Ezekiel - Lesson 47

Lesson 47, The River of Life and the Healing of the Land, Ezekiel 47, 1 to 12. Scholars agree that the literary picture of the renewal of the land that Ezekiel paints in Ezekiel 47, 1 to 12 here is fantastic fantasy, and that it brings to a fitting climax not only the final vision, but the prophecy of Ezekiel as a whole. As was the case in chapters 1 and chapter 7, it seems that by the time the prophet reached this phase of his tour of the temple compound, the sights he had witnessed had so gripped him that his excitement affected the literary quality of the report.We feel his excitement when we hear him exclaim three times in 12 verses, look, behold, check it out, wow, verses 1, 2, 7. In vision reports, this word introduces new sights and often expresses excited cognizance. The Heavenly Tour Guide recognizes this in verse 6 when he says to the prophet, you have been staring, human. We've heard that before in chapter 8. This marvelous picture of a renewal would have stirred the heart of any true Israelite, especially one who had lived through the desolation of Judah and spent many years in exile.Ezekiel 47, 1 to 12 divides into two parts, verses 1 to 7 and 8 to 12, but these panels are remarkably symmetrical in their style and tone. In the Hebrew, the first consists of 100 words, while the second is 102 words. So again, is he counting words and trying to make it match? But the two panels are distinguished generically.Verses 1 to 7 are essentially narrative in form, while verses 8 to 12 are entirely Yahweh's speech, introduced with, and he said to me in verse 8. Well, 47, 1 to 12 is part of a larger vision report. Here we have a report of what Ezekiel saw and Yahweh's interpretation, transforming the vision into a prophecy of salvation. At the same time, the staged nature of both the sight and the interpretation, combined with the fantastic nature of the images, suggests another literary cartoon, like the Gog oracle, chapters 38 to 39.This one also consists of eight frames, four in each part. So let's look first at the prophet's vision of the river of life. The vision.47, 1 to 7. The first frame, verse 1. Then he brought me back to the entrance of the house. I was struck by the sight of water seeping, oozing from underneath the house threshold and flowing eastward. After all, the house faced east.The water flowed down below from the right side of the facade of the house on the south side of the altar. We had last seen the heavenly guide inspecting the sacrificial kitchens in 46, 21 to 24. In the opening scene here, he brought Ezekiel back to the entrance of the temple from where the prophet was amazed by the sight of water seeping from under the platform, miftan, that is, the slab of stone, the base of the temple, visible to an observer outside.As the threshold, this slab formed the threshold of the doorway. The last line of verse 1 informs us that the water was emerging from the right side of the facade of the temple. Facade ketev is an architectural term referring to the part of the gate structure that extends horizontally from the opening itself to the next corner and vertically from the ground up at least as far as the top of the door.The layout of the temple and the stream's direction of flow suggest an east orientation. The right and south here would have meant left to the prophet who was looking at it. The second frame, then he led me out through the north gate and took me around the outside to the outer gate that faces eastward.I noticed the water trickling out from the south side. Here we observe the guide leading Ezekiel out of the temple complex by way of the north gate to the outside of the east gate. The most direct route to this spot would have led him through the eastern gate itself, but it was barred to human traffic.44, 1 to 2, you can't go through that gate. Arriving outside the gate, Ezekiel noticed water seeping out under the wall of the south side of the gate structure, like the gurgling of the water from the mouth of a small vessel. The seepage from under the threshold of the sanctuary had increased to the size of the mouth of a small flask.The third frame, verses 3 to 5. Meanwhile, the man continued eastward with a measuring rod. Oh, he keeps showing up, doesn't he? He had the measuring line in his hand. He measured off 1,000 cubits and led me through the water.It was ankle deep. Then he measured off 1,000 cubits more and led me through the water. It was knee deep.Then he measured off 1,000 cubits and led me through it. It was waist deep. Then he measured 1,000 cubits.Now it was a stream, which I was unable to cross on account of the water level. The stream was deep enough to swim in, but impossible to wade across. In this third scene, the tour guide appeared with his measuring instrument in his hand once more.Whereas this person's earlier measurement of the temple compound had highlighted its symmetrical plan and the gradations of holiness, now his intentions had changed. Ezekiel saw him wading downstream, measuring his distance from the temple as he went. Every 1,000 cubits, about 1,500 feet or 460 meters, he measured the depth of the water.The results that Ezekiel recorded were actually fantastic. He noted that the flow of the water had increased geometrically from a trickle to an ankle-deep stream to a knee-deep creek to a waist-deep wadi, that he was unable to wade, but he would need to swim to cross it. Presumably, the amount of water continued to swell geometrically until it reached the Dead Sea as a roaring river, Nahar.That this effect was achieved without apparent contributions from tributaries heightens the magnitude of this miracle. This never happens this way. The fourth frame, verse 6 to 7. Then he said to me, You have been staring, human.Then he led me back to the bank of the stream. When I got back, I was struck by the sight of a vast number of trees on both banks of the stream. The sight had left Ezekiel staring in amazement and probably with his jaw dropped.Ah, never seen this before. The angelic guide brought him back to his senses with, You're staring, human, son of man. The guide led him out of the water back to the bank where he was surprised by a new sight that he had noticed before, another new dimension.Both sides of the river were lined with dense groves of trees. So much the vision. In verses 8 to 12, we have the interpretation of the river of life.The fifth frame, 8a to ba. Then he explained to me. Now the man is talking.This water flows out to the eastern region, descends to the Aravah, and enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, that is, the Dead Sea. However Ezekiel may have interpreted the sight, the guide's interpretation represented Yahweh's intended meaning. In the first frame of the interpretive panel of this cartoon, Ezekiel learned that this river that disappeared over the eastern horizon eventually entered the sea.Its journey began by flowing out to the eastern region, literally circuit, a vague reference to the territory between the central highlands north of Jerusalem and the Jordan River. Then the river descended into the Aravah, that is, the Jordan River Valley, and flowed southward into the Dead Sea, defined here as the sea of stagnant waters, elsewhere also referred to as the Salt Sea. Now visitors to the Holy Land who have swum in the Dead Sea know that we could also call it the Smelly Sea.The surface of this remarkable body of water is 1,300 feet, 400 meters below sea level, making it the lowest point in the Rift Valley and indeed lowest place on the dry land surface of the earth. With a salinity today of 26 to 35 percent salt, this is almost twice as high as the Great Salt Lake in Utah at 18 percent. The ocean is at 3.5 to 5 percent.With no outlet, after millennia of accumulation, the high amounts of sodium, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and other chemicals have left the Dead Sea virtually devoid of life. And with the exception of a few oases, the vegetation along its shores is limited to a few salt-tolerant species of plants fed by freshwater streams and springs. The tour guide seemed oblivious to the geographic problems this course of the river presented.If my proposal for the location of the temple is correct, as we'll talk about in the next address, it could have followed northeast to link up with the Wadi Farah, or it could have headed straight over the mountains of Manasseh and downhill to the Jordan. The interpretation may have envisioned a cleavage of the barriers like Zechariah 14.4 describes. In the eschatological future, when Yahweh's feet stand on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives will split apart, creating a wide valley running from east to west.In any case, Ezekiel's vision calls for a miraculous reconfiguration of the landscape, the converse of that experienced by the Israelites at the Red Sea. Instead of creating a dry path through deep water, this holy river produced a water course through the rocky, if not barren, irregular terrain. The sixth frame, 8b to 10.Then the waters are healed, and every living thing that swarms thrives wherever the stream flows. There are vast numbers of fish, because the waters have arrived here. These waters have arrived here, bringing healing and life wherever the stream flows.And fishermen stand beside it all the way from En-Gedi to En-Eglayim. It is a place where nets are spread out to dry. The variety and abundance of its fish are comparable to the fish found in the Mediterranean Sea.With the prediction, then the waters are healed in the last clause of verse 8, the focus shifts from topographical to biological and botanical phenomena. The moment the stream reached the salt sea, the waters were miraculously healed. In this case, the healing involved neutralizing the baneful chemicals in the water, so it became fresh and capable of supporting life.The fourfold all and the repetition of an entire clause, wherever the stream flowed, everywhere, wherever the stream flowed, everywhere, in verse 9, emphasized the thoroughness of the healing. Then every living creature that swarms thrives everywhere the stream flows. The vocabulary derives from Genesis 1, 20 to 21.The sea swarmed Sharatz with every living creature called Nefesh Chaya, in every place where the rivers flowed because the waters, these waters, had arrived there. The arrival of the living water from the temple revived the Dead Sea, which resulted in the profuse multiplication of sea life of all sorts. Verse 10 concretizes the literary picture.All around the Dead Sea, from En Gedi to Ein Eglayim, the prophets saw fishermen at work, spreading their nets and hauling in their catches. En Gedi is a flourishing oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, opposite the Arnon River across the Dead Sea in Moab then, Jordan today. This spring's waters emerge from a permanent source on top of the escarpment 600 feet above the lake and produce a ribbon of green along the stream to the sea.Ein Eglayim is more difficult to locate, but since Isaiah 15, 5 and Jeremiah 48, 34 associate an Egleth Shalishia with Zor, which probably points to a spot on the eastern or northeastern side of the Dead Sea. If they were indeed located on opposite sides of the Dead Sea, En Gedi and Ein Eglayim would represent a topographical, geographical merism, polar opposites, like A to Z, highlighting the totality of the healing of the waters, everything from A to Z. From west to east, all around the lake, fishermen spread their nets to catch their fish. Whereas in 26, 5 and 14, the image of a spreading place for nets, remember 26, Tyre? Tyre will become a place to spread and dry your nets.There it had served as a warning of judgment for Tyre. The city would be reduced to a bare rock where fishermen dry their nets. Here the figure symbolized blessing.These revived waters will be renowned, not only for the abundance of life supported, but for the variety of their species. Indeed, the number of their kinds, minna, would rival the great sea that is the Mediterranean. 7 As for its swamps and marshes, they are not healed, they are reserved as sources of salt.The guide informed Ezekiel of exceptions to this remarkable picture of life. According to verse 11, the water in the swamps and marshes were not freshened. These expressions probably refer to the shallow region of the tongue-shaped Lashon, Arabic Lisan, the peninsula that used to jut into the sea from the eastern shore, where the water was too shallow for fish.Some pockets of saltiness were intentionally preserved because of the economic value of the minerals found in and around the Dead Sea, which also reminds us that just because the sea is dead does not mean it's bad. There are good things about, good features of this quality of water body. And even in this picture of an Edenic revival, there is a preservation of this for its mineral value.Salt is a valuable seasoning and preserving agent, but here the word functions generically for a wide range of chemicals that could be extracted from the sea. 8 All kinds of trees providing food grow up along the stream on both banks. Their leaves never wither, nor does their fruit ever cease.Every month they produce fresh fruit because the streams' waters flow out from the sanctuary. Oh, not from the Jordan. No, the source is the sanctuary.Their fruit provides food, and their leaves healing. They're used for medicinal purposes. The guide's exposition on the revitalizing power of the temple stream concluded by returning briefly to the fourth scene, specifically the river, the trees that flourished on both banks.This we saw, on scene four. Now the text focuses on the abundance of their growth and their benefits for human use. He painted this image with a few impressive strokes of his literary brush.One, both banks were filled with every tree, which suggests both profusion and variety, answering to the species of fish mentioned in verse 10. Two, like the trees in Eden, Genesis 2, 15 to 17, these would remain perpetually green and provide an endless supply of food. He concretized its fruit will not fail with, according to their months, they will yield fresh fruit, which really means every month everyone will bear fruit.Three, in addition to being eye candy, beautiful to see and sweet to visualize, the never-withering leaves would serve medicinal functions, offering healing for sickly and wounded bodies, because their nourishing waters originated in the sanctuary. With the prophet, we stare at these literary images in wonder. Wow, what a God! Wow, what a restoration! Wow, what a blessed Eden is made possible by the waters that flow from the temple! Well, at this point, we need to pause and ask a couple of important interpretive questions relating to the significance of this vision.What can we say? First, apart from Yahweh's direct inspiration of the prophet, from where did notions like this come to this sixth-century prophet in Babylon? Well, there's no doubt that Ezekiel's vision of this life-giving stream was inspired at least in part by Genesis 2, 10 to 14, and of course, it was literally inspired because these are the words of God to him, and he showed him the vision. Where in Genesis 2, 10 to 14, there, paradise is portrayed as a garden rendered fruitful by a river flowing out of Eden and dividing into four branches and which Yahweh visited daily, 3, 8. However, Ezekiel merges the ancient Edenic tradition with official Zion theology. Psalm 46, 5 speaks of a river, Nahar, whose streams, plurim, make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.In Psalm 36, 8 to 9, those who take refuge under Yahweh's wings drink of the abundance of his house. What? You drink of the house? And then, the river of delights, since with him is the fountain of life. And in Joel, whose prophecy probably appeared two or three decades before Ezekiel's, after comparing the restored land of Israel to Eden earlier, 2, 3, in Joel 3, 17 to 18, in this oracle, Joel describes the nation's glorious future.And you will know that I am Yahweh your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain, and Jerusalem will be holy. Never again will strangers pass through it. In that day, the mountains will drip with wine, and the hills will flow with milk.All the gullies of Judah will flow with water. A spring will issue from the house byeth of Yahweh, and water the wadi of the Acacias. Texts like these assume that the temple in Jerusalem was the source of blessing and nourishment for a dry and thirsty land.In times past, people had looked to the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley as the vital source of water for Jerusalem. From the second millennium on, they may even have considered these waters sacred. Compare 1 Kings 1, 38.But no one in the first testament associated the Gihon with a temple, which is really remarkable. It's not that far away, but nobody ever made that connection. Many scholars have linked the vision here with cosmic symbols that we find elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern iconographic art.First, the Sumerian clay seal introducing Gudea to Ea, who sits enthroned above the subterranean's water, which find their way into his jug and then flow out to fill other jugs, and it gets bigger and bigger. There's a mari on the Euphrates, a mari investiture panel in which the subterranean waters flow through mirror images of a female deity through whose body the subterranean waters flow, and in four streams loaded with fish, they emerge from a pot holding a tree of life. The goddesses are located below in images of the goddess Ishtar in her inner holy place.Three, there's the Canaanite myth of El, the high god, living at the source of the double river midst the upspringings of the deeps in the Ugaritic text. And fourth, there is the eighth century temple of Apollo from Delphi in Greece, located where a spring emerges from the ground and flows beneath the temple emerging in the south side. Jacob Milgram argued that Ezekiel's temple was inspired by that temple.Not many have followed him. According to these images, the source of the river was actually the subterranean waters, the great deep. Stephen Cook suggests the threshold of the temple functions as a cork, stopping, controlling the turbulence and chaos represented by the great deep.But we may also view it as a spigot, a faucet that releases the unlimited water resources available to Yahweh. Like the images in Ezekiel's opening chapter, whatever mythological or cosmic symbolism pervaded the thinking of peoples around Israel, in Ezekiel's vision, these were subordinated completely to Ezekiel's theological and national agenda. Like his oracles against the nations and his promises of restoration, Ezekiel's vision for the future was focused on his own people and his own native land.The fact that fishermen harvested their catches on the east side of the Dead Sea had no bearing on the nations. It simply enhanced the image of the stream that vitalizes the stagnant waters wherever it flows. And presumably, the life-giving power was not felt only in the regions through which the river flowed.What we see here is an illustration of the rabbinic rhetorical principle of kau ha-chomer, light and heavy, that is, arguing from the least to the greatest, or in this case, from the greatest to the least. If Yahweh is able to transform the sterile environment of the Dead Sea and its environs into an Eden, how much more is he able to extend the boundaries of this paradise to all the territories assigned to the tribes of Israel? This is a picture of that sort of healing all over. Second, what became of this vision? How did Ezekiel's images inspire later prophets and preachers? Ezekiel's influence is obvious throughout the book of Zechariah.Fifty years after the exiled prophet's prophecy 520 BC, the second last of Israel's prophets painted the eschatological scene with even bolder strokes. Although his interest was still narrowly nationalistic, Zechariah 14 5b to 11 links Yahweh's transformation of Jerusalem with universal sovereignty and cosmic restructuring. Speaking of Jerusalem, he predicted, in that day, living waters, mayim chayim, will flow from Jerusalem, one half of them toward the eastern Dead Sea, the other half to the western Mediterranean Sea.This will happen in the summertime as well as in the winter. Verse 8, the image of Yahweh as a source of living water, making the waters team with life, appears also in Isaiah 44 3 to 4, 55 1 and 58 11. Later Jewish believers continued to find inspiration in Ezekiel's vision of the temple stream.As the 3rd to 2nd century BC letter of Aristeas imagined it, here are his words, the water supply is inexhaustible, for an abundant natural spring pours forth within the temple area, and there are furthermore marvelous underground reservoirs passing description to a distance of five stades, as was pointed out, round the foundations of the temple. Of these, each had innumerable pipes, so that various channels converged at the several reservoirs. That letter of Aristeas, 89.These images must have been inspired by Ezekiel. According to a rabbinic midrash, Ezekiel's and Zechariah's river will divide into three branches, which flow into the Sea of Tiberias, Galilee, the Sea of Sodom, the Dead Sea, and the ultimate destination, the Great Sea, the Mediterranean, respectively, and eventually encompass the whole world. Ezekiel's vision of the river also lives on in the New Testament.We recognize a veiled allusion in Jesus' words in John 7, 38, as the Scriptures say, whoever believes in me, from their belly will flow rivers of living water, presumably as a life-giving agent of divine grace and blessing. The expression living waters points immediately to Zechariah, but secondarily to Ezekiel. Some have seen a connection with Ezekiel's Aglaeum in 153 fish the disciples caught in John 21, 11.Applying a rabbinic interpretive device known as gematria, by which the numerical values of words are totaled, we may compute the sum of the numerical value of letters involved in Aglaeum. Here is the calculation. The opening ion is worth 70, g is worth 3, l is worth 30, y is worth 10, and m is worth 40, giving us a total of 153, which is the number of the fish the disciples caught in John 21, 11.Well, I'm not sure about that. That's interesting. They're far from certain, though.This is not the case, though, with Revelation 22, 1-3. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruits yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.No longer will there be anything accursed but the throne of God, and the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. Here, Ezekiel's vision of the lifting of the curse and its replacement with a blessing has been universalized. Ezekiel didn't get that far.Fascination with Ezekiel 12, 1-12, is evident also in the writings of the early church. Even the Antiochian interpreters abandoned the literal for the spiritual and allegorical interpretation. Bishop Theodoret of Antioch, A.D. 393-458, drew the following connections.The river represents the grace of Christ, who, according to the flesh, derived from the threshold of the Davidic line. That's his roots. The river's increase, this is the growth of the church.The fourfold measurement, the four evangelists. The depth of the last sounding, the relative depth of the last gospel. The fruit of the trees, good works.The foliage, the inner joy that accompanies good works. The course from Jerusalem through Galilee to the desert and out to the Dead Sea, this is the course of the gospel across Galilee to civilized pagans and barbarians. The freshening power of the stream's water, the sanctification of the myths and fables of pagans.The fish and the fishermen, souls and those who go after them. The salt pools, lukewarm Christians whose punishment is a useful warning to others. For Jerome, A.D. 345-419, the river was a picture of the teaching of the church and the grace of baptism.The farther one progresses in one's Christian life, the deeper one enters into the life-giving waters. The river flows between two rows of trees, the books of the Old and the New Testament, renders everything fruitful and refreshes even the Dead Sea found in the souls of those who have died in sin. Recent Christian interpretation of Ezekiel 47, 1-12, has tended to follow this lead of the early church, seeking to discover its meaning through a spiritualizing, if not allegorical, hermeneutic.After surveying a series of opinions, the seventeenth-century Puritan William Greenhill commented in 1839, We may take the gospel, with the gifts and the graces of the Spirit, to be those waters, for the gospel is the ministration of the Spirit as the Apostle saith. 2 Corinthians 3.8. His commentary proceeds accordingly. I was surprised to find a related approach in Robert W. Jensen's recent commentary on Ezekiel.He writes, Flowing fresh water is for obvious reasons a universally encountered sacramental sign of life. We die of the dehydration more quickly than of any other deprivation except breath. If we know that a sin is a pollution that renders us unfit for God and one another, washing with the waters will be a further sacramental sign.And if we further know that fitness for God and fitness for life are the same, we will see also this sign as life-giving. It is perhaps not altogether fanciful to see Jesus' baptism in the Judean wilderness, and our baptism into him, as a fulfillment of the promised transformation of the Jordan wilderness by a river of life. Reacting to these sorts of spiritualizing excesses, literalists, millenarians, maintain that Ezekiel's vision foresees a future temple built on Mount Zion with waters actually issuing forth from the building.These waters will course across the desert to the Dead Sea, freshen up its water, and fructify the land. The required contravention of natural and physical laws is no obstacle, since this is presented as a gloriously, miraculously, miraculous act of God. However, these approachers raise the question, would Ezekiel have approved of either? Would he accept the dissolution of his own people into some sort of spiritual ideal, or did he really expect a literal fulfillment of the oracle? Respectful considerations of the genre of this prophetic experience, the details of the passage, and the broader context all point in another direction.First, the prophecy of the life-giving river came to Ezekiel in visionary form as part of the larger revelation encompassing all of chapters 40 to 48. As we've frequently observed, this vision is characterized by idealistic and symbolic imagery, qualities that it shares with other visions in the book, chapters 1, 8 to 11, 37. On the one hand, none of the previous visions has called for a literal interpretation.On the one hand, none of the previous visions has called for a literal interpretation. On the other hand, nor has the prophet been consciously proclaiming mystical, spiritual messages whose meanings were hidden until the coming of Christ. Ezekiel's message was profoundly theological, intended for his immediate audience, and designed to answer the utter despair and cynicism under which his people languished.Their shock at divine abandonment and expulsion from the homeland called for a message of reversal. Where the vision of the dry bones had announced the lifting of the curse of death, this vision proclaimed the renewal of all aspects of the deity, nation, and land relationships. Second, virtually every detail of this vision is unrealistic and caricatured.Rivers do not issue forth from temple thresholds, nor do they increase geometrically in size and volume without tributaries, from mere seepage to an unfordable river in the desert, without the benefit of tributaries. Waters do not flow over or through hills. When freshwater contacts putrid water, particularly the most foul body on earth, the influence is from foul to fresh, not the reverse.A body of water as lifeless as the Dead Sea cannot match the Mediterranean in the number and variety of its fish, nor do marsh waters differ generically from waters of the larger body. Trees do not break the seasonal patterns and produce fruit every month of the year, nor do the leaves of these trees all have medicinal value. All these features suggest an impressionistic literary cartoon with an intentional ideological aim.What then is the permanent message of Ezekiel 47, 1 to 12, for the people of God? I can think of several theological and practical lessons. First, the prerequisite to renewal of the environment is the restoration of a people's relationship with God. That Ezekiel's portrayal of the land of Israel's physical revitalization came at the end of this elaborate vision.That was no accident. This may happen only after Yahweh has returned to his people, and his people have accepted his presence with authentic faith and humble worship. Nor was it coincidental that before the stream flowed out over the desert and down to the Aravah to rejuvenate land and sea, it passed by the altar.This structure, standing in the very center of the temple complex, symbolized God's desire to receive sinful humans and his delight in their worship. Second, conversely, the renewal of the environment represents the natural and logical concomitant of spiritual renewal. In the beginning God had pronounced the world he had made good, Genesis 1, 31.At the cosmic level, the rebellion of humanity had brought his curse upon the good earth, and its only hope is in the lifting of the curse. This vision presents this same truth at the national level. Like his ancient Near Eastern neighbors, and in keeping with Yahweh's original covenant, Leviticus 26, 1 to 13, Deuteronomy 1 to 14, Ezekiel expected the spiritual renewal of his people to be accompanied by the lifting of the curse from the land, demonstrated materially in numerous progeny, abundant crops, and large herds of livestock.In Ezekiel 34, 26 to 27, and 36, 8 to 11, God had given his verbal promise of renewal and blessing. Now that promise was concretized in visual form. The Judean desert and Dead Sea, the most inhospitable of land and marine environments, respectively, served as dramatic symbols of renewal.Revelation 22, 3 interprets the river of life in perfect keeping with the historical interpretation of this text. There shall no longer be any curse. Third, from start to finish, the renewal of God's people is a miracle, miraculous work of divine grace.The revitalization of the landscape is not achieved through human ingenuity, technology, or effort. It is the result of God lifting the curse and replacing it with his blessing. The river of life does not originate in the palace of our president or any other earthly king, but in the house of God.And wherever it flows, it produces life, even in the Dead Sea, the ultimate symbol of the curse. Compare Genesis 18. At the same time, the way God produces life out of death is most remarkable.From small and often imperceptible beginnings and with little promise, God's grace transforms a hostile world. We see a parallel image in Jesus, parabolic mustard seed, which as a symbol of the kingdom of God began as a mere speck, but grew into a huge tree where birds dwelt and nested, Matthew 13, 31 to 32. Such is the mystery of the divine power miraculously bringing life out of death.Fourth, Yahweh's concern for his holiness is matched by his desire to bless his people. Prior to chapter 47, everything about the design and ritual of the temple had reflected his determination to protect that holiness. But this agenda has now been almost totally eclipsed as we get to this chapter.The only remaining hint is found in the final reference to the temple as Hamikdash, the holy place, in verse 12. Here the issue was not primarily divine holiness, but earthly well-being, abundant life that God offers to those among whom he resides and whom he rules. This passage declares that divine sanctity and grace are not antithetical notions, but perfect correlatives of the divine character.Illegitimate contact with divine holiness by humans may be lethal, but not because God delights in death. On the contrary, the stream that flowed from this temple symbolizes Yahweh's firm and enthusiastic vote for life, 1832. But where does all this leave the believer on this side of the cross? If one cannot spiritualize the stream as the Messiah, or the water as the water of baptism, or the four measurements as pictures of the four gospels, what's left? Everything.First, believers may celebrate in knowing that their well-being is the passion of God, and that when one's relationship with him is right, then the rest of life will be well, Matthew 6, 33. Second, the work of renewal in an individual's life and in the church is from start to finish a divine work. Third, the Lord retains his interest in the physical environment.This is my Father's world. And when the human race is finally reconciled to him, all of creation will reap the benefits, Romans 8, 18-25. Fourth, as the new temple of God, the church serves as the agent of life and renewal to a world that languishes under the curse of sin and death.Compare 1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 2 Corinthians 6, 16-18. Fifth, the abundant life is offered to all who worship the Lord in spirit and in truth, for whoever believes in him will overflow with rivers of living water, John 7, 38. My old song sprang up from a bitter well and were contrived to channel off the flow into a guarded land, a distant hell which I could view apart and then let go.But now before me seems a river sweet and clear which runs into a land unknown. The only songs I know are for retreat, for stepping back, aloof, afraid, alone. I shall not force this new geography into old paths of pain, but tentative.Let this bright stream create new songs in me, whose forms I do not know, yet form must give. I will not make the music, I will be the song itself, while so you flow through me. A poem written by my student Alison Buckland, 1983, after hearing this word, used with her permission.