2 Kings 19:29-34
"29 “And this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 30 And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.31 For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord will do this.
32 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 33 By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 34 For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”"
The Lord now addresses Hezekiah and assures him of ultimate deliverance. The point of 29 is that normal conditions would not return for a year or so, but that sowing and reaping would become possible again in due time. It is, in fact, a promise concerning the rehabilitation of the land after the ravages of war and siege. One has only to think of the large-scale rehabilitation that has had to take place on the Continent of Europe in our time to understand what this word must have meant for Judah. Notice the striking phrases in 30 - 'take root downward and bear fruit upward'. They enshrine a particularly important spiritual truth. It is only as our spiritual roots go deep down into the soil of grace, drawing constant and enriching nurture for the inner life, that there can be any real growth and any abiding fruit in us. The trouble so often with us, however, is that we expect to see the fruit before the roots ever have time to push down, and this is against the laws of nature and spirit alike. The spiritual life that does not receive any real nourishment is doomed to fruitlessness. What are we to say, then, of Christians who have no desire for the systematic teaching of the Scriptures, which alone can build them up in grace? What service can they render, and what fruit can they bring forth, for God?