According to verse 5, Jehovah will raise up to David a righteous Shoot, that is, Christ, who will reign as King and act prudently and will execute judgment and righteousness in the holy land. This is a very crucial matter.
In the coming restoration Christ will come as the Shoot of David. This means that He will come as the descendant of David. However, in this verse Jeremiah does not use the word descendant. If he had used this word, verse 5 would have been indicating merely that Christ is a human being born as a descendant of David. There would not be any thought or notion concerning the divine life. However, the word Shoot indicates Christ's humanity, and it also implies life.
A shoot is a new, fresh sprout of a tree, especially a sprout of a tree that has been cut down. Suppose a tree has been cut down to the ground and only a stump remains. After a while a new sprout springs out of this stump. This sprout is a shoot. As the Shoot of David, Christ is a new sprout from the stump of David. The royal family of David was like a large tree, but because of the apostasy of Solomon and his descendants, that tree was cut down, mainly by Nebuchadnezzar, leaving only a stump in the earth. When Christ was born, a new, fresh sprout came out of this stump.
The birth of Christ as such a Shoot was wholly a matter of life, and His birth was rich in its implications regarding life. This life has grown and spread to such an extent that Christ is now the King to rule and to act prudently.
At the time of Christ's coming nearly two thousand years ago, the tree of the royal house of David was merely a stump in the ground. In bringing forth Christ as the Shoot of David, God brought together two descendants of David—Joseph, a descendant of Solomon, and Mary, a descendant of Nathan, another one of David's sons. Christ was conceived in Mary, not through Joseph as the father but through the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20), to be something divine and holy (Luke 1:35).
In the days prior to the birth of Christ, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus for a census to be taken of all the inhabited earth, and all went to be registered, each to his own city (Luke 2:1, 3). Since Joseph was of the house and family of David, he went with Mary to Bethlehem, David's city. While they were there, Mary gave birth to Jesus and laid Him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Christ's birth at Bethlehem was a fulfillment of the prophecy in Micah 5:2. Because of Herod's persecution, Joseph took the child and His mother to Egypt (Matt. 2:14). Eventually, after the death of Herod, Joseph returned to Nazareth with the child and His mother (vv. 19-23). This was the beginning of the fulfillment of Jehovah's promise concerning the raising up of Christ as the Shoot, as the new sprout, of David.