Root of David / Lion of Judah

The two titles converge at Revelation 5:5, but their OT roots are distinct. Lion of Judah comes from Genesis 49:8–10 — Jacob's blessing of Judah: "Judah is a lion's whelp… The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." Henry, on Genesis 49, treats Shiloh as the deliberately-mysterious messianic name embedded in the patriarchal blessing — the sceptre will be held by Judah until the one to whom it belongs arrives. Numbers 24:17 — Balaam's oracle: "there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel" — extends the royal-tribe expectation. Root of David draws on Isaiah 11:1, 11:10 — "there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots… there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people." Bullinger, in The Apocalypse, notes the deliberate doubleness: in Isa 11 Messiah is both the root (the source) and the branch (the offshoot) of Jesse, a paradox the Revelation will use to claim that Christ both predates David and descends from him.

Paul cites Isaiah 11:10 directly at Romans 15:12 — "There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust" — locating the OT Root-of-Jesse promise in Christ's extension to the nations. The decisive NT moment is Revelation 5:5: in the throne-room scene where no one is found worthy to open the scroll, one of the elders says, "Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book." Both titles announced in one breath — and then, at v.6, the figure who appears is "a Lamb as it had been slain." Seiss, in The Apocalypse, calls this paragraph the deepest paradox in Christian iconography: the Lion announced, the slain Lamb appears, and the announcement is not corrected — the Lion is the Lamb. Revelation 22:16 has Christ himself name both: "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." Henry, on Rev 22, presses the doubleness: Christ is the source from which David's line sprang, and the descendant in whom that line culminates.

The two titles, taken together, do work neither does alone. Lion of Judah carries the royal-tribe promise of Genesis 49 — Christ is the legitimate heir of the messianic tribe, the one whose right it is to receive the sceptre. Root of David carries the source-and-descendant paradox — Christ is at once before David (Isa 11:10's "root" preceding the Davidic line) and from David (Isa 11:1's "rod out of the stem of Jesse" descending from it). Henry, working both passages, finds in the doubleness a Christological clue: only one who is both creator and creature could claim both predicates honestly. Bullinger develops the paradox structurally: the Lion-Lamb juxtaposition of Rev 5 is the most concentrated picture in Scripture of the Christological union of strength and sacrifice — the same one is both. Seiss treats the announcement-and-appearance pattern as deliberately pedagogical: the elders' announcement teaches what the eye then sees, so that no reader can mistake the Lamb's bloody appearance for weakness — the Lion announced is the slain Lamb seen, and the slain Lamb seen is the Lion who has prevailed. The title therefore holds royal authority and sacrificial humility together at the throne.