what has sprouted: the fresh growth a field or plant puts out, and by extension the ruler God promises to grow from David's line
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This word names the thing that has sprouted. It belongs to the same family as the verb for springing up out of the ground (צָמַח), and its plainest use is farming language: the green cover on a field, the crops a season yields, the leaves a vine puts out. Genesis uses it for everything that grew on the ground of the valley God overthrew, and Psalm 65 for the growth a well watered land is blessed with.
From there the prophets take the same ordinary word and apply it to a person. Jeremiah and Zechariah announce that God will make new growth spring up for David, and Zechariah goes so far as to make it the man's name. The picture is doing real work: it says that a royal line brought low will put out fresh growth because God makes it grow, in the same way a field grows because rain falls on it.
What holds the uses together is that in every one of them something is coming up where nothing was showing. That is why one short word can cover a field of grain and a promised king, and why the prophets keep setting the noun beside its own verb, so that the promise sounds like planting rather than politics.
Nuances
1athe green growth of the ground: the plants, grass, and crops that a field or a land puts out
TranslatabilityApproximate
Gen 19:25Psa 65:10(11)Isa 4:2*Isa 61:11Ezk 16:7
Isa 4:2
Whether the phrase rendered "the growth of the LORD" in Isaiah 4:2 names what the land produces or names a person. The parallel line speaks of "the fruit of the land," which favours a harvest; on the other side, this is the earliest place where the noun stands beside the divine name, which is how it works in the royal promises of Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 6:12. Neither reading has won the field.
contestedThe phrase names the produce of the restored land, matching the parallel line about the fruit of the earth and the promise of abundance for the survivors of Israel.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12 (Continental Commentaries; Fortress, 1991), on 4:2
contestedThe phrase names a person, the royal figure God will raise up, read as the later promises in Jeremiah and Zechariah are read; this is the reading behind the traditional rendering "the Branch of the LORD."; BDB, s.v. צֶמַח
1bthe new growth a single plant puts out: the shoots, leaves, or sprouting grain that come up on it
TranslatabilityApproximate
Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7*
1cthe ruler God promises to make grow up from David's line, traditionally called the Branch
names growth that pushes up from the ground or from a stump, not a limb off a standing treeGen 19:25Psa 65:10
keeps a living tie to the verb for sprouting, so the royal promise sounds like something God is making growZec 6:12Jer 33:15
is the same ordinary word used for a field's crops, so the promise about a king borrows plain farming speechEzk 16:7Hos 8:7
Both
both name a growing part of a plant rather than its root or its fruitEzk 17:9
both can stand for a family line pictured as a plantJer 23:5
Only Branch
in English a branch grows out of a trunk that already stands, which suggests a side line off something established rather than fresh growth from the base
the capital letter makes it read as a fixed title, while the Hebrew word stays an ordinary noun for new growth
English "branch" also means a division of an organization or a fork of a river, associations the Hebrew word never carries
“growth”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“vegetation”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“bud”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“sprout”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How tsemaḥ differs from similar Hebrew words
צָמַחthe verb behind this noun: the action of sprouting or of making something sprout, where this word is the growth that results
Hardened into a title for the promised king, so that it works as his name rather than as a description of him: he is announced as "the Branch" whom God will raise for David.Jer 23:5Zec 3:8
Names the standing growth of a whole land taken together, something visible that can be blessed or wiped out: the produce of the plain destroyed with Sodom, the crops God waters and blesses, and the growth God gives the survivors of Israel.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 4:2
Names the new growth belonging to one plant, and because it is a thing rather than an event it can wither, be stripped, or come to nothing: the fresh shoots of the transplanted vine and the seed that yields no harvest.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
Both
Both picture growth pushing up out of the ground rather than a limb branching off a standing tree, so they sit naturally side by side, the sprouting and the sprout named in one breath.Isa 61:11
Both belong to the promise of a king from David's line, and the promise pairs them: God will make him spring up, and what springs up is called the growth God has raised.Jer 33:15Zec 6:12
Both work as comparisons, where growing stands for something other than a plant: Ezekiel says God made a helpless child come up the way a field's growth comes up.Ezk 16:7
Names the growing as an event with someone behind it, which is why it so often says that God is the one making things come up: he grows the trees of the garden, the grass for cattle, and the harvest the rain brings.Gen 2:9Psa 104:14Isa 55:10Job 38:27
Reaches beyond plants to hair and beards coming back in, a use the noun never has: Samson's shaved head, the humiliated envoys waiting for their beards, and the hair regrowing on healed skin.Jdg 16:222Sa 10:51Ch 19:5Lev 13:37
Applies the picture to things that are not growth at all, so that rescue, right living, healing, fresh events, and even trouble are said to spring up out of nowhere.Psa 85:11Isa 42:9Isa 58:8Job 5:6
נֵצֶרa shoot springing from a stump or a root, the image Isaiah uses for what survives of a felled family line, while this word is growth coming up out of the ground itself
Names ordinary green growth coming up out of the ground: the produce of a plain, what the rain makes sprout, what the soil sends up.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11
Covers the whole business of sprouting, so it can serve as a measure of how something grows, or be made to shrivel at the root and yield nothing.Ezk 16:7Ezk 17:9Hos 8:7
Hardens into an actual title for a coming man, rendered "Branch" as a name he is called by rather than as a description of a plant.Zec 3:8Zec 6:12
Both
Both name the living green growth that comes up from a plant, so English Bibles reach for the same words, "branch" or "shoot", for either one.Isa 11:1Isa 61:11
Both carry the promise of a coming king in David's line, which is why translations capitalize either word as "Branch" in those passages.Isa 11:1Jer 23:5Zec 3:8
Both can be presented as God's own work, growth he plants and brings up rather than something that simply happens on its own.Isa 60:21Isa 4:2
This word looks at growth coming up out of the ground rather than at a limb standing above it: what the soil sends up, the green cover of a field, the increase a watered land is blessed with. Genesis uses it for everything that grew on the ground of the ruined valley, and Ezekiel compares a foundling's growing up to the way a field grows.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11Ezk 16:7
It can name the tender sprouting stage of a plant, young enough that a hot east wind withers it and it yields no food. Ezekiel dries up the new growth of the transplanted vine, and Hosea says the sprouting grain will produce no meal.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
It is used of a person. The prophets announce that God will make new growth spring up for David, and Zechariah turns the word into the man's own name, so that a promised ruler is called by a farming word for what has sprouted.Jer 23:5Jer 33:15Zec 3:8Zec 6:12
Both
English Bibles render both words "branch," which is the main reason readers confuse them. The traditional "the Branch" of the royal promises and the "branches" of the cedar of Lebanon are two different Hebrew words with two different pictures behind them.Ezk 31:3Jer 23:5
Both are set beside fruit, so each can stand for what a plant produces. The mountains of Israel will put out their branches and bear their fruit, and the vine's fruit and its new growth wither together.Ezk 36:8Ezk 17:9
Both are used as pictures for the future of a people or a royal line, not only for plants. Ezekiel plants a cedar that spreads its branches on Israel's high mountain, and Zechariah gives the name to the man who will build the temple.Ezk 17:23Zec 6:12
This is a solid limb on a standing tree or vine, a part of the plant you can point to and even cut off and carry away. Leviticus has worshippers gather boughs of leafy trees for the festival, and Ezekiel praises Assyria as a cedar of Lebanon that was beautiful in its branches.Lev 23:40Ezk 31:3
It is what a plant that has come into its strength holds out: fruit hangs from it and birds shelter under it. The transplanted vine is set in good soil so that it will put out branches and bear fruit, and the cedar planted on Israel's mountain carries branches broad enough for every bird to nest in their shade.Ezk 17:8Ezk 17:23Ezk 36:8
It marks the top of a plant over against its root, so that naming the two together says nothing of the plant is left at all. Malachi warns that the coming day will leave the arrogant neither root nor branch.Mal 4:1
Counted in the plural, the branches are a plant's reach and spread, big enough to be compared with the greatest trees. The vine brought out of Egypt covers the hills with its shade and its branches are like the mighty cedars.Psa 80:10
יוֹנֶקֶתa tender young shoot on a tree or stump, named for how small and easily broken it is, where this word says nothing about the growth being fragile
Names growth as a whole, whatever the ground or a field sends up, so it can cover a region of vegetation or a standing crop rather than one limb of one plant.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11
Hardens into a title for the promised king, rendered "the Branch" in English Bibles, a use the prophets settle on and repeat.Jer 23:5Zec 3:8Zec 6:12Isa 4:2
Says nothing about being tender or breakable: it can name sturdy growth that fails only when drought or judgment dries out the whole plant.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
Both
Both name new growth coming up from a living plant, and both are turned into pictures of a people spreading out and thriving.Psa 80:11Hos 14:6Ezk 16:7
Both are also turned around into pictures of judgment, where the growth that ought to thrive is dried up and yields nothing.Job 15:30Ezk 17:9Hos 8:7
Names a tender young shoot, small and soft enough to be plucked off by hand, so it pictures growth that is easily taken or easily lost.Ezk 17:22Job 15:30
Always a limb belonging to a parent tree or vine, one of several that run out from it, never the growth of a field taken as a whole.Job 8:16Psa 80:11Hos 14:6
Carries the particular hope that life survives in a stump: cut the tree down and this fresh shoot still comes up.Job 14:7
Plain farming language for what a field or a land has grown, with no picture behind it: everything growing on the soil of the valley God overthrew, the growth a well watered land is blessed with, the way the earth pushes its green cover into the open.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11Ezk 16:7
Names the tender new growth of a single plant, the part that dries up first and can fail to deliver. The vine loses its fresh growth to the east wind, and Hosea's crop puts out growth that will never make flour.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
Becomes a name for the king God promises to raise up from David's line, the figure older English Bibles print as the "Branch." Zechariah keeps the growing picture alive by saying this man will sprout up from where he stands, which is the opposite of a limb hanging off a tree that is already tall.Jer 23:5Jer 33:15Zec 3:8Zec 6:12
Both
Both name green growth on a vine or a tree, and Ezekiel's parable of the transplanted vine uses them one after the other for the same plant: first the branches it stretches toward the eagle, then the fresh growth that will wither.Ezk 17:6Ezk 17:10
Both name what a plant shows the world and therefore what gets destroyed when God acts against it: the olive tree's branches are ruined when fire is set to it, and the vine's growth withers when its roots are torn away.Jer 11:16Ezk 17:9
Names limbs a plant already has: the parts a standing vine or tree reaches out and spreads with. Ezekiel's transplanted vine bends its branches toward the eagle who planted it, and stretches them out to him to be watered.Ezk 17:6Ezk 17:7
Always plural and countable, so the branches are how a plant's size and glory get measured, and how its ruin gets told. The great cedar is admired for the length and the sheer number of its branches, and then its branches lie fallen in every valley.Ezk 31:7Ezk 31:9Ezk 31:12Ezk 19:11
Big enough to shelter others: birds of every kind nest in the shade of these branches, which is how a kingdom that other peoples live under gets pictured.Ezk 17:23
tsemaḥ in the other biblical languages
ἀνατολήGreek“east”the word the ancient Greek translators used for the royal promises here; it means a rising or the east, so the plant picture gives way to sunrise, which is the language behind the dawn from on high in Luke 1:78
Names literal green growth coming up out of the ground: what a watered field puts forth, what the earth makes spring up, and what is wiped out when a land is ruined.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10Isa 61:11Ezk 16:7
Because it is growth from a root, it can threaten as easily as promise: a vine whose new shoots wither, or a crop that never comes to anything.Ezk 17:9Ezk 17:10Hos 8:7
As a title for the coming king it keeps the plant picture, and with it the sense of small, living beginnings: a shoot rising from a stump of David's line, a man who will grow up from his own place and build the temple.Zec 6:12Jer 33:15Zec 3:8
Both
Both words serve as a title for the promised king from David's line, which is why the Greek word carries messianic weight that its everyday meaning of "east" would never suggest on its own. Greek translators of the Old Testament used it for the Hebrew title, and Zechariah's wording stands behind Luke's song.Jer 23:5Zec 3:8Luk 1:78
Both picture rescue as something emerging into view after devastation: fresh growth for a land that has been stripped bare, and first light for people sitting in the dark.Isa 4:2Luk 1:78
Works as a plain compass direction, the east, locating where travellers come from or which side of a city a gate stands on. Nothing about growing plants is in view.Mat 2:1Rev 21:13Rev 16:12
Paired with the west, it stretches the picture across the whole horizon, so that people are gathered in from the farthest ends of the earth.Mat 8:11Luk 13:29Mrk 16:8
Names the moment a light first comes up, the rising of a star or of the sun, which is why English Bibles can render it "dayspring" or "sunrise". The image is dawn breaking overhead, not something pushing up out of the soil.Mat 2:2Mat 2:9Rev 7:2
Marks the quarter of the sky a sudden flash crosses, so that the coming of the Son of Man is measured from one edge of the visible world to the other.Mat 24:27
ῥίζαGreek“root”the Greek word for a root, which names the stock a royal figure comes out of rather than the new growth that comes up from it
It is ordinary farming language for the green growth a whole stretch of land puts out, everything that has come up on the ground: what was wiped out along with the valley cities, and what God blesses on well watered land.Gen 19:25Psa 65:10
It names what one plant sends up above the ground, the leafy growth and the standing grain, so it is the part that can be seen and harvested and that dries out first: the vine's foliage withers, and the ripening crop yields no flour.Ezk 17:9Hos 8:7
It works as a measure of how fast and how thickly something comes up, so a nation's increase is compared to the way a field greens over, and God's saving work to the way the ground pushes its growth into the open.Ezk 16:7Isa 61:11
In the royal promise it is the fresh growth that comes up out of a line cut back, so what God pledges to David is new growth he makes spring up, and the growth is a person: God's servant, whose own name is this word.Jer 33:15Zec 3:8Isa 4:2
Both
Both are plant words that became a title for the promised ruler of David's line, so in each language the hope is carried by a growing thing rather than by a throne or a crown. The two pictures work from opposite ends of the same plant: the Hebrew word is the new growth God raises up for David, while the Greek word is the root that growth comes out of.Jer 23:5Zec 6:12Rev 22:16Rom 15:12
Both belong first to plain talk about growing things, and both turn up in pictures of drying out, where a plant fails and the failure is really about people: the vine's growth shrivels in the furrows where it came up, and shallow seed withers because there is no root under it.Ezk 17:10Mrk 4:6Mat 13:6
It names the buried part of the plant, the part that holds it up and feeds it, so striking the root finishes off everything above the ground: the axe is laid to the root of the tree, and the fig tree Jesus curses is dead all the way down to its roots.Mat 3:10Luk 3:9Mrk 11:20
Because a root is what anchors, its ABSENCE becomes the picture of a person with nothing inside to hold on with: seed that comes up on thin ground has no root, so the first heat or the first pressure ends it.Mat 13:6Mrk 4:17Luk 8:13
It names the older stock a newcomer is joined onto and lives off, which settles who owes life to whom: the grafted shoot draws its richness up from the root and never the other way round.Rom 11:16Rom 11:17Rom 11:18
It can name the hidden source that something else grows out of, including something bad: the love of money is called a root that all sorts of evil grow from, and a bitter root can come up inside a community and poison it.1Ti 6:10Heb 12:15
In the royal promise it is the stock the figure comes out of, so calling Jesus the "root" of David and of Jesse says he is where that line begins and not only where it ends.Rev 5:5Rev 22:16Rom 15:12
What scholars say about tsemaḥ
The lexica are agreed on the sense. BDB and HALOT both give the noun as growth or sprout, what springs up, derived from the verb צמח, and both separate the plain agricultural uses from the figurative application to a coming ruler; DCH treats the range the same way. Almost all the interest of the word lies in the four royal texts, Jeremiah 23:5 and 33:15 with Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12, where the Septuagint renders it ἀνατολή, a rising, a choice that shifts the image from vegetation to dawn and stands behind the language of Luke 1:78. Wolter H. Rose's monograph Zemah and Zerubbabel is the fullest modern treatment of these oracles; it argues that the Zechariah texts do not simply identify the figure with Zerubbabel, against the identification favoured by Carol and Eric Meyers in their Anchor Bible commentary on Haggai and Zechariah 1-8. Isaiah 4:2 is the disputed case, taken as agricultural abundance by Wildberger and as a person in the lexical tradition that files it with the royal texts. The line in Hosea 8:7 is textually uneven, and Wolff's Hermeneia commentary surveys the corrections that have been proposed for it. The treatment followed here agrees with the lexica in taking the royal usage as a figurative extension of ordinary plant vocabulary rather than as a fixed title.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. צֶמַחlexicon
BDB, s.v. צֶמַחlexicon
DCH, vol. 7, s.v. צֶמַחlexicon
TDOT, s.v. צמחtheological-dictionary
Wolter H. Rose, Zemah and Zerubbabel: Messianic Expectations in the Early Postexilic Period (JSOTSup 304; Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)monograph
Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 (Anchor Bible 25B; Doubleday, 1987)commentary
Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 1-12 (Continental Commentaries; Fortress, 1991)commentary
Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1974)commentary