The Root of Jesse or the Tree of Jesse is an iconographic depiction of the Ancestors of Christ. It shows in a tree which rises from Jesse of Bethlehem, the father of King David; the original use of the family tree as a schematic representation of a genealogy. It originates in a passage in the Biblical Book of Isaiah which describes metaphorically the descent of the Messiah, and is accepted by Orthodoxy as referring to Jesus Christ.
The passage in Isaiah, 11:1 is
- "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots."