A SPROUT, a shoot — what comes up out of the ground; from tsamach, 'to sprout.' The image is a cut stump putting out green: something small rising where something great was felled. Jeremiah promises David a tsemach tsaddiq, 'a righteous Sprout' (23:5), against the backdrop of a royal house whose cedars have just been cut down and burned (22:7). The word carries no Hebrew definite article in any of its three occurrences — here, at Zechariah 3:8 ('my servant, Sprout'), or at 6:12, where the text calls it a NAME outright ('Sprout is his name') — which is why this translation treats it as one, not a titled common noun, and it runs alongside Isaiah's netser, the 'shoot' from the stump of Jesse. English tradition prints 'Branch' (KJV, ASV, NIV all follow it), but NWT's 'sprout' keeps the plainer botany the verb actually gives — 'Branch' evokes a limb on a living tree, when the image is new growth from a stump. The same oracle is spoken a second time in Jeremiah 33, where the name it carries is given to the CITY instead of the man. → first discussed at Jer 23:5