Key Text: By the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine (Ezekiel 47:12).
As soon as the Spirit of God withdrew from the City of Jerusalem, she was doomed to destruction (Chapter 11). The covenant with God had been broken because Jerusalem had been unfaithful; therefore destruction was a necessity. Ezekiel’s vision of the river proceeding from the temple is meant that God would restore his people (Israel) who were now as dead and make them live again. Ezekiel would prophesy as he did in the Valley of Dry Bones vision, where the spirit of God who would breathe or blow upon the death-filled valley and raise the fallen to be a mighty host. The prophecy of the life-giving stream which issued from beneath the temple where God dwelt, is the source of the waters. Even though Jerusalem was not situated on a great river, God provided water from a crevice in the Temple rock and beneath that rock stretched the Valley of the Kedron. The stream flowed going east to the Jordan River and then curved south through the Dead Sea area v 7-8. We read the murmur of the stream in Psalm: “There is a river, the divisions whereof make glad the City of our God.” Isaiah says: the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams.” Ezekiel anticipates the abundant outpouring of blessing that shall come when God dwells among men pouring and spreading life and fertility wherever its waters come.
An escorting angel, wanting to reveal the size of the river, took Ezekiel in the vision to four different distances from the temple where the stream was found to be at increasing depths, until it was over his head: a stream (ankle deep) ¼ of a mile, knee-deep at ½ mile, waist-deep ¾ mile, and a river that could not be passed over 1 mile. The fountain was the mother of the river, God’s ideal for the world and the Church of today. This is where the prophet says the “desert will blossom like a rose.” This imaginary tells us of the divine intervention needed to bless the world and it must come from above the world. Moral, social, intellectual, and political reforms may well go to Ezekiel and learn that the “river of the water of life,” which is to heal the barren and refresh the thirsty land, must come from below the Temple threshold. Ezekiel says that wherever the river comes there springs up fair trees “on the banks thereof whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed.”
The water flows east, then south, and then runs into the Dead Sea and literally refreshes the salt water (which is more than six times as salty as the sea). The Dead Sea is transformed into a “living sea” of fresh water, conducive for the “multitude of fish.” Fish were caught there at Engedi and Eneglaim. Although the salt marshes were not reclaimed, on the banks of the river where the desert had prevented growth, there were food trees which bore fruit monthly for food and the leaves served as medicine. So, feel free to apply the whole of this vision to the effusion of light and salvation by the outpouring of the Spirit of God under the gospel by which the knowledge of the true God was multiplied in the earth. And, the farther the waters flow from the Temple, the deeper they grow under the grace of the gospel with its effects in the world. AMEN & HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
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