great and marvelous work of the last days, He took up the same word and finished the story:
"But behold, the life of my servant shall be in my hand; therefore they shall not hurt him, although he shall be marred because of them. Yet I will heal him, for I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil." (3 Nephi 21:10)
In my hand.
It’s the same hand Isaiah’s servant was hidden in: "in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me."
Hidden in His hand. Held in His hand. Healed by His hand.
John was beheaded. Jesus was crucified.
The Servant will be marred, and Christ will heal him.
Who is he?
We don’t guess, and neither should anyone else.
God knows how to hide things very well, and the Branch is the one figure in Isaiah 11 He left without a description.
The clues are there, but only for the searcher. Search Isaiah the way the Savior commanded, and the way the Book of Mormon carries him, and nearly three dozen of them come to light: what the Servant does, what he suffers, what he’s required to be.
Read and you’ll miss them. Search and they surface.
That’s the design: "a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently" (3 Nephi 23:1).
And anyone who claims to be the Servant isn’t.
Christ Himself showed the pattern. When He stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He didn’t announce Himself. He read Isaiah aloud and said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21), and let the scripture do the declaring.
We do the same.
He charged His disciples "that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matthew 16:20). He said, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me" (John 5:31–32). He said "I am" outright before the high priest at His trial (Mark 14:62), and it cost Him His life.
Abinadi declared Him before a hostile king: "God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people" (Mosiah 15:1). He paid for it the way a testator pays: "having sealed the truth of his words by his death" (Mosiah 17:20). "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator" (Hebrews 9:16).
The ones who declare Him pay for it. The one who declares himself is not the one.
What isn’t hidden is the promise. The scriptures teach it openly, and so do we:
The Lord will raise up a servant from David’s line in the latter days, held in the hand of Christ, for the gathering of His people.
The shepherds, and the woe
The Branch promise doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes right after a woe:
"Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD." (Jeremiah 23:1)
Ezekiel says it louder: "Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?" (Ezekiel 34:2). "Behold, I am against the shepherds" (34:10).
And the Book of Mormon has the strongest word of all. Nephi copied Isaiah 49 from the brass plates, and his copy opens with a line the King James Bible doesn’t have:
"Hearken, O ye house of Israel, all ye that are broken off and are driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people." (1 Nephi 21:1)
Driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors.
And look which chapter it opens. It’s the Servant’s own song: "the Lord hath called me from the womb… in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me" (1 Nephi 21:1–2). The chapter that hides the Servant begins by naming the shepherds who scattered the sheep he’s sent to gather.
A woe is the covenant’s curse arriving
A woe isn’t a scolding.
Moses set the covenant’s two halves before Israel in Deuteronomy 28. Hearken, and "all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee" (28:2). Refuse, and "all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee" (28:15).
Israel entered "into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath" (29:12), and the Hebrew word for that oath is ‘alah: a sworn curse, called down on oneself. Break the covenant, and "all the curses of the covenant" fall (29:21). The last of them is scattering: "the LORD shall scatter thee among all people" (28:64).
Jeremiah knew what he was announcing. He had already quoted the covenant: "Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant" (Jeremiah 11:3). And nine verses after the woe on the pastors, he says what has come: "because of swearing the land mourneth" (23:10). The word is ‘alah again.
The shepherds scattered the sheep, and the curse of scattering came home to the shepherds.
Jesus kept both halves together. "Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20). And then: "woe unto you that are rich!… Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets" (6:24, 26).
Blessing and woe are one covenant, read from both ends.
The woes come home
The Book of Mormon brings the woes home, and it doesn’t aim them at somebody else’s church. Mormon wrote straight to his readers:
"Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing." (Mormon 8:35)
What he saw was "your churches, yea, even every one," polluted by pride (8:36): "ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted" (8:37). Then he named the shepherds and the house:
"O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ?" (Mormon 8:38)
The holy church of God. Not a stranger’s church. His.
And the ones he calls out are "teachers," the same men Jeremiah called pastors.
And there’s no third place to stand. The angel told Nephi plainly:
"Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church." (1 Nephi 14:10)
Nephi saw that the church of the Lamb was small: "its numbers were few" (14:12).
The line between the two doesn’t run between buildings. It runs through them. The Lord defined His church by what a person does: "whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church" (D&C 10:67).
A name on the roll doesn’t settle which church you belong to. Repenting and coming to Him does.
Nephi saw the same thing: churches corrupted "because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrine," churches that "rob the poor because of their fine sanctuaries," and even "the humble followers of Christ… in many instances… do err because they are taught by the precepts of men" (2 Nephi 28:12–14).
Then the woes came, one after another, and they came to Zion:
"Wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion!" (28:24)
"Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well!" (28:25)
"Wo be unto him that hearkeneth unto the precepts of men, and denieth the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost!" (28:26)
"Wo be unto him that saith: We have received, and we need no more!" (28:27)
"Wo unto all those who tremble, and are angry because of the truth of God!" (28:28)
"Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough!" (28:29)
"Wo be unto the Gentiles, saith the Lord God of Hosts! For notwithstanding I shall lengthen out mine arm unto them from day to day, they will deny me" (28:32)
Seven woes, and not one of them is aimed at people who know they’re lost.
Every one is spoken to people who think they’re safe. That’s how apostasy works.
You don’t leave the house. You settle into it.
And watch where the woes go. They start at ease in Zion. They move to "All is well." Then to the precepts of men, and denying "the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost." Then to "we need no more." And the seventh woe lands on the bottom step:
They will deny me.
The woes don’t stop at comfort. They end at denying Christ Himself.
That’s full-on apostasy.
The chapter’s false priests had already said it at the start: "there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men" (28:5).
And who are the Gentiles who deny Him? In the Kirtland Temple, the Prophet Joseph prayed for the Saints as a people "who are identified with the Gentiles" (D&C 109:60).
The seventh woe isn’t addressed to strangers. It’s addressed to us.
And even there, at the bottom, the arm is still out:
"…nevertheless, I will be merciful unto them, saith the Lord God, if they will repent and come unto me; for mine arm is lengthened out all the day long." (2 Nephi 28:32)
The Lord’s answer
Right after each woe on the shepherds, the Lord answers, and the order matters.
First He comes Himself: "I will gather the remnant of my flock" (Jeremiah 23:3); "Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out" (Ezekiel 34:11).
Then He raises up those who will feed them: "I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them" (Jeremiah 23:4), and in the very next verse, the one Branch (23:5). Ezekiel names him: "one shepherd… even my servant David" (Ezekiel 34:23).
The prophet Zenos saw the same order and carried it to the very end. In his allegory the vineyard is nearly lost, and "the Lord of the vineyard wept": "What could I have done more for my vineyard?" (Jacob 5:41). Then He makes one last push: "let us go to and labor with our might this last time, for behold the end draweth nigh" (5:62).
Watch how the help arrives.
"And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard sent his servant; and the servant went and did as the Lord had commanded him, and brought other servants; and they were few." (Jacob 5:70)
His servant. One.
He goes first, does exactly what he’s told, and then gathers the rest. And they were few.
Then comes the line that matters most: "the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them" (5:72). The Lord doesn’t send them out and wait at the gate.
He’s in the rows beside them.
So here is the order, from Jeremiah to Ezekiel to Zenos:
The Lord searches for His sheep Himself.
He sends one servant.
That servant brings the few.
And the Lord labors beside them all, to the last row of the last season.
The Lord comes first, and He’s still there at the end.
Where this lands
Read the Branch verses as only about Jesus and you lose something the Lord promised. You lose a servant from David’s line, held in Christ’s hand, sent to gather.
And you lose the reason Isaiah is hidden in the Book of Mormon at all.
Nephi carried chapter after chapter of Isaiah off the brass plates, because he "did liken all scriptures unto us" (1 Nephi 19:23). The risen Lord quoted Isaiah’s servant to the Nephites, then gave the command: "search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah" (3 Nephi 23:1). If every servant in those chapters were only Christ, much of what the Lord took such care to carry across the ocean would only tell us what we already know.
He preserved it because it tells us something we don’t: before He comes, He will send His servant.
Read them with Isaiah 11 and D&C 113, and every piece holds:
Christ, the Stem.
The Rod and the Root, described for the Prophet Joseph in D&C 113.
Zerubbabel and Joshua, types and signs that pointed ahead.
The Branch: one servant, raised up in the latter days, hidden until he’s searched out.
"In the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly."
Our part isn’t to name him.
It’s to be the kind of sheep he can feed, the kind of people the Lord can gather, and the kind of people who would have known John, and would have known Him.
And the sheep are held in the same hand as the Servant:
"…neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand." (John 10:28–29)
The covenant behind it all is as sure as the sunrise: "If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night… Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant" (Jeremiah 33:20–21).
The sun came up this morning.
I know Jesus is the Christ. He is the Stem of Jesse, the King of kings, and the only One who saves. He is the keeper of the gate, and He employeth no servant there. But there is much to come where He does employ a servant, and many servants. And I know He keeps His promises to David, and to us. But we have to diligently search to find those promises, or we will miss them.
Don’t miss them.
"Behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH." — Zechariah 3:8
Ken Krogue is a co-founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply searching Isaiah for more than ten years. He writes with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approves every word.
For another way to approach your study: Seven Ways People Read Isaiah.
Continue searching CFM-07
- Jeremiah Stood in the Temple Gate and Called It a "Den of Robbers." The Priests and Prophets Tried to Kill Him.
- Judah Burned Its Children in the Valley of Hinnom. Jesus Used That Valley’s Name for Hell.
- The Church Was Never Meant to Carry You. Elder Bednar Said So, and Jeremiah Wrote It to the Captives in Babylon.
- Why We Split Jeremiah Into Two Lessons at Chapter 30
- The Rest of the Book: Jeremiah & Lamentations
