To Take Root

... Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.
And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.

-- II Kings 19: 29-30 (KJV)

This passage, set in the context of a face-off between the Kingdom of Judah and Assyrian invaders circa 700 B.C., purports to transcribe a letter sent by the prophet Isaiah to the Judean king Hezekiah.

Isaiah's rebuke of the blaspheming Assyrians contains a number of difficult and curious passages. But the basic message is that while Assyria has subjected most of the kingdom, a "remnant" of Jews shall "take root" again in the soil of Jerusalem and "bear fruit" as holy warriors against the infidels.

Of this rhyming pair of predicates, "bear fruit" had been an English phrase since the late thirteenth century, but "take root" was coined only in 1535 when Miles Coverdale translated this passage. In this case, it means something like "stand one's ground" or "cling tenaciously," and Isaiah extends the metaphor by predicting the "fruit" of resistance to foreign uprooting. Although we still sometimes speak of a community "taking root," the phrase now more often refers to an idea that implants itself in the mind. The phrase was first used this way in the same poem, William Cowper's The Task (1784), that lent us the modern sense of "still small voice." Cowper wrote that "Prejudice in men of stronger minds / Takes deeper root, confirm'd by what they see." How true.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!