EZEKIEL 47 COMMENTARYEDITED BY GLENN PEASE

The River From the Temple

1 The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar.

BARNES, "The vision of the waters; or, the blessings which flow from this source to animate and refresh all the inhabitants of the earth. Compare Isa_44:8...; Joe_3:18. Ezekiel’s description is adopted and modifled by Zechariah and in Rev. (compare the marginal references) Hebrew tradition speaks of a spring of water, named Etham, said to be identical with the well-waters of Nephtoah Jos_18:15, on the west of the temple, whose waters were conducted by pipes into the temple-courts for the uses needed in the ministration of the priests. The waters of Shiloah Psa_46:4; Isa_8:6 flowed from the rocks beneath the temple-hill. It is quite in the manner of Ezekiel’s vision to start from an existing feature and thence proceed to an ideal picture from where to draw a spiritual lesson. The deepening of the waters in their course shows the continual deepening of spiritual life and multiplication of spiritual blessings in the growth of the kingdom of God. So long as the stream is confined to the temple-courts, it is merely a small rill, for the most part unseen, but when it issues from the courts it begins at once to deepen and to widen. So on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the company of believers, little then but presently to develop into the infant Church in Jerusalem.

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CLARKE, "Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold - Ezekiel, after having made the whole compass of the court of the people, is brought back by the north gate into the courts of the priests; and, having reached the gate of the temple, he saw waters which had their spring under the threshold of that gate, that looked towards the east; and which passing to the south of the altar of burnt-offerings on the right of the temple, ran from the west to the east, that they might fall into the brook Kidron, and thence be carried into the Dead Sea. Literally, no such waters were ever in the temple; and because there were none, Solomon had what is called the brazen sea made, which held water for the use of the temple. It is true that the water which supplied this sea might have been brought by pipes to the place: but a fountain producing abundance of water was not there, and could not be there, on the top of such a hill; and consequently these waters, as well as those spoken of in Joe_3:18, and in Zec_14:8, are to be understood spiritually or typically; and indeed the whole complexion of the place here shows, that they are thus to be understood. Taken in this view, I shall proceed 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 dispensation, by which the knowledge of the true God was multiplied in the earth; and have only one previous remark to make, that the farther the waters flowed from the temple, the deeper they grew.

With respect to the phraseology of this chapter, it may be said that St. John had it particularly in view while he wrote his celebrated description of the paradise of God, Revelation 22. The prophet may therefore be referring to the same thing which the apostle describes, viz., the grace of the Gospel, and its effects in the world.

GILL, "Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house,.... The door of the temple, even of the holy of holies; hither the prophet is said to be brought again, or "brought back" (x); for he was last in the corners of the outward court, viewing the kitchens or boiling places of the ministers; but now he was brought back into the inner court, and to the door that led into the holiest of all: and, behold! for it was matter of admiration, as well as of observation and attention: waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward; this is a new thing, to which there was nothing like it, either in the first or second temple. Ariateas (y) indeed relates what he himself saw, "a never failing conflux of water, as of a large fountain, naturally flowing underneath, and wonderful receptacles under ground; to each of which were leaden pipes, through which the waters came in on every side, for about half a mile about the temple, and washed away the blood of the sacrifices;'' and so the Talmudists (z) say, there was an aqueduct from the fountain of Etam, and pipes laid from thence to supply the temple with water, for the washing and boiling of the sacrifices, and keeping the temple clean: but these waters are quite different; they are

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such as came out of the temple, and not what were carried by pipes into it; nor were they a common sewer to carry off the filth of it, but formed a delightful and useful river. The fountain of them is not declared, only where they were first seen to issue out, under the threshold of the house eastward; the threshold of the door of the most holy place; so that they seem to take their rise from the holy of holies, the seat of the divine Majesty, and throne of God, with which agrees Rev_22:1, and so the Talmudists (a) say, that this fountain came first from the house of the holy of holies, under the threshold of the door of it, which looked to the east: for the fore front of the house stood toward the east; the holy of holies was at the west end of the temple; but the front of it, and so the door into it, was to the east, and from hence these waters flowed: and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house; they are said to "come down", because the temple was high built upon the top of a mountain; and "from under", that is, the threshold of the door of it; or rather in subterraneous passages, till they appeared from under that; and this was "on the right side of the house"; that is, on the south side: for, suppose a man standing with his face to the east, as the prophet did, when he turned himself to see which way the waters flowed, having his face to the west when he first saw them come out; the south then must be on his right hand, and so it follows: at the south side of the altar; of the altar of burnt offerings, which stood before the house.

HENRY 1-2, "This part of Ezekiel's vision must so necessarily have a mystical and spiritual meaning that thence we conclude the other parts of his vision have a mystical and spiritual meaning also; for it cannot be applied to the waters brought by pipes into the temple for the washing of the sacrifices, the keeping of the temple clean, and the carrying off of those waters, for that would be to turn this pleasant river into a sink or common sewer. That prophecy, Zec_14:8, may explain it, of living waters that shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them towards the former sea and half of them towards the hinder sea. And there is plainly a reference to this in St. John's vision of a pure river of water of life, Rev_22:1. That seems to represent the glory and joy which are grace perfected. This seems to represent the grace and joy which are glory begun. Most interpreters agree that these waters signify the gospel of Christ, which went forth from Jerusalem, and spread itself into the countries about, and the gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost which accompanied it, and by virtue of which it spread far and produced strange and blessed effects. Ezekiel had walked round the house again and again, and yet did not till now take notice of those waters; for God makes known his mind and will to his people, not all at once, but by degrees. Now observe,

I. The rise of these waters. He is not put to trace the streams to the fountain, but has the fountain-head first discovered to him (Eze_47:1): Waters issued out from the threshold of the house eastward, and from under the right side of the house, that is, the south side of the alter. And again (Eze_47:2), There ran out waters on the right side,signifying that from Zion should go forth the law and the word of the Lord from 3

Jerusalem, Isa_2:3. There it was that the Spirit was poured out upon the apostles, and endued them with the gift of tongues, that they might carry these waters to all nations. In the temple first they were to stand and preach the words of this life, Act_5:20. They must preach the gospel to all nations, but must begin at Jerusalem, Luk_24:47. But that is not all: Christ is the temple; he is the door; from him those living waters flow, out of his pierced side. It is the water that he gives us that is the well of water which springs up, Joh_4:14. And it is by believing in him that we receive from him rivers of living water; and this spoke he of the Spirit, Joh_7:38, Joh_7:39. The original of these waters was not above-ground, but they sprang up from under the threshold; for the fountain of a believer's life is a mystery; it is hid with Christ in God, Col_3:3. Some observe that they came forth on the right side of the house to intimate that gospel-blessings are right-hand blessings. It is also an encouragement to those who attend at Wisdom's gates, at the posts of her doors, who are willing to lie at the threshold of God's house, as David was, that they lie at the fountainhead of comfort and grace; the very entrance into God's word gives light and life, Psa_119:130. David speaks it to the praise of Zion, All my springs are in thee, Psa_87:7. They came from the side of the altar, for it is in and by Jesus Christ, the great altar (who sanctifies our gifts to God), that God has blessed us with spiritual blessings in holy heavenly places. From God as the fountain, in him as the channel, flows the river which makes glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High, Psa_46:4. But observe how much the blessedness and joy of glorified saints in heaven exceed those of the best and happiest saints on earth; here the streams of our comfort arise from under the threshold; there they proceed from the throne the throne of God and of the Lamb, Rev_22:1.

K&D 1-12, "The River of Water of LifeWhen Jehovah shall have judged all the heathen in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and shall dwell as King of His people upon Zion His holy mountain, then will the mountains trickle with new wine, and the hills run with milk, and all the brooks of Judah flow with water; and a spring will proceed from the house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley. With these figures Joel (Joel 4:18) has already described the river of salvation, which the Lord would cause to flow to His congregation in the time when the kingdom of God shall be perfected. This picture of the Messianic salvation shapes itself in the case of our prophet into the magnificent vision contained in the section before us.

(Note: Compare W. Neumann, Die Wasser des Lebens. An exegetical study on Eze_47:1-12. Berlin, 1848.)Eze_47:1. And he led me back to the door of the house, and, behold, water flowed out from under the threshold of the house toward the east, for the front side of the house was toward the east; and the water flowed down from below, from the right shoulder of the house on the south of the altar. Eze_47:2. And he led me out by the way of the north gate, and caused me to go round about on the outside, to the outer gate of the way to the (gate), looking toward the east; and, behold, waters rippled for the right shoulder of the gate. Eze_47:3. When the man went out toward the east, he had a measuring line in his hand, and he measured a thousand cubits, and caused me to go through the water-water to the ankles. Eze_47:4. And he measured a thousand, and caused me to go through the water-water to the knees; and he measured a thousand, and caused me to go through-water to the hips. Eze_47:5. And he measured a thousand-a river through which I could not walk, for the water was high, water to swim in, a river which could not be forded. Eze_47:6. And he said to me, Hast thou seen

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it, son of man? and he led me back again by the bank of the river. Eze_47:7. When I returned, behold, there stood on the bank of the river very many trees on this side and on that. Eze_47:8. And he said to me, This water flows out into the eastern circle, and runs down into the plain, and reaches the sea; into the sea is it carried out, that the waters may become wholesome. Eze_47:9. And it will come to pass, every living thing with which it swarms everywhere, whither the double river comes, will live, and there will be very many fishes; for when this water comes thither they will become wholesome, and everything will live whither the river comes. Eze_47:10. And fishermen will stand by it, from Engedi to Eneglaim they will spread out nets; after their kind will there be fishes therein, like the fishes of the great sea, very many. Eze_47:11. Its marshes and its swamps, they will not become wholesome, they will be given up to salt. Eze_47:12. And by the river will all kinds of trees of edible fruit grow on its bank, on this side and on that; their leaves will not wither, and their fruits will not fail; every moon they will bear ripe fruit, for its water flows out of its sanctuary. And their fruits will serve as food, and their leaves as medicine.From the outer court, where Ezekiel had been shown the sacrificial kitchens for the people (Eze_46:21.), he is taken back to the front of the door of the temple house, to be shown a spring of water, flowing out from under the threshold of the temple, which has swollen in the short course of four thousand cubits from its source into a deep river in which men can swim, and which flows down to the Jordan valley, to empty itself into the Dead Sea. In Eze_47:1 and Eze_47:2, the origin and course of this water are described; in Eze_47:3 and Eze_47:5, its marvellous increase; in Eze_47:6, the growth of trees on its banks; in Eze_47:7-12, its emptying itself into the Arabah and into the Dead Sea, with the life-giving power of its water. - Eze_47:1. The door of the house is the entrance into

the holy place of the temple, and מפתן הבית the threshold of this door. קדימה, not “in the east” (Hitzig), for the following sentence explaining the reason does not require this meaning; but “toward the east” of the threshold, which lay toward the east, for the front of the temple was in the east. מתחת is not to be connected with מכתף, but to be taken by itself, only not in the sense of downwards (Hitzig), but from beneath, namely, down from the right shoulder of the house. ירד, to flow down, because the temple stood on higher ground than the inner court. The right shoulder is the part of the eastern wall of the holy place between the door and the pillars, the breadth of which was five cubits (Eze_41:1). The water therefore issued from the corner formed by the southern wall of the porch and the eastern wall of the holy place (see the sketch on Plate I), and flowed past the altar of burnt-offering on the south side, and crossed the court in an easterly direction, passing under its surrounding wall. It then flowed across the outer court and under the pavement and the eastern wall into the open country, where the prophet, on the outside in front of the gate, saw it rippling forth from the right shoulder of that gate. That he might do this, he was led out through the north gate, because the east gate was shut (Eze_44:1), and round by the outside wall to the eastern outer gate. דר חוץ is more minutely defined by אל־שער דר and this, again, by ,החוץ נה הפ by the“ ,קדיםway to the (gate) looking eastwards.” The ἁπ. λεγ. ינבלך  ר ;, Piel of פכה, related to מים .most probably signifies to ripple, not to trickle ,בכה has no article, because it is evident from the context that the water was the same as that which Ezekiel had seen in the inner court, issuing from the threshold of the temple. The right shoulder is that portion of the eastern wall which joined the south side of the gate. - Eze_47:3-5. The miraculous increase in the depth of the water. A thousand cubits from the wall, as one

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walked through, it reached to the ankles; a thousand cubits further, to the knees; a thousand cubits further, to the hips; and after going another thousand cubits it was impossible to wade through, one could only swim therein. The words מי אפסים are a brief expression for “there was water which reached to the ankles.” אפס is equivalent to פס an ankle, not the sole of the foot. In 1Ch_11:13, on the other hand, we have ,פס דמיםfor אפס דמים . The striking expression מים ברכים for מי ברכים may possibly have been chosen because מי ברכים had the same meaning as מימי רגלים in Isa_36:12 (Keri). The measuring man directed the prophet's attention (Eze_47:6) to this extraordinary increase in the stream of water, because the miraculous nature of the stream was exhibited therein. A natural river could not increase to such an extent within such short distances, unless, indeed, other streams emptied themselves into it on all sides, which was not he case here. He then directed him to go back again על along the bank, not ,שפת“to the bank,” as he had never left it. The purpose for which he had been led along the bank was accomplished after he had gone four thousand cubits. From the increase in the water, as measured up to this point, he could infer what depth it would reach in its further course. He is therefore now to return along the bank to see how it is covered with trees. בשובני cannot be explained in any other way than as an incorrect form for בשובי, though there are no corresponding analogies to be found.

In Eze_47:8-12 he gives him a still further explanation of the course of the river and the effect of its waters. The river flows out into הגלילה נה ,the eastern circle ,הקדמwhich is identical with ת גליל הירדן htiw lacitne, the circle of the Jordan (Jos_22:10-11), the region above the Dead Sea, where the Jordan valley (Ghor) widens out into a broad, deep basin. הערבה is the deep valley of the Jordan, now called the Ghor(see the comm. on Deu_1:1), of which Robinson says that the greater part remains a desolate wilderness. It was so described in ancient times (see Joseph. Bell. Jud. iii. 10. 7, iv. 8. 2), and we find it so to-day (compare v. Raumer, Pal. p. 58). הימה is the Dead Sea, called הים ני הקדמ in Eze_47:18, and the sea of the Arabah in Deu_3:17; Deu_4:49. We agree with Hengstenberg in taking the words אל־הימה המוצאים as an emphatic summing up of the previous statement concerning the outflow of the water, to which the explanation concerning its effect upon the Dead Sea is attached, and supply באו from the clause immediately preceding: “the waters of the river that have been brought out (come) to the sea, and the waters of the Dead Sea are healed.” There is no need, therefore, for the emendation proposed by Hitzig, namely, אל הים הם ,So much .מוצאיםhowever, is beyond all doubt, that הימה is no other than the Dead Sea already mentioned. The supposition that it is the Mediterranean Sea (Chald., Ros., Ewald, and others) cannot be reconciled with the words, and has only been transferred to this passage from Zec_14:8. נרפא signifies, as in 2Ki_2:22, the healing or rendering wholesome of water that is injurious or destructive to life. The character of the Dead Sea, with which the ancients were also well acquainted, and of which Tacitus writes as follows: Lacus immenso ambitu, specie maris sapore corruptior, gravitate odoris accolis pestifer, neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas aquis volucres patitur(Hist. v. c. 6), - a statement confirmed by all modern travellers (cf. v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 61ff., and Robinson, Physical Geography of the Holy Land), - is regarded as a disease of the water, which is healed or turned into wholesome water in which fishes can live, by

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the water of the river proceeding from the sanctuary. The healing and life-giving effect of this river upon the Dead Sea is described in Eze_47:9 and Eze_47:10. Whithersoever the waters of the river come, all animated beings will come to life and flourish.In Eze_47:9 the dual נחלים occasions some difficulty. It is not likely that the dual

should have been used merely for the sake of its resemblance to מים, as Maurer imagines; and still less probable is it that there is any allusion to a junction of the river proceeding from the temple at some point in its course with the Kedron, which also flows into the Dead Sea (Hävernick), as the Kedron is not mentioned either before or afterwards. According to Kliefoth, the dual is intended to indicate a division which takes place in the waters of the river, that have hitherto flowed on together, as soon as they enter the sea. But this would certainly have been expressed more clearly. Hengstenberg takes the expression “double river” to mean a river with a strong current, and refers to Jer_50:21 in support of this. This is probably the best explanation; for nothing is gained by altering the text into נחלם (Ewald) or נחלים (Hitzig), as נחל does not require definition by means of a suffix, nor doe the plural answer to the context. is to be taken in connection with אשר ”;wherewith it swarms whithersoever the river comes“ :ישרץthough אל does not stand for על after Gen_7:21, as Hitzig supposes, but is to be explained from a species of attraction, as in Gen_20:13. יחיה is a pregnant expression, to revive, to come to life. The words are not to be understood, however, as meaning that there were living creatures in the Dead Sea before the health-giving water flowed into it; the thought is simply, that whithersoever the waters of the river come, there come into existence living creatures in the Dead Sea, so that it swarms with them. In addition to the שרץ, the quantity of fish is specially mentioned; and in the second hemistich the reason is assigned for the number of living creatures that come into existence by a second allusion to the health-giving power of the water of the river. The subject to וירפאו, viz., the waters of the Dead Sea, is to be supplied from the context. The great abundance of fish in the Dead Sea produced by the river is still further depicted in Eze_47:10. Fishermen will spread their nets along its coast from Engedi to Eneglaim; and as for their kind, there will be as many kinds of fish there as are to be found in the great or Mediterranean Sea. עין i.e., Goat's spring, now Ain-Jidi, a spring in the middle of the ,גדיwest coast of the Dead Sea, with ruins of several ancient buildings (see the comm. on Jos_15:62, and v. Raumer, Pal. p. 188). עין עגלים has not yet been discovered, though, from the statement of Jerome, “Engallim is at the beginning of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan enters it,” it has been conjectured that it is to be found in Ain el-Feshkhah, a spring at the northern end of the west coast, where there are also ruins of a small square tower and other buildings to be seen (vid., Robinson's Palestine, II pp. 491, 492), as none of the other springs on the west coast, of which there are but few, answer so well as this. למינה is pointed without Mappik, probably because the Masoretes did not regard the ה as a suffix, as the noun to which it alludes does not follow till afterwards. - Eze_47:11 introduces an exception, namely, that notwithstanding this the Dead Sea will still retain marshes or pools and swamps, which will not be made wholesome (בצאת for ת .pools). An allusion to the natural character of the Dead Sea underlies the words ,בצ“In the rainy season, when the sea is full, its waters overspread many low tracts of marsh land, which remain after the receding of the water in the form of moist pools or basins; and as the water in these pools evaporates rapidly, the ground becomes covered with a

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thick crust of salt” (Robinson's Physical Geography, p. 215). למלח they are given ,נתנוup to salt, i.e., destined to remain salt, because the waters of the river do not reach them. The light in which the salt is regarded here is not that of its seasoning properties, but, in the words of Hengstenberg, “as the foe to all fruitfulness, all life and prosperity, as Pliny has said (Hist. Nat. xxxi. c. 7: Omnis locus, in quo reperitur sal, sterilis est nihilque gignit”) (cf. Deu_29:22; Jer_17:6; Zep_2:9; Psa_107:34). - In Eze_47:12 the effect of the water of the river upon the vegetation of the ground, already mentioned in Eze_47:7, is still further described. On its coast grow all kinds of trees with edible fruits (עץ ,מאכלas in Lev_19:23), whose leaves do not wither, and whose fruits do not fail, but ripen every month (בכר, or produce first-fruits, i.e., fresh fruits; and לחדשים distributive, as in Isa_47:13), because the waters which moisten the soil proceed from the sanctuary, i.e., “directly and immediately from the dwelling-place of Him who is the author of all vital power and fruitfulness” (Hitzig). The leaves and fruits of these trees therefore possess supernatural powers. The fruits serve as food, i.e., for the maintenance of the life produced by the river of water; the leaves as medicine (תרופה from רוף ,(healing ,רפא =i.e., for the healing of the sick and corrupt (εἰς θεραπείαν, Rev_22:2).

In the effect of the water proceeding from the sanctuary upon the Dead Sea and the land on its shores, as described in Eze_47:8-12, the significance of this stream of water in relation to the new kingdom of God is implied. If, then, the question be asked, what we are to understand by this water, whether we are to take it in a literal sense as the temple spring, or in a spiritual and symbolical sense, the complete answer can only be given in connection with the interpretation of the whole of the temple vision (Ezekiel 40-48). Even if we assume for the moment, however, that the description of the new temple, with the worship appointed for it, and the fresh division of Canaan, is to be understood literally, and therefore that the building of an earthly temple upon a high mountain in the most holy terumah of the land set apart for Jehovah, and a renewal of the bleeding sacrifices in this temple by the twelve tribes of Israel, when restored to Palestine from the heathen lands, are to be taken for granted, it would be difficult to combine with this a literal interpretation of what is said concerning the effect of the temple spring. It is true that in Volck's opinion “we are to think of a glorification of nature;” but even this does not remove the difficulties which stand in the way of a literal interpretation of the temple spring. According to Eze_47:12, its waters posses the life-giving and healing power ascribed to them because they issue from the sanctuary. But how does the possession by the water of the power to effect the glorification of nature harmonize with its issuing from a temple in which bullocks, rams, calves, and goats are slaughtered and sacrificed? - Volck is still further of opinion that, with the spiritual interpretation of the temple spring, “nothing at all could be made of the fishermen;” because, for example, he cannot conceive of the spiritual interpretation in any other way than as an allegorical translation of all the separate features of the prophetic picture into spiritual things. But he has failed to consider that the fishermen with their nets on the shore of the sea, once dead, but now swarming with fish, are irreconcilably opposed to the assumption of a glorification of nature in the holy land, just because the inhabitants of the globe or holy land, in its paradisaically glorified state, will no more eat fish or other flesh, according to the teaching of Scripture, than the first men in Paradise. When once the wolf shall feed with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the cow with the bear, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, under the sceptre of the sprout from the stem of Jesse, then will men also cease their fishing, and no longer slaughter and eat either oxen or goats. To this the Israelites will form no exception in their glorified land of Canaan. -8

And if even these features in the vision before us decidedly favour the figurative or spiritual view of the temple spring, the necessity for this explanation is placed beyond the reach of doubt by a comparison of our picture with the parallel passages. According to Joel 4:18, at the time when a spring issues from the house of Jehovah and the vale of Shittim is watered, the mountains trickle with new wine, and the hills run with milk. If, then, in this case we understand what is affirmed of the temple spring literally, the trickling of the mountains with new wine and the flowing of the hills with milk must be taken literally as well. But we are unable to attain to the belief that in the glorified land of Israel the mountains will be turned into springs of new wine, and the hills into fountains of milk, and in the words of the whole verse we can discern nothing but a figurative description of the abundant streams of blessing which will then pour over the entire land. And just as in Joel the context points indisputably to a non-literal or figurative explanation, so also does the free manner in which Zechariah uses this prophecy of his predecessors, speaking only of living waters which issue from Jerusalem, and flow half into the eastern (i.e., the Dead) sea, and half into the western (i.e., the Mediterranean) sea (Zec_14:8), show that he was not thinking of an actual spring with earthly water. And here we are still provisionally passing by the application made of this feature in the prophetic descriptions of the glory of the new kingdom of God in the picture of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev_22:1 and Rev_22:2).The figurative interpretation, or spiritual explanation, is moreover favoured by the analogy of the Scriptures. “Water,” which renders the unfruitful land fertile, and supplies refreshing drink to the thirsty, is used in Scripture as a figure denoting blessing and salvation, which had been represented even in Paradise in the form of watering (cf. Gen_13:10). In Isa_12:3, “and with joy ye draw water from the wells of salvation,” the figure is expressly interpreted. And so also in Isa_44:3, “I will pour water upon the thirsty one, and streams upon the desert; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring:” where the blessing answers to the water, the Spirit is named as the principal form in which the blessing is manifested, “the foundation of all other salvation for the people of God” (Hengstenberg). This salvation, which Joel had already described as a spring issuing from the house of Jehovah and watering the dry acacia valley, Ezekiel saw in a visionary embodiment as water, which sprang from under the threshold of the temple into which the glory of the Lord entered, and had swollen at a short distance off into so mighty a river that it was no longer possible to wade through. In this way the thought is symbolized, that the salvation which the Lord causes to flow down to His people from His throne will pour down from small beginnings in marvellously increasing fulness. The river flows on into the barren, desolate waste of the Ghor, and finally into the Dead Sea, and makes the waters thereof sound, so that it swarms with fishes. The waste is a figure denoting the spiritual drought and desolation, and the Dead Sea a symbol of the death caused by sin. The healing and quickening of the salt waters of that sea, so fatal to all life, set forth the power of that divine salvation which conquers death, and the calling to life of the world sunk in spiritual death. From this comes life in its creative fulness and manifold variety, as shown both by the figure of the fishermen who spread their nets along the shore, and by the reference to the kinds of fish, which are as manifold in their variety as those in the great sea. But life extends no further than the water of salvation flows. Wherever it cannot reach, the world continues to life in death. The pools and swamps of the Dead Sea are still given up to salt. And lastly, the water of salvation also possesses the power to produce trees with leaves and fruits, by which the life called forth from death can be sustained and cured of all diseases. This is the meaning, according to the express statement of the text, of the trees with their never

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withering leaves, upon the banks of the river, and their fruits ripening every month.

JAMISON, "Eze_47:1-23. Vision of the Temple waters. Borders and division of the land.

The happy fruit to the earth at large of God’s dwelling with Israel in holy fellowship is that the blessing is no longer restricted to the one people and locality, but is to be diffused with comprehensive catholicity through the whole world. So the plant from the cedar of Lebanon is represented as gathering under its shelter “all fowl of every wing” (Eze_17:23). Even the desert places of the earth shall be made fruitful by the healing waters of the Gospel (compare Isa_35:1).waters — So Rev_22:1, represents “the water of life as proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” His throne was set up in the temple at Jerusalem (Eze_43:7). Thence it is to flow over the earth (Joe_3:18; Zec_13:1; Zec_14:8). Messiah is the temple and the door; from His pierced side flow the living waters, ever increasing, both in the individual believer and in the heart. The fountains in the vicinity of Moriah suggested the image here. The waters flow eastward, that is, towards the Kedron, and thence towards the Jordan, and so along the Ghor into the Dead Sea. The main point in the picture is the rapid augmentation from a petty stream into a mighty river, not by the influx of side streams, but by its own self-supply from the sacred miraculous source in the temple [Henderson]. (Compare Psa_36:8, Psa_36:9; Psa_46:4; Isa_11:9; Hab_2:14). Searching into the things of God, we find some easy to understand, as the water up to the ankles; others more difficult, which require a deeper search, as the waters up to the knees or loins; others beyond our reach, of which we can only adore the depth (Rom_11:33). The healing of the waters of the Dead Sea here answers to “there shall be no more curse” (Rev_22:3; compare Zec_14:11).

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:1. Behold, waters issued out— There was a large quantity of water for the uses of the temple, conveyed in pipes under ground from the fountain of Etam. From these waters the prophet draws his similitude of the salubrious waters, which increased as they flowed, till they reached the borders of Israel; hereby not obscurely prefiguring that salvation which was to flow forth from Jerusalem to all the children of Abraham by faith. So it is elsewhere foretold, a law shall go forth from Sion; and ye that are athirst, come to the waters, &c. Waters first flow towards the south of the temple, then to the east; which was the first course of the gospel, before it was disseminated widely among the Gentiles. Houbigant.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:1 Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house [stood toward] the east, and the waters came down from

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under from the right side of the house, at the south [side] of the altar.

Ver. 1. Afterward he brought.] Christus mystagogus me duxit. Yεω επου, Follow God whithersoever he leadeth thee; this was an ancient rule among the heathens. Christo ducente et docente.

And, behold, waters issued out,] i.e., The gospel of grace, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost thereby conveyed into the hearts of believers, and poured out upon the world by the death of Christ. The prophet seems to allude to those waters, which by conduits were conveyed to the altar to wash away the blood of the sacrifices and filth of the temple, which else would have been very offensive and noisome. See the like in Zechariah 14:8, where the eastern and western Churches also are pointed out. See Revelation 22:1.

From under the threshold.] Quod gloria Dei dudum triverat. (a) Christ is that door, [John 10:7] and fountain of living water. [Jeremiah 2:13 Isaiah 12:3; Isaiah 55:1] And from the temple at Jerusalem flowed forth the waters of saving truth to all nations; and first eastward, not Romeward, though the faith of the Romans was not long after spoken of throughout the whole world. [Romans 1:8]

COFFMAN, "Here is the vision of the great river flowing from beneath the Temple itself toward the east, a river expanding and broadening, ever deeper and deeper, all the way through the desert even to the sea; and whithersoever the waters of that mighty river shall come, "Everything that liveth, which moveth, shall live; and there shall be a great multitude of fish." (Ezekiel 47:9). The location and boundaries of the Holy Land into which the Twelve Tribes will be located are given.

PETT, "Verse 1

‘And he brought me back to the door of the house, and behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the forefront of the house was towards the east. And the waters came out from under, from the right side of the

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house, on the south of the altar.’

The heavenly visitant now brought Ezekiel to the door of the house. This was probably the door of the sanctuary itself. And from underneath its threshold issued out water moving towards the east gate, which was natural as the door faced east (thus not towards Jerusalem which was south). The water flowed from the right side of the threshold and past the south side of the altar as it made its way to the permanently closed east gate. It was at present but a streamlet, a day of small things. This was the path that Yahweh had taken in the reverse direction when His glory had returned to the house previously. It is clear that we are to see in this life from God as He now reaches out to His people with spiritual water, for to Israel waters spoke of life.

‘Waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward.’ Water is regularly a picture of spiritual life and growth, whether in terms of river or rain. ‘The righteous man’ is ‘like a tree planted by the streams of water,’ (Psalms 1:3). The man who trusts in Yahweh is like ‘a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river,’ (Jeremiah 17:8). The coming transforming and reviving work of the Spirit is likened to men being sprinkled with water and made clean (Ezekiel 36:25-27), and to water being poured out on those who are thirsty, and streams on the dry ground (Isaiah 44:3). A Man is coming who will be a hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest, like rivers of water in a dry place (Isaiah 32:2). A fountain is to be opened for sin and uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1). Those who take refuge in God will drink of the river of His pleasures, for with Him is the fountain of life (Psalms 36:8-9). There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High (Psalms 46:4). The earth being filled with the knowledge of Yahweh is likened to the waters covering the sea (Isaiah 11:9).

‘From the right side of the house, on the south of the altar.’ Every Israelite knew that at the right side of the house had stood the seven branched golden lampstand (Exodus 26:35; Exodus 40:24). This primarily represented the presence of Yahweh as a light of divine perfection among His people, but it also represented the resulting witness of Israel and was later seen as a symbol of the witness and work of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest (Zechariah 4). But as God’s anointed ones they were fed from the golden lampstand, as God worked through His Spirit in the

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day of small things (Zechariah 4:10). Possibly this was seen by Zechariah as the first initial fulfilment of the flowing water from the south side of the sanctuary, from He Who is the light of the world.

Verses 1-12

Chapter Ezekiel 47:1-12 The Rivers of Living Water.

The first twelve verses of this chapter deal with the vision of rivers of living water flowing from the temple, beginning as a small streamlet and multiplying as they flowed outwards. If anything proves that this is a heavenly temple it is this. Attempts have been made to literalise this but they can miss the point of the whole message and ignore the significance read into the incident in the New Testament (John 7:37-39; Revelation 22:1-5). This is no vision of an earthly cascade, but of heavenly action active in blessing. Such a huge earthly cascade issuing continually month by month (Ezekiel 47:12) from a real temple would soon sweep the temple away. Nor could such a cascade come from ‘the top of a very high mountain’ (Ezekiel 40:2). But this is a heavenly river flowing from a heavenly sanctuary, which is an entirely different matter (see Ezekiel 47:12 where it is stressed that the unique quality of the water is because it comes from the sanctuary).

So firstly we must recognise the source of this flow. It is from the sanctuary via the closed east gate of the heavenly temple (Ezekiel 47:1). It has nothing therefore to do with Jerusalem, for this temple was specifically sited well away from Jerusalem (Ezekiel 45:1-6). Its source is in God. Zechariah 14:8 tells us that ‘in that day living waters will go out from Jerusalem -- and Yahweh will be king over all the earth’. If we see this as spiritual waters flowing from God the two can be equated but no literalist can compare the two. Literally speaking they are from different sites. However as spiritual flows they are both from God. This confirms that Zechariah is actually thinking of Jerusalem in the same way as Ezekiel is thinking of the heavenly temple.

It should be recognised that Ezekiel was fond of the metaphorical picture of things 13

abounding through water, and did not feel it necessary to explain that he did not mean it literally. He says of Pharaoh, ‘the waters nourished him, the deep made him to grow’, and he likened Egypt to rivers and canals causing growth wherever they went (Ezekiel 31:4), a similar picture to here. Pharaoh’s punishment was that he would be taken out of the waters and the rivers and thrown into the wilderness (Ezekiel 29:3-5) and the result would be that those who were like trees by the waters would sink to the nether parts of the earth (Ezekiel 31:14). Both Babylon and Egypt are seen as planting men by rivers of water so that they might be like the willow tree or the goodly vine (Ezekiel 17:5; Ezekiel 17:8). Israel too is said to have been like a vine, planted by the waters, fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters, until she was replanted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty land (Ezekiel 19:10; Ezekiel 19:13). And especially in Ezekiel 36:25-26 Ezekiel pictures God as sprinkling His people with water so that they may be made clean and undergo spiritual transformation. Thus we have every reason to see these waters too as metaphorical and spiritual.

And secondly we must recognise its intention. It was to bring life wherever it went (Ezekiel 47:9). To the ancients the primary power of water was to give life. Those who lived in Canaan knew what it was to watch all nature die in a waterless and very hot summer. And then the rains came, and almost immediately, like magic, the bushes came to life, greenery sprang from the ground, and the world came alive again. That was the life-giving power of water. In Babylonia Israel had also witnessed the power of the great rivers. Along their banks life always flourished, and water was taken from them by irrigation to bring life to drier areas. The wilderness blossomed like a rose. They knew that the coveted Garden of Eden had been fruitful because of the great river flowing through it that became four rivers and watered the world. So that was their dream for their everlasting homeland, a great and everflowing river that would bring life everywhere, and especially in men’s hearts.

This prophecy is the answer to their dreams and parallel to those great prophetic pronouncements which spoke of the coming of the Spirit in terms of heavenly rain producing life and fruitfulness (Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:3-5; Joel 2:23-32), and is similar in thought to Psalms 46:4; Psalms 65:9; Isaiah 33:21.

PULPIT, "As the first part of Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 40-43.) dealt with the temple, 14

or "house," and the second (Ezekiel 44-47.) with the ritual, or "worship," so the third, which beans with the present chapter (Ezekiel 47:1-23; Ezekiel 48:1-35.), treats of the land, or "inheritance" setting forth first its relation to the temple (verses 1-12) and to outlying countries (verses 13-21), and secondly its division among the tribes, inclusive of the priests, Levites, sanctuary, prince, and city (Ezekiel 48:1-23), with a statement of the dimensions and gates of the last (verses 24-35). The opening section of the present chapter (verses 1-12) is by Kliefoth and others connected with the second part as a conclusion, rather than with the third part as an introduction; but, taken either way, the passage has the same significance or nearly so. If read in continuation of the foregoing, it depicts the blessed consequences, in the shape of life and healing, which should flow to the land of Israel and its inhabitants from the erection in their midst of the sanctuary of Jehovah, and the observance by them of the holy ordinances of Jehovah's religion. Viewed as a preface to what follows, it exhibits the transformation which the institution of such a culture would effect upon the land before proceeding to speak of its partition among the tribes. The prophet's imagery in this paragraph may have taken as its point of departure the well-known fact that the waters of Shiloah (Isaiah 8:6; Psalms 46:4) appeared to flow from under the temple hill, the Pool of Siloam having been fed from a spring welling up with intermittent action from beneath Ophel. To Isaiah "the waters of Shiloah that go softly," had already been an emblem of the blessings to be enjoyed under Jehovah's rule (Isaiah 8:6); to Joel (Joel 3:18) "a fountain," coming forth from the house of the Lord and watering the valley of Shittim, or the Acacia valley, on the borders of Moab, on the other side of Jordan, where the Israelites halted and sinned (Numbers 25:1; Numbers 33:49), had symbolized the benefits that should be experienced by Israel in the Messianic era when Jehovah should permanently dwell in his holy mount of Zion; to Ezekiel, accordingly, the same figure naturally occurs as a means of exhibiting the life and healing, peace and prosperity, that should result to Israel from the erection upon her soil of Jehovah's sanctuary and the institution among her people of Jehovah's worship. Zechariah (Zechariah 13:1; Zechariah 14:8) and John (Revelation 22:1, Revelation 22:2) undoubtedly make use of the same image, which, it is even probable, they derived from Ezekiel (comp. Ecclesiasticus 24:30, 31, in which Wisdom is introduced as saying, "I also came out as a brook from a river, and as a conduit into a garden. I said, I will water my best garden, and will water abundantly my garden bed; and, lo, my brook became a river, and my river became a sea").

Ezekiel 47:1

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Having completed his survey of the sacrificial kitchens in the outer court (Ezekiel 46:19-24), the prophet was once more conducted by his guide to the door of the house, or of the temple in the strict sense, i.e. of the sanctuary. There he perceived that waters issued (literally, and behold waters issuing) from under the threshold of the house, i.e. of the temple porch (see Ezekiel 40:48, Ezekiel 40:49; and comp. Ezekiel 9:3), eastward, the direction having been determined by the fact that the forefront of the house stood or was toward the east. He also noticed that the waters came down (or, descended)—the temple having been situated on higher ground than the inner court—from under the threshold, from the right side of the house—literally, from the shoulder (comp. Ezekiel 40:18, Ezekiel 40:40, Ezekiel 40:41; Ezekiel 41:2, Ezekiel 41:26; Ezekiel 46:1-24 :29) of the house, the right. The two clauses are not to be conjoined as by Hengstenberg, Ewald, and Smend, as if they meant, from underneath the right side of the house; but kept distinct, to indicate the different features which entered into the prophet's picture. The first was that the waters issued forth from under the threshold of the house; the second, that they proceeded from the right side or shoulder of the house, i.e. from the corner where the south wall of the porch and the east wall of the temple joined (see Ezekiel 41:1); the third, that the stream flowed on the south side of the altar, which stood exactly in front of the temple perch (see Ezekiel 40:47), and would have obstructed the course of the waters had they issued forth from the perch doorway instead of from the comer above described.

MACLAREN, "THE RIVER OF LIFE

Ezekiel 47:1.

Unlike most great cities, Jerusalem was not situated on a great river. True, the inconsiderable waters of Siloam-’which flow softly’ because they were so inconsiderable-rose from a crevice in the Temple rock, and beneath that rock stretched the valley of the Kedron, dry and bleached in the summer, and a rainy torrent during the rainy seasons; but that was all. So, many of the prophets, who looked forward to the better times to come, laid their finger upon that one defect, and prophesied that it should be cured. Thus we read in a psalm: ‘There is a river, the divisions whereof make glad the City of our God.’ Faith saw what sense saw not.

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Again, Isaiah says: ‘There’-that is to say, in the new Jerusalem-’the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams.’ And so, this prophet casts his anticipations of the abundant outpouring of blessing that shall come when God in very deed dwells among men, into this figure of a river pouring out from beneath the Temple-door, and spreading life and fertility wherever its waters come. I need not remind you how our Lord Himself uses the same figure, and modifies it, by saying that whosoever believeth on Him, ‘out of him shall flow rivers of living waters’; or how, in the very last words of the Apocalyptic seer, we hear again the music of the ripples of the great stream, ‘the river of the water of life proceeding out of the Throne of God and of the Lamb.’ So then, all through Scripture, we may say that we hear the murmur of the stream, and can catch the line of verdure upon its banks. My object now is not only to deal with the words that I have read as a starting-point, but rather to seek to draw out the wonderful significance of this great prophetic parable.

I. I notice, first, the source from which the river conies.

I have already anticipated that in pointing out that it flows from the very Temple itself. The Prophet sees it coming out of the house-that is to say, the Sanctuary. It flows across the outer court of the house, passes the altar, comes out under the threshold, and then pours itself down on to the plain beneath. This is the symbolical dress of the thought that all spiritual blessings, and every conceivable form of human good, take their rise in the fact of God’s dwelling with men. From beneath the Temple threshold comes the water of life; and wherever it is true that in any heart-or in any community-God dwells, there will be heard the tinkling of its ripples, and freshness and fertility will come from the stream. The dwelling of God with a man, like the dwelling of God in humanity in the Incarnation of His own dear Son, is, as it were, the opening of the fountain that it may pour out into the world. So, if we desire to have the blessings that are possible for us, we must comply with the conditions, and let God dwell in our hearts, and make them His temples; and then from beneath the threshold of that temple, too, will pour out, according to Christ’s own promise, rivers of living water which will be first for ourselves to drink of and be blessed by, and then will refresh and gladden others.

Another thought connected with this source of the river of life is that all the blessings which, massed together, are included in that one word ‘salvation’-which is

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a kind of nebula made up of many unresolved stars-take their rise from nothing else than the deep heart of God Himself. This river rose in the House of the Lord, and amidst the mysteries of the Divine Presence; it took its rise, one might say, from beneath the Mercy-seat where the brooding Cherubim sat in silence and poured itself into a world that had not asked for it, that did not expect it, that in many of its members did not desire it and would not have it. The river that rose in the secret place of God symbolises for us the great thought which is put into plainer words by the last of the apostles when he says, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ All the blessings of salvation rise from the unmotived, self-impelled, self-fed divine love and purpose. Nothing moves Him to communicate Himself but His own delight in giving Himself to His poor creatures; and it is all of grace that it might be all through faith.

Still further, another thought that may be suggested in connection with the source of this river is, that that which is to bless the world must necessarily take its rise above the world. Ezekiel has sketched, in the last portion of his prophecy, an entirely ideal topography of the Holy Land. He has swept away mountains and valleys, and levelled all out into a great plain, in the midst of which rises the mountain of the Lord’s House, far higher than the Temple hill. In reality, opposite it rose the Mount of Olives, and between the two there was the deep gorge of the Valley of the Kedron. The Prophet smooths it all out into one great plain, and high above all towers the Temple-mount, and from it there rushes down on to the low levels the fertilising, life-giving flood.

That imaginary geography tells us this, that what is to bless the world must come from above the world. There needs a waterfall to generate electricity; the power which is to come into humanity and deal with its miseries must have its source high above the objects of its energy and its compassion, and in proportion to the height from which it falls will be the force of its impact and its power to generate the quickening impulse. All merely human efforts at social reform, rivers that do not rise in the Temple, are like the rivers in Mongolia, that run for a few miles and then get sucked up by the hot sands and are lost and nobody sees them any more. Only the perennial stream, that comes out from beneath the Temple threshold, can sustain itself in the desert, to say nothing of transforming the desert into a Garden of Eden. So moral and social and intellectual and political reformers may well go to Ezekiel, and learn that the ‘river of the water of life,’ which is to heal the barren and

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refresh the thirsty land, must come from below the Temple threshold.

II. Note the rapid increase of the stream.

The Prophet describes how his companion, the interpreter, measured down the stream a thousand cubits-about a quarter of a mile-and the waters were ankle-deep another thousand, making half a mile from the start, and the water was knee-deep. Another thousand-or three-quarters of a mile-and the water was waist-deep; another thousand-about a mile in all-and the water was unfordable, ‘waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.’ Where did the increase come from? There were no tributaries. We do not hear of any side-stream flowing into the main body. Where did the increase come from? It came from the abundant welling-up in the sanctuary. The fountain was the mother of the river-that is to say, God’s ideal for the world, for the Church, for the individual Christian, is rapid increase in their experience of the depth and the force of the stream of blessings which together make up salvation. So we come to a very sharp testing question. Will anybody tell me that the rate at which Christianity has grown for these nineteen centuries corresponds with Ezekiel’s vision-which is God’s ideal? Will any Christian man say, ‘My own growth in grace, and increase in the depth and fulness of the flow of the river through my spirit and my life correspond to that ideal’? A mile from the source the river is unfordable. How many miles from the source of our first experience do we stand? How many of us, instead of having ‘a river that could not be passed over, waters to swim in,’ have but a poor and all but stagnant feeble trickle, as shallow as or shallower than it was at first?

I was speaking a minute ago about Mongolian rivers. Australian rivers are more like some men’s lives. A chain of ponds in the dry season-nay! not even a chain, but a series, with no connecting channel of water between them. That is like a great many Christian people; they have isolated times when they feel the voice of Christ’s love, and yield themselves to the powers of the world to come, and then there are long intervals, when they feel neither the one nor the other. But the picture that ought to be realised by each of us is God’s ideal, which there is power in the gospel to make real in the case of every one of us, the rapid and continuous increase in the depth and in the scour of ‘the river of the water of life,’ that flows through our lives. Luther used to say, ‘If you want to clean out a dunghill, turn the Elbe into it.’ If you desire to have your hearts cleansed of all their foulness, turn the river into it. But it

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needs to be a progressively deepening river, or there will be no scour in the feeble trickle, and we shall not be a bit the holier or the purer for our potential and imperfect Christianity.

III. Lastly, note the effects of the stream.

These are threefold: fertility, healing, life. Fertility. In the East one condition of fertility is water. Irrigate the desert, and you make it a garden. Break down the aqueduct, and you make the granary of the world into a waste. The traveller as he goes along can tell where there is a stream of water, by the verdure along its banks. You travel along a plateau, and it is all baked and barren. You plunge into a w⤹, and immediately the ground is clothed with under-growth and shrubs, and the birds of the air sing among the branches. And so, says Ezekiel, wherever the river comes there springs up, as if by magic, fair trees ‘on the banks thereof, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed.’

Fertility comes second, the reception of the fertilising agent comes first. It is wasted time to tinker at our characters unless we have begun with getting into our hearts the grace of God, and the new spirit that will be wrought out by diligent effort into all beauty of life and character. Ezekiel seems to be copying the first psalm, or vice versa, the Psalmist is copying Ezekiel. At any rate, there is a verbal similarity between them, in that both dwell upon the unfading leaf of the tree that grows planted by rivers of water. And our text goes further, and speaks about perennial fruitfulness month by month, all the year round. In some tropical countries you will find blossoms, buds in their earliest stage, and ripened fruit all hanging upon one laden branch. Such ought to be the Christian life-continuously fruitful because dependent upon continual drawing into itself, by means of its roots and suckers, of the water of life by which we are fructified.

There is yet another effect of the waters-healing. As we said, Ezekiel takes great liberties with the geography of the Holy Land, levelling it all, so his stream makes nothing of the Mount of Olives, but flows due east until it comes to the smitten gorge of the Jordan, and then turns south, down into the dull, leaden waters of the Dead Sea, which it heals. We all know how these are charged with poison. Dip up a

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glassful anywhere, and you find it full of deleterious matter. They are the symbol of humanity, with the sin that is in solution all through it. No chemist can eliminate it, but there is One who can. ‘He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.’ The pure river of the water of life will cast out from humanity the malignant components that are there, and will sweeten it all. Ay, all, and yet not all, for very solemnly the Prophet’s optimism pauses, and he says that the salt marshes by the side of the sea are not healed. They are by the side of it. The healing is perfectly available for them, but they are not healed. It is possible for men to reject the influences that make for the destruction of sin and the establishment of righteousness. And although the waters are healed, there still remain the obstinate marshes with the white crystals efflorescing on their surface, and bringing salt and barrenness. You can put away the healing and remain tainted with the poison.

And then the last thought is the life-giving influence of the river. Everything lived whithersoever it went. Contrast Christendom with heathendom. Admit all the hollowness and mere nominal Christianity of large tracts of life in so-called Christian countries, and yet why is it that on the one side you find stagnation and death, and on the other side mental and manifold activity and progressiveness? I believe that the difference between ‘the people that sit in darkness’ and ‘the people that walk in the light is that one has the light and the other has not, and activity befits the light as torpor befits the darkness.

But there is a far deeper truth than that in the figure, a truth that I would fain lay upon the hearts of all my hearers, that unless we our own selves have this water of life which comes from the Sanctuary and is brought to us by Jesus Christ, ‘we are dead in trespasses and sins.’ The only true life is in Christ. ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’

EBC, "RENEWAL AND ALLOTMENT OF THE LAND

Ezekiel 47:1-23; Ezekiel 48:1-35

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IN the first part of the forty-seventh chapter the visionary form of the revelation, which had been interrupted by the important series of communications on which we have been so long engaged, is again resumed. The prophet, once more under the direction of his angelic guide, sees a stream of water issuing from the Temple buildings and flowing eastward into the Dead Sea. Afterwards he receives another series of directions relating to the boundaries of the land and its division among the twelve tribes. With this the vision and the book find their appropriate close.

I.

The Temple stream, to which Ezekiel’s attention is now for the first time directed, is a symbol of the miraculous transformation which the land of Canaan is to undergo in order to fit it for the habitation of Jehovah’s ransomed people. Anticipations of a renewal of the face of nature are a common feature of Messianic prophecy. They have their roots in the religious interpretation of the possession of the land as the chief token of the Divine blessing on the nation. In the vicissitudes of agricultural or pastoral life the Israelite read the reflection of Jehovah’s attitude towards Himself and His people: fertile seasons and luxuriant harvests were the sign of His favour; drought and famine were the proof that He was offended. Even at the best of times, however, the condition of Palestine left much to be desired from the husbandman’s point of view, especially in the kingdom of Judah. Nature was often stern and unpropitious, the cultivation of the soil was always attended with hardship and uncertainty, large tracts of the country were given over to irreclaimable barrenness. There was always a vision of better things possible, and in the last days the prophets cherished the expectation that that vision would be realised. When all causes of offence are removed from Israel and Jehovah smiles on His people, the land will blossom into supernatural fertility, the ploughman overtaking the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, the mountains dropping new wine and the hills melting. [Amos 9:13] Such idyllic pictures of universal plenty and comfort abound in the writings of the prophets, and are not wanting in the pages of Ezekiel. We have already had one in the description of the blessings of the Messianic kingdom; and we shall see that in this closing vision a complete remodelling of the land is presupposed, rendering it all alike suitable for the habitation of the tribes of Israel.

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The river of life is the most striking presentation of this general conception of Messianic felicity. It is one of those vivid images from Eastern life which, through the Apocalypse, have passed into the symbolism of Christian eschatology. "And He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruits every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." [Revelation 22:1-2] So writes the seer of Patmos, in words whose music charms the ear even of those to whom running water means much less than it did to a native of thirsty Palestine. But John had read of the mystic river in the pages of his favourite prophet before he saw it in vision. The close resemblance between the two pictures leaves no doubt that the origin of the conception is to be sought in Ezekiel’s vision. The underlying religious truth is the same in both representations, that the presence of God is the source from which the influences flow forth that renew and purify human existence. The tree of life on each bank of the river, which yields its fruit every month and whose leaves are for healing, is a detail transferred directly from Ezekiel’s imagery to fill out the description of the glorious city of God into which the nations of them that are saved are gathered.

But with all its idealism, Ezekiel’s conception presents many points of contact with the actual physiography of Palestine; it is less universal and abstract in its significance than that of the Apocalypse. The first thing that might have suggested the idea to the prophet is that the Temple mount had at least one small stream, whose "soft-flowing" waters were already regarded as a symbol of the silent and unobtrusive influence of the Divine presence in Israel. [Isaiah 8:6] The waters of this stream flowed eastward, but they were too scanty to have any appreciable effect on the fertility of the region through which they passed. Further, to the southeast of Jerusalem, between it and the Dead Sea, stretched the great wilderness of Judah, the most desolate and inhospitable tract in the whole country. There the steep declivity of the limestone range refuses to detain sufficient moisture to nourish the most meagre vegetation, although the few spots where wells are found, as at Engedi, are clothed with almost tropical luxuriance. To reclaim these barren slopes and render them fit for human industry, the Temple waters are sent eastward, making the desert to blossom as the rose. Lastly, there was the Dead Sea itself, in whose bitter waters no living thing can exist, the natural emblem of resistance to the purposes of Him who is the God of life. These different elements of the physical reality were familiar to Ezekiel, and come back to mind as he follows the course of the new

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Temple river, and observes the wonderful transformation which it is destined to effect. He first sees it breaking forth from the wall of the Temple at the right-hand side of the entrance, and flowing eastward through the courts by the south side of the altar. Then at the outer wall he meets it rushing from the south side of the eastern gate, and still pursuing its easterly course. At a thousand cubits from the sanctuary it is only ankle-deep, but at successive distances of a thousand cubits it reaches to the knees, to the loins, and becomes finally an impassable river. The stream is of course miraculous from source to mouth. Earthly rivers do not thus broaden and deepen as they flow, except by the accession of tributaries, and tributaries are out of the question here. Thus it flows on, with its swelling volume of water, through "the eastern circuit," "down to the Arabah" (the trough of the Jordan and the Dead Sea), and reaching the sea it sweetens its waters so that they teem with fishes of all kinds like those of the Mediterranean. Its uninviting shores become the scene of a busy and thriving industry; fishermen ply their craft from Engedi to Eneglaim, and the food supply of the country is materially increased. The prophet may not have been greatly concerned about this, but one characteristic detail illustrates his careful forethought in matters of practical utility. It is from the Dead Sea that Jerusalem has always obtained its supply of salt. The purification of this lake might have its drawbacks if the production of this indispensable commodity should be interfered with. Salt, besides its culinary uses, played an important part in the Temple ritual, and Ezekiel was not likely to forget it. Hence the strange but eminently practical provision that the shallows and marshes at the south end of the lake shall be exempted from the influence of the healing waters. "They are given for salt." (Ezekiel 47:11).

We may venture to draw one lesson for our own instruction from this beautiful prophetic image of the blessings that flow from a pure religion. The river of God has its source high up in the mount where Jehovah dwells in inaccessible holiness, and where the white-robed priests minister ceaselessly before Him; but in its descent it seeks out the most desolate and unpromising region in the country and turns it into a garden of the Lord. While the whole land of Israel is to be renewed and made to minister to the good of man in fellowship with God, the main stream of fertility is expended in the apparently hopeless task of reclaiming the Judean desert and purifying the Dead Sea. It is an emblem of the earthly ministry of Him who made Himself the friend of publicans and sinners, and lavished the resources of His grace and the wealth of His affection on those who were deemed beyond ordinary possibility of salvation. It is to be feared, however, that the practice of most Churches has been too much the reverse of this. They have been tempted to confine

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the water of life within fairly respectable channels, amongst the prosperous and contented, the occupants of happy homes, where the advantages of religion are most likely to be appreciated. That seems to have been found the line of least resistance, and in times when spiritual life has run low it has been counted enough to keep the old ruts filled and leave the waste places and stagnant waters of our civilisation ill provided with the means of grace. Nowadays we are sometimes reminded that the Dead Sea must be drained before the gospel can have a fair chance of influencing human lives, and there may be much wisdom in the suggestion. A vast deal of social drainage may have to be accomplished before the word of God has free course. Unhealthy and impure conditions of life may be mitigated by wise legislation, temptations to vice may be removed, and vested interests that thrive on the degradation of human lives may be crushed by the strong arm of the community. But the true spirit of Christianity can neither be confined to the watercourses of religious habit, nor wait for the schemes of the social reformer. Nor will it display its powers of social salvation until it carries the energies of the Church into the lowest haunts of vice and misery with an earnest desire to seek and to save that which is lost. Ezekiel had his vision, and he believed in it. He believed in the reality of God’s presence in the sanctuary and in the stream of blessings that flowed from His throne, and he believed in the possibility of reclaiming the waste places of his country for the kingdom of God. When Christians are united in like faith in the power of Christ and the abiding presence of His Spirit, we may expect to see times of refreshing from the presence of God and the whole earth filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

II.

Ezekiel’s map of Palestine is marked by something of the same mathematical regularity which was exhibited in his plan of the Temple. His boundaries are like those we sometimes see on the map of a newly settled country like America or Australia-that is to say, they largely follow the meridian lines and parallels of latitude, but take advantage here and there of natural frontiers supplied by rivers and mountain ranges. This is absolutely true of the internal divisions of the land between the tribes. Here the northern and southern boundaries are straight lines running east and west over hill and dale, and terminating at the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley, which form of course the western and eastern limits. As to the external delimitation of the country it is unfortunately not possible to speak with certainty. The eastern frontier is fixed by the Jordan and the Dead Sea so far as they

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go, and the western is the sea. But on the north and south the lines of demarcation cannot be traced, the places mentioned being nearly all unknown. The north frontier extends from the sea to a place called Hazar-enon, said to lie on the border of Hauran. It passes the "entrance to Hamath," and has to the north not only Hamath, but also the territory of Damascus. But none of the towns through which it passes-Hethlon, Berotha, Sibraim-can be identified, and even its general direction is altogether uncertain.

From Hazar-enon the eastern border stretches southward till it reaches the Jordan, and is prolonged south of the Dead Sea to a place called Tamar, also unknown. From this we proceed westwards by Kadesh till we strike the river of Egypt, the Wady el-Arish, which carries the boundary to the sea. It will be seen that Ezekiel, for reasons on which it is idle to speculate, excludes the transjordanic territory from the Holy Land. Speaking broadly, we may say that he treats Palestine as a rectangular strip of country, which he divides into transverse sections of indeterminate breadth, and then proceeds to parcel out these amongst the twelve tribes.

A similar obscurity rests on the motives which determined the disposition of the different tribes within the sacred territory. We can understand, indeed, why seven tribes are placed to the north and only five to the south of the capital and the sanctuary. Jerusalem lay much nearer the south of the land, and in the original distribution all the tribes had their settlements to the north of it except Judah and Simeon. Ezekiel’s arrangement seems thus to combine a desire for symmetry with a recognition of the claims of historical and geographic reality. We can also see that to a certain extent the relative positions of the tribes correspond with those they held before the Exile, although of course the system requires that they shall lie in a regular series from north to south. Dan, Asher, and Naphtali are left in the extreme north, Manasseh and Ephraim to the south of them, while Simeon lies as of old in the south with one tribe between it and the capital. But we cannot tell why Benjamin should be placed to the south and Judah to the north of Jerusalem, why Issachar and Zebulun are transferred from the far north to the south, or why Reuben and Gad are taken from the east of the Jordan to be settled one to the north and the other to the south of the city. Some principle of arrangement there must have been in the mind of the prophet, and several have been suggested; but it is perhaps better to confess that we have lost the key to his meaning.

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The prophet’s interest is centred on the strip of land reserved for the sanctuary and public purposes, which is subdivided and measured out with the utmost precision. It is twenty-five thousand cubits (about eight and one-third miles) broad, and extends right across the country. The two extremities east and west are the crown lands assigned to the prince for the purposes we have already seen.

In the middle a square of twenty-five thousand cubits is marked off; this is the "oblation" or sacred offering of land, in the middle of which the Temple stands. This again is subdivided into three parallel sections, as shown in the accompanying diagram. The most northerly, ten thousand cubits in breadth, is assigned to the Levites; the central portion, including the sanctuary, to the priests; and the remaining five thousand cubits is a "profane place" for the city and its common lands. The city itself is a square of four thousand five hundred cubits, situated in the middle of this southmost section of the oblation. With its free space of two hundred and fifty cubits in width belting the wall it fills the entire breadth of the section: the communal possessions flanking it on either hand, just as the prince’s domain does the "oblation" as a whole. The produce of these lands is "for food to them that ‘serve’ (i.e., inhabit) the city." (Ezekiel 48:18) Residence in the capital, it appears, is to be regarded as a public service. The maintenance of the civic life of Jerusalem was an object in which the whole nation was interested, a truth symbolised by naming its twelve gates after the twelve sons of Jacob. Hence, also, its population is to be representative of all the tribes of Israel, and whoever comes to dwell there is to have a share in the land belonging to the city. (Ezekiel 48:19) But evidently the legislation on this point is incomplete. How were the inhabitants of the capital to be chosen out of all the tribes? Would its citizenship be regarded as a privilege or as a onerous responsibility? Would it be necessary to make a selection out of a host of applications, or would special inducements have to be offered to procure a sufficient population? To these questions the vision furnishes no answer, and there is nothing to show whether Ezekiel contemplated the possibility that residence in the new city might present few attractions and many disadvantages to an agricultural community such as he had in view. It is a curious incident of the return from the Exile that the problem of peopling Jerusalem emerged in a more serious form than Ezekiel from his ideal point of view could have foreseen. We read that "the rulers of the people dwelt at Jerusalem: the rest of the people also cast lots, to bring one of ten to dwell in Jerusalem, the holy city, and nine parts in [other] cities. And the people blessed all the men that willingly offered themselves to dwell at Jerusalem." [Nehemiah 11:1-2] There may have been causes for this general reluctance which

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are unknown to us, but the principal reason was doubtless the one which has been hinted at, that the new colony lived mainly by agriculture, and the district in the immediate vicinity of the capital was not sufficiently fertile to support a large agricultural population. The new Jerusalem was at first a somewhat artificial foundation, and a city too largely developed for the resources of the community of which it was the centre. Its existence was necessary more for the protection and support of the Temple than for the ordinary ends of civilisation; and hence to dwell in it was for the majority an act of self-sacrifice by which a man was felt to deserve well of his country. And the only important difference between the actual reality and Ezekiel’s ideal is that in the latter the supernatural fertility of the land and the reign of universal peace obviate the difficulties which the founders of the post-exilic theocracy had to encounter.

This seeming indifference of the prophet to the secular interests represented by the metropolis strikes us as a singular feature in his programme. It is strange that the man who was so thoughtful about the salt-pans of the Dead Sea should pass so lightly over the details of the reconstruction of a city. But we have had several intimations that this is not the department of things in which Ezekiel’s hold on reality is most conspicuous. We have already remarked on the boldness of the conception which changes the site of the capital in order to guard the sanctity of the Temple. And now, when its situation and form are accurately defined, we have no sketch of municipal institutions, no hint of the purposes for which the city exists, and no glimpse of the busy and varied activities which we naturally connect with the name. If Ezekiel thought of it at all, except as existing on paper, he was probably interested in it as furnishing the representative congregation on minor occasions of public worship, such as the Sabbaths and new moons, When the whole people could not be expected to assemble. The truth is that the idea of the city in the vision is simply an abstract religious symbol, a sort of epitome and concentration of theocratic life. Like the figure of the prince in earlier chapters, it is taken from the national institutions which perished at the Exile; the outline is retained, the typical significance is enhanced, but the form is shadowy and indistinct, the colour and variety of concrete reality are absent. It was perhaps a stage through which political conceptions had to pass before their religious meaning could be apprehended. And yet the fact that the symbol of the Holy City is preserved is deeply suggestive and indeed scarcely less important in its own way than the retention of the type of the king. Ezekiel can no more think of the land without a capital than of the state without a prince. The word "city"-synonym of the fullest and most intense form of life, of life regulated by law and elevated by devotion to a common ideal, in which

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every worthy faculty of human nature is quickened by the close and varied intercourse of men with each other-has definitely taken its place in the vocabulary of religion. It is there, not to be superseded, but to be refined and spiritualised, until the city of God, glorified in the praises of Israel, becomes the inspiration of the loftiest thought and the most ardent longing of Christendom. And even for the perplexing problems that the Church has to face at this day there is hardly a more profitable exercise of the Christian imagination than to dream with practical intent of the consecration of civic life through the subjection of all its influences to the ends of the Redeemer’s kingdom.

On the other hand we must surely recognise that this vision of a Temple and a city separated from each other-where religious and secular interests are as it were concentrated at different points, so that the one may be more effectually subordinated to the other-is not the final and perfect vision of the kingdom of God. That ideal has played a leading and influential part in the history of Christianity. It is essentially the ideal formulated in Augustine’s great work on the city of God, which ruled the ecclesiastical polity of the mediaeval Church. The State is an unholy institution; it is an embodiment of the power of this present evil world: the true city of God is the visible Catholic Church, and only by subjection to the Church can the State be redeemed from itself and be made a means of blessing. That theory served a providential purpose in preserving the traditions of Christianity through dark and troubled ages, and training the rude nations of Europe in purity and righteousness and reverence for that by which God makes Himself known. But the Reformation was, amongst other things, a protest against this conception of the relation of Church to State, of the sacred to the secular. By asserting the right of each believer to deal with Christ directly, without the mediation of Church or priest it broke down the middle wall of partition between religion and everyday duty; it sanctified common life by showing how a man may serve God as a citizen in the family or the workshop better than in the cloister or at the altar. It made the kingdom of God to be a present power wherever there are lives transformed by love to Christ and serving their fellow men for His sake. And if Catholicism may find some plausible support for its theory in Ezekiel and the Old Testament theocracy in general, Protestants may perhaps with better right appeal to the grander ideal represented by the new Jerusalem of the Apocalypse-the city that needs no Temple, because the Lord Himself is in her midst.

"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of 29

heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." [Revelation 21:2-3; Revelation 21:22-23]

It may be difficult for us amid the entanglements of the present to read that vision aright-difficult to say whether it is on earth or in heaven that we are to look for the city in which there is no Temple. Worship is an essential function of the Church of Christ; and so long as we are in our earthly abode worship will require external symbols and a visible organisation. But this at least we know, that the will of God must be done on earth as it is in heaven. The true kingdom of God is within us; and His presence with men is realised, not in special religious services which stand apart from our common life, but in the constant influence of His Spirit, forming our characters after the image of Christ, and permeating all the channels of social intercourse and public action, until everything done on earth is to the glory of our Father which is in heaven. That is the ideal set forth by the coming of the holy city of God, and only in this way. can we look for the fulfilment of the promise embodied in the new name of Ezekiel’s city, Jehovah-shammah, -

THE LORD IS THERE.

2 He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the

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south side.

BARNES, "Out of the way of the gate northward - Rather, by the way of the northward gate.

CLARKE, "There ran out waters - mayim mephaccim, the waters seem מים מפכיםto have been at first in small quantity; for the words imply that they oozed or dropped out. They were at first so small that they came guttatim, drop by drop; but they increased so, that they became a river in which one could swim.

GILL, "Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward,.... Out of the inward court where he was, by the way of the north gate, the eastern gate being shut: and led me about the way without unto the utter gate, by the way that looketh eastward; and from thence he had him round to the outward eastern gate, where he was at first, Eze_40:6, to meet the flow of waters that came through the inward and outward courts eastward: and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side; that is, on the south side of the gate, in a small quantity, and in a very still and easy way, like water out of the mouth of a vial, as the word (b) signifies. So Bartenora (c), who understands this gate of the water gate, interprets the right side of the south; and observes, that the prophet first saw the waters come out very small, like the horns of a locust; but when they came to this gate, they became like water as it flows out of the mouth of a small pitcher: and from this whole account of the waters, it is plain they cannot be understood literally, but figuratively; and which confirm this to be the sense of the whole vision. They may be applied unto, and serve to illustrate, the love of God; the secret spring of which is in the heart and will of God; ran under ground from all eternity; channelled in Christ; broke up and issued forth in the mission of him into the world, under the threshold of him, the door of the church; and in and by him, the altar, sacrifice, and propitiation; wherein the love of God in an especial manner is manifested; and which has its heights and depths, immeasurable and unfathomable, Eph_3:18, these waters also may be applied to the grace of the Spirit of God in regeneration and conversion; which is compared to water, for its cleansing, fructifying, and refreshing nature; to "waters", for the abundance of it; and this flows from the God of all grace through Christ, and out of his fulness is gradually increased, and becomes a well, yea, rivers of living water, Joh_7:37, but it seems best to understand them of the Gospel, and the doctrines of it; which, like water, cools those who are inflamed with the heat of the fiery law; extinguishes the thirst of sensible sinners, and refreshes them; cleanses and purifies their souls, which is instrumentally done with the washing of water by the word; and makes them fruitful and

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flourishing: this is not of men, but God; comes from heaven, the holy of holies; and out of the house and church of God; from Zion and Jerusalem, by Christ the door, and points to him the way; and is chiefly concerning him, the altar, his sacrifice and satisfaction, peace, atonement, and propitiation by him; see Isa_2:3.

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:2. Then brought he me out of the way, &c.— Out by the way, &c. Houbigant. There ran out waters on the right side; that is to say, from the south of the temple to the east; therefore the measure of the thousand cubits, which is made afterwards, is made from west to east, and the farther the river recedes from the temple the deeper it becomes. See Houbigant.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:2 Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led me about the way without unto the utter gate by the way that looketh eastward; and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side.

Ver. 2. And, behold, there ran out waters.] As out of a vial.

On the right side.] The right side is a place of honour and defence. The doctrine of the gospel hath the pre-eminence, and is maintained by the right hand of God against all opposites.

PETT, "Verse 2

‘Then he brought me out by the way of the north gate, and led me round by the outside route to the outer gate, that is, by the route of the gate that looks towards the east. And behold, there ran out waters on the south side.’

Ezekiel was now taken by way of the north gate to the outside of the east gate which was permanently closed because of its holiness, and the waters which were coming from the sanctuary were making their way under the gate on the south side. The flow was still not very large, but its source and passage was holy.

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In a larger context we have here a combination of the lifegiving Spirit, proceeding from the place of the throne of God, and then through the holy place of the Prince, before flowing from the temple to the world.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:2

As the prophet could not follow the stream's course by passing through the east inner gate, which was shut on the six working days (Ezekiel 46:1), or through the east outer gate, which was always shut (Ezekiel 44:1), his conductor led him outside of the inner and outer courts by the north gates (literally, to the north (outer) gate), and brought him round by the way without unto the outer gate by the way that looketh eastward. This can only import that, on reaching the north outer gate, the prophet and his guide turned eastward and moved round to the east outer gate. The Revised Version reads, by the way of the gate that looketh toward the east; but as the east outer gate was the terminus ad quem of the prophet's walk, it is better to translate, to the gate looking eastward. When the prophet had arrived thither, he once more beheld that there ran out—literally, trickled forth ( מפכים occurring here only in Scripture, and being derived from פכה, "to drop down," or "weep")—waters . Obviously these were the same as Ezekiel had already observed. On (literally, from) the right side; or, shoulder. This, again, signified the corner where the east wall of the temple and the south wall of the gate joined.

3 As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits[a] and then led me through water that was ankle-deep.

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BARNES, "The ancles - This may coincide with the step gained in the baptism of Cornelius Acts 10, and the opening of the Church to the Gentiles. The dispersion which had followed the martyrdom of Stephen Act_11:19, had carried believers into various countries, and so paved the way for the foundation of Gentile Churches.

CLARKE 3-5, "He measured a thousand cubits - the waters were to the Ankles; a thousand more, - the waters were to the Knees; a thousand more, - they became a River that could not be forded. The waters were risen, and they were waters to Swim in.

I. This may be applied to the gradual discoveries of the plan of salvation, -1. In the patriarchal ages.2. In the giving of the law.3. In the ministry of John the Baptist. And,4. In the full manifestation of Christ by the communication of the Holy Ghost.

II. This vision may be applied also to the growth of a believer in the grace and knowledge of God. There is -1. The seed of the kingdom.2. The blade from that seed.3. The ear out of that blade. And,4. The full corn in that ear.

III. It may be applied to the discoveries a penitent believer receives of the mercy of God in his salvation. He is -1. A little child, born of God, born from above, and begins to taste the bread of life, and live on the heavenly food.2. He grows up and increases in stature and strength, and becomes a young man.3. He becomes matured in the Divine life, and has his spiritual senses exercised so as to become a father in Christ. In other words, the grace of God appears to come drop by drop; it is given as it can be used; it is a seed of light, and multiplies itself. The penitent at first can scarcely believe the infinite goodness of his Maker; he however ventures to follow on with the conducting angel, the minister of the Gospel, in his descriptions of the plenitude of that salvation, provided in that living Temple in which alone the well-spring of life is to be found.4. In thus following on to know the Lord he finds a continual increase of light and life, till at last he is carried by the streams of grace to the ocean of eternal mercy; then

“Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea, And lost in his immensity.”IV. These waters may be considered as a type of the progress which Christianity shall make in the world.

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1. There were only a few poor fishermen.2. Afterwards many Jews.3. Then the Gentiles of Asia Minor and Greece.4. The continent and isles of Europe. And,5. Now spreading through Africa, Asia, and America, at present these waters are no longer a river, but an immense sea; and the Gospel fishers are daily bringing multitudes of souls to Christ.

GILL, "And when the man that had the line in his hand,.... The same as in Eze_40:3 and is no other than Christ, who appeared in a human form to the prophet; and who hitherto had only made use of the measuring reed in taking the dimensions of the house, and what appertained to it; but now he uses the line of flax he had in his hand, in measuring the waters as they ran; by which line is meant the Scriptures, the word of God, by which all doctrines are to be measured: this is the rule that both preachers and hearers are to go by; and, as by the direction of this person the waters flowed where he would have them, so the doctrines of the Gospel are preached by the order of Christ where he pleases; see Luk_24:47, and these move in a direct line, as those waters did; error is crooked, and has its windings and turnings; but truth is straight and even; all the words of Wisdom are right, and there is nothing froward, perverse, or crooked in them, Pro_8:8, went forth eastward; which was the course the waters took by his direction; the Gospel was first spread in the eastern part of the world, in Asia, where many churches were planted by it; it has been since in the south, in Africa, particularly in the times of Austin, when these waters, the doctrines of grace, flowed largely; and they have been since in the north and west, in Europe, in our northern climes; all which perhaps may be signified by the right side, or south side, by which these waters flowed, and by the prophet's going to the north gate, and about, to see them; but in the latter day they will move eastward again, when the kings of the east and their kingdoms shall become Christ's; see Rev_16:12, he measured a thousand cubits; or, "a thousand by the cubit (d)"; the Targum is, "a thousand cubits by the cubit;'' with his line from the eastern gate of the house, at the right side of which the waters ran out; this was about half a mile: and he brought me through the waters: not the thousand cubits he had measured; but when he came to the end of them, he made the prophet to cross the waters, to go through them across, that he might observe the depth of them: and the waters were to the ankles; were ankle deep, a few inches: or, "to the soles"; for, as R. Jonah thinks, א may be additional; and פס, in the Syriac language, signifies a part of the hand, Dan_5:5, and, applied to the feet, designs the soles of them; and then the sense is, the waters were so shallow, that they only covered the soles of the feet: this

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may signify the ministry of John the Baptist, who, though greater than the prophets, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than he; and of the disciples of Christ, before the effusion of the Spirit: or may design the more easy doctrines of the Gospel; those waters which Christ's lambs may wade in; that milk which new born babes desire, and are fed with; those plain truths of the word, which those of the weakest capacity are able to take in, receive, and embrace; in the knowledge of which, though fools, they err not; such as salvation by Christ alone; justification by his righteousness; peace and pardon by his blood; which are so plain, as to be understood by every truly gracious soul, though of ever so mean a capacity: or it may intimate the small spread of the Gospel at first in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

HENRY 3-7, "II. The progress and increase of these waters: They went forth eastward (Eze_47:3), towards the east country (Eze_47:8), for so they were directed. The prophet and his guide followed the stream as it ran down from the holy mountains, and when they had followed it about a thousand cubits they went over across it, to try the depth of it, and it was to the ankles, Eze_47:3. Then they walked along on the bank of the river on the other side, a thousand cubits more, and then, to try the depth of it, they waded through it the second time, and it was up to their knees, Eze_47:4. They walked along by it a thousand cubits more, and then forded it the third time, and then it was up to their middle - the waters were to the loins. They then walked a thousand cubits further, and attempted to repass it the fourth time, but found it impracticable: The waters had risen, by the addition either of brooks that fell into it above ground or by springs under ground, so that they were waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over, Eze_47:5. Note, 1. The waters of the sanctuary are running waters, as those of a river, not standing waters, as those of a pond. The gospel, when it was first preached, was still spreading further. Grace in the soul is still pressing forward; it is an active principle, plus ultra - onward still, till it comes to perfection. 2. They are increasing waters. This river, as it runs constantly, so the further it goes the fuller it grows. The gospel-church was very small in its beginnings, like a little purling brook; but by degrees it came to be to the ankles, to the knees: many were added to it daily, and the grain of mustard seed grew up to be a great tree. The gifts of the Spirit increase by being exercised, and grace, where it is true, is growing, like the light of the morning, which shines more and more to the perfect day. 3. It is good for us to follow these waters, and go along with them. Observe the progress of the gospel in the world; observe the process of the work of grace in the heart; attend the motions of the blessed Spirit, and walk after them, under a divine guidance, as Ezekiel here did. 4. It is good to be often searching into the things of God, and trying the depth of them, not only to look on the surface of those waters, but to go to the bottom of them as far as we can, to be often digging, often diving, into the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, as those who covet to be intimately acquainted with those things. 5. If we search into the things of God, we shall find some things very plain and easy to be understood, as the waters that were but to the ankles, others more difficult, and which require a deeper search, as the water to the knees or the loins, and some quite beyond our reach, which we cannot penetrate into, or account for, but, despairing to find the bottom, must, as St. Paul, sit down at the brink, and adore the depth, Rom_11:33. It has been often said that in the scripture, like these waters of the sanctuary, there are some places so shallow that a lamb may wade through them, and others so deep that an elephant may swim in them. And it is our wisdom, as the prophet

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here, to begin with that which is most easy, and get our hearts washed with those things before we proceed to that which is dark and hard to be understood; it is good to take our work before us.

COKE, "Verses 3-5Ezekiel 47:3-5. And when the man—went forth— The gradual rise of the waters denotes the large effusion of the Spirit, which was very remarkable at the first publication of the gospel, and its wonderful increase from small beginnings; as well as some future and large effusion of that Spirit, when God shall be pleased to pour it forth upon the Jews for their conversion. The supplies of grace are often represented under the metaphor of a river, and streams watering a dry and thirsty soil, and cleansing and making fruitful the ground where they pass. Many of the ideas in this chapter are taken from the terrestrial paradise; see Ezekiel 47:7; Ezekiel 47:12 which ideas are also carried to the celestial paradise by St. John. Revelation 22.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:3 And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters [were] to the ankles.

Ver. 3. And when the man that had the line in his hand.] The man Christ Jesus, the sole architect of his Church, and measurer of his gospel; and that by his gospel, which is the line in his hand, nec solum recta, sed et regula, not only by riht but also by rule.

He measured a thousand cubits.] It was not for nothing that Plato said, O Yεος αιει γαωμετρει, God is always measuring the world.

The waters were to the ankles.] Grace is but a small thing at first; no more is the gospel. [Matthew 13:31-33] The Church were at first but a very few, [Acts 1:15] that is, one hundred and twenty, of all the great multitudes which had formerly followed Jesus: Sed vix diligitur Iesus propter Iesum. It was more for the loaves than any great love that the most followed him.

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PETT, "Verses 3-6

‘When the man went forth eastward with the line in his hand, he measured a thousand cubits, and he caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were to the ankles. Again he measured a thousand, and caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand and caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were to the loins. Afterward he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be forded (‘be passed through’). And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen?” ’

The flow of water now grew in volume, gradually growing deeper and deeper, until at length it was too deep for a man to stand up in. That this multiplying of the water was intended to be miraculous cannot be doubted, and evoked the man’s question. This was no natural river. There were no streams flowing into the flow, so that its growth was unnatural and could only be by the mighty working of God. Notice its growth in stages, a fact deliberately drawn out by the measuring every thousand cubits. It was a symbol of the mighty working of the Spirit of God beginning in a gradual work that grew and grew until it achieved its fulfilment in waters that bore a man so that he could not resist it.

We note in passing that although Ezekiel was made to paddle in the river and walk through the river there is no suggestion that he was made to swim in it. No doubt he could not swim.

No Israelite would have doubted that this was the River of God that was full of water (Psalms 65:9), as had been that in Eden, sufficient to supply four great rivers (Genesis 2:10). Isaiah 33:21 spoke of God’s blessing as being like a place where Yahweh would be with His people in majesty, in a place of broad rivers and streams, but without rowing galley or gallant ship, in other words a heavenly river unaffected by man.

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And we have been privileged to see the far end of the streamlet as it has flowed and expanded through the centuries, from the small beginnings of the work of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest it grew through the centuries through many godly men until it became the work of John the Baptiser (Malachi 4:6), the ministry of Jesus (John 3:5-6; John 4:10; John 4:14), and the Gospel flowing out through His disciples, through the ages, to the world (John 7:37-39). All coming from the flow from the heavenly temple as it grew and grew. And one day we shall see its glorious final result in the river of water of life in the new earth, in Paradise (Revelation 22:1-5, which is largely based on this chapter).

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:3

Having emerged from the corner of the east outer gate in drops, the stream, which had not swollen in its passage across the outer court and under the temple wall, speedily exhibited a miraculous increase in depth, and therefore in volume. Having advanced eastward along the course of the stream an accurately measured distance of a thousand cubits (about one-third of a mile), the prophet's guide brought, or caused him to pass, through the waters, when he found that they were to the ankles; or, were waters of the ankles, as the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate, Keil, Kliefoth, Ewald, and Smend translate, rather than "water of the foot-soles," as Gesenius and Havernick render, meaning," water that hitherto had only been deep enough to wet the soles." The ὕδωρ ἀφέσεως, or "water of vanishing," of the LXX,, is based on the idea of "failing," "ceasing," "coming to an end," which appears to be the root-conception of (see Genesis 47:15, Genesis 47:16; Psalms 77:9; Isaiah 16:4).

4 He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist.

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BARNES, "The knees - The mission of Paul and Barnabas Act_13:1-4 is another marked epoch in the Church’s history; and the time of Paul’s martyrdom denotes an increase in the Gentile Church, which corresponds with the waters reaching the loins.

GILL, "And again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees,.... The man with his line measured another thousand cubits straight on from the first; and then bid the prophet cross and ford them again, and then they were knee deep: again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins; a third time he measured a thousand cubits still onward, and ordered the prophet to wade through them, when they were risen so high as to reach his loins. The waters to the knees and loins may signify the greater knowledge of the Gospel, and the mysteries of it, the apostles had after the Spirit was poured forth; and the greater spread of it in the world, among Jews and Gentiles: or else may design those doctrines of the Gospel, and mysteries of grace, which are more sublime, and more difficult to understand; which require some pains to search into, and get the knowledge of; as concerning predestination, election, the covenant of grace, and the eternal transactions between the Father and the Son, &c. which are meat for strong men, who have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:4 Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters [were] to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters [were] to the loins.

Ver. 4. Again he measured a thousand.] This is a number of perfection. The gospel is a perfect doctrine, and is "able to make the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished (or perfected) unto all good works." [2 Timothy 3:17]

The waters were to the knees.] Grace grows by degrees; and the Scriptures have their shallows wherein the lamb may wade, like as they have their profundities wherein the elephant himself may swim. Augustine (a) condemned the Holy Scriptures at first, as neither eloquent nor deep enough for the elevation of his wit. But afterwards, (b) when he was both a better and a wiser man, he saw his own

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shallowness, and admired the never enough adored depth of God’s holy oracles.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:4

At a second and a third distance of a thousand cubits the same process was repeated when the waters were found to be first waters to the knees, and secondly waters to (or, of) the loins. The unusual expression, מים ברכים, instead מי, as in the similar expressions before and after, may have been chosen, Keil suggests, in order to avoid resemblance to the phrase, מימי רגלים in Isaiah 36:12 (Keri)—not a likely explanation. Havernick describes it simply as an instance of bold emphasis. Schroder breaks it up into two clauses, thus: "waters, to the knees they reach." Smend changes מים into מי.

5 He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross.

BARNES, "The rivers in Palestine were for the most part mere watercourses, dry in summer, in winter carrying the water along the wadys to the sea. The river of the vision is to have a continuous flow.

Waters to swim in - When under Constantine the Roman empire had become Christian, the Church may be contemplated as the full river, to flow on through time until the final completion of Isaiah’s prophecy Isa_11:9.

GILL, "Afterward he measured a thousand,.... A fourth time a thousand cubits. 41

Some think these four measurings respect the preaching of the Gospel in the four parts of the world; but rather they refer to four remarkable seasons of the ministry of it; as in the times of John the Baptist, and the disciples of Christ before his death; in the primitive churches of the three first centuries; at the time of the Reformation; and in the latter day glory, which is the fourth and last measuring: and it was a river that I could not pass over; the prophet could not set his foot on the bottom, and wade through it, and cross over it, as he had done before: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in; not to walk in: a river that could not be passed over; by any man, on his feet; only by swimming, and perhaps not by that, at least not without difficulty: this may signify the large spread of the Gospel in the latter day, when the earth shall be filled with it, as the waters cover the sea; and the great light into it, and knowledge of it, that men shall then have, Isa_11:9, and yet that there are some doctrines exceeding deep, out of the reach and penetration of men, called the deep things of God, which human reason cannot attain, and where it cannot fix its foot, 1Co_2:9, and which are only to be reached and embraced in the swimming arms of faith; and, though believed, cannot be accounted for, as to the modus of them, and are not to be dived into; such as the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, and the distinct manner of their subsisting in it; the generation of the Son; the procession of the Spirit; the incarnation of Christ; the union of the two natures in his person; the resurrection of the dead, &c.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:5 Afterward he measured a thousand; [and it was] a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.

Ver. 5. A river that could not be passed over.] Representing, as the fathomless depth of the Scriptures - which is such as that we may well do by it as the Romans did by a lake, the depth whereof they could not sound, they dedicated it to Victory - so the abundance of spiritual graces in the Church, the love of Christ which passeth all knowledge, [Ephesians 3:19] the over abounding goodness of God, [1 Timothy 1:14] the super pleonasm of it, as the apostle hath it there. Oh, saith Chrysostom, speaking of this subject, I am like a man digging in a deep spring: I stand here, and the water riseth upon me; and I stand there, and still the water riseth upon me. It is indeed a sea that hath neither bank nor bottom.

PULPIT, "After a fourth distance of a thousand cubits, the waters had risen, or, lifted themselves up (comp. Job 8:11, in which the verb is used of a plant growing up), and become waters to swim in—literally, waters of swimming ( שחו occurs only

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here; the noun צפה only in Ezekiel 32:6)—a river that could not be passed over, on account of its depth. The word נחל was applied either to a river that constantly flowed from a fountain, as the Amen, or to a winter torrent that springs up from rain or snow upon the mountains, and disappears in summer like the Kedron, which had seldom any water in it (see Robinson's 'Bibl. Res.,' 1.402). That Ezekiel's river broadened and deepened so suddenly, and apparently without receiving into it any tributaries, clearly pointed to miraculous action.

PARKER, " Curious Things In LifeThis chapter is a chapter of measurement. Everything is meted out, as it were, by so many cubits and inches. So we read, "he measured," "again he measured," and "again he measured," and in the fifth verse, "afterward he measured." It was a man who represented God. Thus the Lord shows us how everything is measured out. There is so much, and there is no more. You may measure it over and over again, sometimes with suspicion and unbelief, but it all comes to the same total. Everything is staked out, marked down, appointed. The voice is very dogmatic:—"This is the north side" ( Ezekiel 47:17); "This is the east side" ( Ezekiel 47:18); "This is the south side" ( Ezekiel 47:19); "This is the west side" ( Ezekiel 47:20). "So shall ye divide." Everything is done for us in grand totals. Within the main boundaries we do a great deal of detail, and so foolish are we and so easily imposed upon that sometimes we think we fix the main boundaries themselves. If we could but know that everything—birth, death, riches, poverty—is marked out, and that we live within positive bounds, we might make a great deal more of our strength, and we might spend to greater advantage the solicitudes which are now wasted upon impossibilities. Am I a whale, that thou hast set a watch over me? Am I a sea, that thou hast written round about my foaming billows, Hitherto, but no further? We see this illustrated every day, and yet every day we doubt it or deny it, and the day following we go out as if we had learned nothing. We have added some lamps to the thoroughfares, but we have not extended the horizon one ten thousandth part of an inch in all the ages of human history. No, we are committed to detailed work, comparatively small interior work, but with the four points and the great outline of history we have simply nothing to do. God is the Measurer, and all things are meted out. What, then, is the suggestion of wisdom? Surely it Isaiah , Lord, teach me where I am bounded, and how I am limited, and help me with patience and eager expectancy to do my little day"s work with all industriousness and heart-loyalty, knowing that that servant shall be blessed who shall be found working steadily at his humble lot whenever his Lord cometh. By following out this doctrine of measurement we shall get rid of a great deal of fret and worry and excitement, and

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we shall be able to welcome weird-looking guests into the house, and say, For God"s sake you are welcome, though we do not know you, and we do not like you at first; the Lord sent you this way; and presently that weird face will become beauteous as the face of a child-angel.

How curious is life, and from certain points how utterly unmanageable I From other points of view, how beauteous is life, how well-proportioned, and how easily handled if we would only keep our own hands off it, and let God do what he will! Look at your own industry and endeavour in the market-place, and in all the pursuits of business. What a curious law it is that in order to do a few things we must do many. In order to get six people to read what you have written you must probably address six thousand persons. If you knew beforehand the six who would read you would send direct intimation to them; and there would be an end of your trouble and expense; but you do not know them, and so to get at the six you must address the six thousand. There must be some moral and educational intent in all this; we must be illustrating some great doctrine or policy of Heaven. It is God"s own way; even the Lord, if we may say so reverently, is put to this selfsame trouble. He preaches the gospel to the whole world, and probably only one man replies. Here are mysteries we cannot solve; we can touch them at their remotest points, but on their innermost meaning we cannot dwell with ease, for we cannot comprehend the unspeakable and illimitable significance This one thing we know, that all tends in an educational direction. The things you do without any positive or profitable result are really profitable to you in another way. Your disappointments are your educators, as well as your satisfactions. You are taught patience, your ambition is limited if not rebuked; you say again and again, We must do a thousand things by way of endeavour in order to accomplish half a dozen things by way of positive and literal success. It is better that man is not omniscient; he would soon lose his omniscience, he would become proud of it. We cannot have one divine attribute only; we must have such a combination and interrelation of attributes as shall keep a balance, so that no man shall be top heavy, no man shall be overborne with one attribute that puts all his other attributes and features to shame. In unity is rest, in harmony is real progress. So we must be balanced on this side and on that; the thousand must be measured out. If there be a thousand and one, and a thousand, there will be loss of equipoise, and all such loss means unsteadiness, uncertainty, dissatisfaction. What money you could have saved if you had known how to go immediately and directly to the persons who wanted you! But you had to go up and down the world soliciting, trying, asking, appealing, wondering, and after many a snub and many a sneer and many a contempt meant to be cruel you did here and

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there light upon one who said, We have been waiting for you, we give you welcome. Why were you sent to all the inhospitable doors? To be taught, to be humbled, to be refined by chastening.

What a curious thing it is that though we know that only one can find the prize yet we all go out to seek for it! We are accustomed to the illustration of a treasure being lost in the darkness and on the broad thoroughfare. A thousand men get to know that a purse has been lost. It was only a purse, only one individual could find it and take it, and yet all the thousand are looking round and groping about for it. Do you not know that only one person can get that? You know it, but something says to you, Perhaps you are the one person. Could we just have that amount of faith in the Christian Church we should have a revival of godliness. Here is salvation; let us suppose that only one man can get it: who knows who that one man is? "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." Even suppose we knew that only one man in all the congregation could realise the Saviour"s presence, and all the advantages of the Saviour"s Cross, so long as we did not know who that one man was, should we not arise and strive mightily and cry loudly? Then who knows how human passion, the excited, ennobled pathos of the soul, might even move God himself to some unheard-of benevolence?

What is the meaning of all this? Even such apparently trifling circumstances as the possible finding of lost treasure should teach us some religious lesson. What if the Lord should say at last, when we say, "Master, we understood that many were called, but few were chosen; we understood that a certain number of persons were elect, and that the number could not be increased,"—what if he should say to us, "How do you know that you were excluded? and if you did not know that you were excluded, why did you not search and strive and try mightily? You were the man I saw seeking for the lost purse: thou wicked and slothful servant, out of thine own mouth I condemn thee." We had better seek and strive and work and pray vehemently and wait patiently, for, who can tell, it may be the meanest of us that is elected to some princedom in heaven. Never was earnestness disappointed, never did earnestness find the door shut. The earnest, the vehement in heart take the kingdom of heaven by force. God is willing, so to say, to be stormed by a besieging heart. It may be you might succeed; you cannot be sure that you are excluded even if we admit the doctrine of election in its most literal and even cruel form; unless you have a writing from heaven signed by God, who says, "You are excluded from my love,"

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you ought to try: and no man tries in vain who tries with his whole heart.

A still more extraordinary thing is this, and curious in its way, that although we know we may at any moment die our plans are laid as if we were going to live for ever. That, I repeat, is a circumstance so extraordinary as to be charged with religious suggestiveness. Ask any man how long he will live, and he will tell you he does not know. Ask him if he may this very day die, and he will say, Certainly, this very day I may cease to live upon the earth. Now examine his plans—his plans of business, his plans of home, his plans of education—and you will not find one of them limited to the day. And the most curious part of it is that the man cannot help it. He could not be bound by the sunrising and the sunsetting. He will tell you plaintively that he may never live to see the sunset, yet his whole life is set in plans that shall endure for years and ages. Why build this fine house? You may never live to see the roof put on. The man cannot help building it; that is not in his disposal. He was told to build it, and build it he must. If he had been told in plain terms, he might have resented the commandment, but there are many ways of telling men what to do without speaking the commandment in so many cold and measurable words: there is a pressure that is not speech. Can we for a moment imagine that there is nothing religiously suggestive in this action? Do we not contradict our own atheism and our own theories of annihilation by it? On paper we write ourselves down as annihilationists; we die like dogs, and there is an end of us. We do not live like dogs—how strange that in the hour and article of death our whole nature should be transformed, and that we who were men planning for immortality are content to go into the kennel and sigh out our last breath and be lost! It cannot be. There is something within the heart that says, No, this is not right; there may be mystery about it, and there may be perversion about it, but we are not the creatures of a day: so far as the body is concerned, we may go any moment, and yet even the body says, Work for tomorrow; build for posterity; write for the unborn ages; breathe out your poetry; if it be not understood now there shall come up a generation by-and-by that shall say no such singer ever charmed its imagination or delighted its heart. Yet we say posterity has done nothing for us. Why, it is posterity that inspires us.

We are not so much indebted to our ancestors as we are to the unborn ages. We feel they are coming, we are their housekeeper, we are preparing for them; we are saying, not in words, but in actions, The unborn must be prepared for—they must not come like starvelings into the world, we must get ready for them; we must get

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the library, and the fire, and all the house appointments duly arranged to receive the oncoming ages. Yet there are fools that tell us that they will do nothing for posterity because posterity has done nothing for them—a blank, palpable, absurd fallacy. The present is drawn upon by the future. I have no doubt about the immortality of man. Man now is immortal every day he lives; that is to say, he is immortal by some sign of his thought or action or plan or purpose. He never says, To-night at six o"clock I may be a dead Prayer of Manasseh , therefore I will draw my lines accordingly. He says, To-night at six o"clock I may be a dead Prayer of Manasseh , but the world will not be dead; the individual may go, but the race will remain; man dies, but humanity abides; and my last Acts , if it be my last Acts , upon earth, shall be an act of generous contribution to the progress of the total world. Do not stifle these voices. You need not give them any theological accent of any narrow or sectarian kind, yet you should not neglect their broadest moral suggestions. Instead of trying to make things less you should endeavour to make things greater; and in this spirit you will find that everything in life suggests the larger life. For that larger life, O my soul, prepare thyself. Such preparation comes by industry of every kind. In all labour there is profit. Even in the things you have done without result you have found some advantage to the soul if you have laboured faithfully. And as for that larger life, we know not what it Isaiah , it is enough to know meantime that it is larger. God is always enlarging and ennobling the outlook of man.

We might also notice as a curious thing in all this measurement, that when we have done our best there comes a point when we must simply leave results. We cannot follow our own labour beyond a certain point. The agriculturist has done what he can in the field; now, he says, I must wait. Can you not be more active in the field? No. Why do you not go into this ploughed and sown field every day and do something to show your activity? He says, I cannot, I must wait, I cannot hasten the sun or the processes of nature. So with the training of your children; all you can do is to show them a noble example. You can be chivalrous in the midst of your family, you can give them the best education in your power, you can encourage all that is good and beautiful in their nature, and then you must wait. You may have heartache, heartbreak, sorrow upon sorrow, tears may be your meat night and day, whilst you are continually mocked by the very presences that ought to have been your bodyguard and your loyalest allies and helpers in life; but having done a certain amount of work you simply now must wait, leave it, read the writing, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. And so with business. You can apparently be driving your business with tremendous energy which ends in nothing. Really a

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quiet industry may often do more than a vehement impotence. You can be industrious, faithful, honourable, generous, and having done all you can, not as an atheist, but as a believer in God, you must say, Now, Lord, the harvest is in thine hands: I have done what I can in my poor little field; thou knowest that I have spared no energy and no thought: now let the harvest be as thou wilt; if I come back in the autumn and find this field sterile, the day of harvest a day of sorrow, help me to say, Thy will be done: I will leave it all now; I have tried to be a faithful and honest servant; and then if the harvest be golden, abundant, and far beyond the resources of our accommodation, to God"s name be the praise; he always surprises us by the infinity, the boundlessness of his gifts. If tor a moment he disappoint us, and we say, "There is nothing," he comes and says, "For a small moment I have forsaken thee; I put all the field back that thou mightest learn how to pray some deeper, tenderer prayer; thou hast done it well, poor chastised soul: now with everlasting mercies will I gather thee." The disappointments are momentary, they act as foils to the eternal radiance of love.

There must be a point of trust in our life. We find it in business, we find it in investment, we find it in friendship. There comes a point when all we can do is to confide: and if we be disappointed in consequence of treachery, remember it is better to be wronged than to wrong; it is better to be betrayed than to be the betrayer. You act the gentleman, let others do what they may; you act the Christian, and let us in the sum-total of things find out who was right and who was wrong. Then consider that life is a plan. It is not a cloud; it could be more perfectly illustrated by geometry than by cloud and mist or vapour. It has its four points, its main boundaries, its architectural shape; its elevation imposing, and all its appointments detailed with scrupulous care towards the education and spiritual comfort of the inhabitant, Work on that plan, and all will be right. Ask for the plan every morning; go into the little office, and have a look at the paper. Here is the great skeleton-building with all its anatomy of scaffolding and planking: what is that little house or wooden shed outside? That is where the plan is kept. Why do men go in there now and then? To look at the plan. Can they not carry the plan in their heads? Not well. Can they not make the plan as they go on? No. Architecture is not conjecture. It is settled, designed; every little part mapped out, and put down and set to scale. And art thou, poor fool, building a life-house without a plan? The only man who has ever grasped life in all its bearings and relationships and issues is the Son of God.

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You can hew away at this old book called the Bible as much as you please, you cannot get away from this living and all-dominating fact, that no man known to history has so laid hold of life in all its depth and length and breadth and height, in all its pain, tragedy, agony, destiny, in all its discipline, education, and culture, with such grasp, such clearness, and such wisdom as it has been realised and provided for by the Christ of God. There are other religions, and many of them fine, fantastic speculation, beautiful, cloudy, rainbow-like dreaming; but for culture of the soul, for discipline of the will, for stirring the whole nature into benevolent impulse towards other men, Christianity stands alone. To that Christ I ask my fellow-men; to that Christ I would go every day and say, Lord Jesus, what is the next thing to be done? and tell me how to do it, and never leave me one moment to myself: measure out the thousand cubits; tell me which is the north side, the south side, the west side, the east side; and if it comes to a great fight, show me how to stand, how to move, how to stretch: Lord, be with me all the time, till "the hurly-burly"s done," till "the battle"s fought and won." Given a young man who goes out to make his own fortune and his own destiny, and you have an image of folly: given a young soul who says, As everything else is meted out, measured, adjusted, and balanced, mayhap my poor little life is treated in the same way; I will go to the divine Measurer, and he will tell me within what lines to work, where to stop and how to live—and in that young soul you have an image of Wisdom.

6 He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?”Then he led me back to the bank of the river.

GILL, "And he said unto me, son of man, hast thou seen this? &c. That is, the man that measured the waters said to the prophet, hast thou carefully observed all this from whence the waters flowed? from what small beginnings they rose, and gradually increased? how they first issued forth, as out of a vial; and now, in the space of about two or three miles, are become a deep river, and impassable? it is right and profitable to observe the rise and progress of the Gospel; what a spread it has had in the world, and

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what it will have: then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river; there to stand and observe the nature of the waters, and the course of them; the multitude of fish in them; and the trees which grew upon the banks of them; of all which some account is given in the following verses.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:6 And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen [this]? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river.

Ver. 6. Son of man, hast thou seen this?] And art thou soundly sensible thereof? It is very fit thou shouldst, that God may have the glory of his great goodness and power in propagating the gospel, and bringing forward the work of his grace in the hearts of his people, maugre the malice of earth and of hell. The Reformation wrought in Germany, from how small beginnings grew it! The establishing of that among us, how imperfect soever, to be done by so weak and simple means, yea, by casual and cross means, against the force of so potent and political an adversary, this is to be looked upon as a just miracle.

To the brink of the river.] Where my work was to stand and cry, Oh the depth! Oh how great things hath God prepared for those that fear him! Oh the joy, the joy! Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, &c.

PETT, "Verse 6-7

‘Then he brought me and caused me to return to the bank of the river. Now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.’

This verse is a death thrust to a literalist interpretation. It refers to Ezekiel being returned to the bank of the river, and then describes the trees that have miraculously and instantaneously grown along the bank of the river. It is quite clear that this is not intended just to be a picture of the scenery but the consequence of this now great and flowing river. The eastern side of the mountains was well known

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for its aridity. Here is the God of creation at work indeed.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:6

Then he … caused me to return to the brink of the river. The difficulty lying in the word "return" has given rise to a variety of conjectures. Hengstenberg supposes the prophet had made trial of the river's depth by wading in (perhaps up to the neck), and that the angel caused him to return from the stream to the bank According to Hitzig, the measuring had taken place at some distance from the stream, and the prophet, having come up to his guide from the bank after making trial of the water's depth, was Once more conducted back to the river's brink. Havernick conceives the sense to be that the prophet, having accompanied the angel to the point where the stream debouched into the Dead Sea was led back to the riverbank. All difficulty, however, vanishes if, either with Schroder we refer וישבני to a mental returning, as if the import were that the angel, having ascertained that the prophet had "seen" the river's course, now told him to direct his attention to the bank, or, with Keil and Kliefoth, translate על by "along" or "on" rather than "to." As the prophet had been led along or on the river's bank to see the increasing breadth and depth of the water, so was he now "caused to return" along or on the same bank to note the abundance of the foliage with which it was adorned.

7 When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river.

BARNES, "Trees naturally flourish where there is abundance of water Psa_1:3.

GILL, "Now when I had returned,.... To the brink of the river: behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side, and on the other; here was a new wonder observed, which had not been before; and therefore this note of admiration, "behold!" is prefixed; on a sudden sprung up trees on each side of the river, of a perfect stature, and full of fruit; which the prophet had not seen when

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he went along with the man on the bank of it, as he measured the waters; but now being returned, sees this wonderful sight; an emblem of true Christians, believers, and regenerate persons, who are trees of righteousness, planted by the river of divine love; watered with the grace of God, and doctrines of the Gospel; whereby they become fruitful in good works, and are to be seen wherever the Gospel comes with power and efficacy; see Psa_1:3, or, "an exceeding large tree" (e); so John saw but one tree, which was on each side of the river, which he calls the tree of life, Rev_22:2, but here it seems to be put for many, as appears from Eze_47:12.

JAMISON, "trees — not merely one tree of life as in Paradise (Gen_3:22), but many: to supply immortal food and medicine to the people of God, who themselves also become “trees of righteousness” (Isa_61:3) planted by the waters and (Psa_1:3) bearing fruit unto holiness.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:7 Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river [were] very many trees on the one side and on the other.

Ver. 7. Behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees.] These were trees of righteousness, fruitful Christians. Arboretum Christi est Ecclesia. The trees of Christ are the churches. See Psalms 1:3; Psalms 92:12, Isaiah 44:3-5; Isaiah 55:11-13, Jeremiah 17:8, Revelation 22:2, where and elsewhere it is easy to observe that John the Divine borroweth the elegancies and flowers of this and other prophets in his description of the Church Christian.

PULPIT, "Now when I had returned בשובני is by the best interpreters, after Gesenius, regarded as an incorrect form for בשובי (literally, in my returning), though Schroder adheres to the transitive sense of the verb, and translates," when I had turned myself," and Hitzig takes the suffix ני as a genitive of possession, and renders, "when he came back with me." In any case, on the return journey the prophet observed that at (or, on) the bank (or, lip) of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. Hitzig supposes the trees had not been there when the prophet made the down journey, but sprang up when he had turned to his guide (Ezekiel 47:6), and stood with his back to the river. Kliefoth's conclusion is better, that the trees had been there all the while, but that the prophet's attention had not been directed to them. The luxuriant foliage of this vision reappears in that of the Apocalyptic river (Revelation 22:2).

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8 He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah,[b] where it enters the Dead Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh.

BARNES, "“The sea” is a term commonly applied to the Dead Sea. Compare Deu_3:17, “the sea of the plain (Arabah), even the salt sea.” The more literal rendering of the verse in this sense would be, “and go into the sea; into the sea go the waters that issue forth, and the waters shall be healed.”

Healed - Every living thing (of which there were none before) shall abound in the “healed” waters. The absence of living creatures in the Dead Sea has been remarked by ancient and modern writers. So the water which Jesus should give should bring life to the dead in trespasses and sins. Compare Joh_4:14; Rev_22:2-3.

GILL, "Then said he unto me,.... The man that measured the waters spoke to the prophet again, and showed him the course of the waters; the quickening and healing virtue of them, and the multitude of fish in them: these waters issue out toward the east country; the Gospel was first preached in the eastern parts of the world; See Gill on Eze_47:3, or "towards the first, or east Galilee" (f); in Galilee Christ began to preach, and wrought his first miracle; here he called his disciples, and chiefly conversed; and here he had the greatest followers, and some of the first Christian churches were formed here after his ascension, Mat_4:12, and go down into the desert; or wilderness, the wilderness of the people, the Gentiles; to whom the Gospel was carried when rejected by the Jews, and who before were like a desert, but now became as a fruitful field, Isa_35:1. The Jews (g) interpret this of the plain, or the sea of Galilee or Tiberius, at which Christ called his disciples; near to this he delivered his discourses concerning himself, the bread of life, and eating his flesh, and drinking his blood; here he met with his disciples after his resurrection, and enjoined Peter to feed his sheep and lambs; see Mat_4:18,

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and go into the sea; the Dead sea, or sea of Sodom, the lake Asphaltites, where nothing is said to live; an emblem of dead sinners; and may represent the worst of sinners, as the Sodomites were; and to such the Gospel was sent, and became effectual to salvation: or it may rather design the great ocean, and may signify the whole world, and all the nations of it, to which the Gospel, by the commission of Christ, was to be preached; see Dan_7:2. The Targum is, "and go through the sea into the great sea;'' it may be rendered, "and go toward the west" (h); the Mediterranean sea being to the west of Judea, it is often put for the west; and so the sense may be, that these waters should flow east and west, as the living waters in Zec_14:8, the same with those, are said to do; and all the Jewish writers think there is such a division of the waters intended, and that they had two streams or rivers; which may receive some confirmation from the next verse, where the word for rivers is of the dual number, and signifies two rivers. The sense of the whole is, that the Gospel should be first preached in Judea and Galilee; then among the Gentiles throughout the Roman empire; and in the latter day especially throughout the world, when it shall be covered with it as the waters cover the sea, Isa_11:9, which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed; that is, which waters of the river being directed and brought into, either the Dead sea, or the great ocean, the waters of the one, or of the other, were healed; and of bituminous and bitter waters were made clear, sweet, and wholesome; and signify the change made in sinful men by means of the Gospel, who are thereby quickened, made partakers of the grace of God, and have their sins pardoned, which is often meant by healing in Scripture, Psa_103:2, pardon of sin flows from the love and grace of God; is the great doctrine of the Gospel, and by which the Lord speaks peace and pardon, and communicates healing of all spiritual diseases to sinners sensible of them; see Psa_107:20.

HENRY, "III. The extent of this river: It issues towards the east country, but thence it either divide itself into several streams or fetches a compass, so that it goes down into the desert, and so goes into the sea, either into the dead sea, which lay south-east, or the sea of Tiberias, which lay north-east, or the great sea, which lay west, Eze_47:8. This was accomplished when the gospel was preached with success throughout all the regions of Judea and Samaria (Act_8:1), and afterwards the nations about, nay, and those that lay most emote, even in the isles of the sea, were enlightened and leavened by it. The sound of it went forth to the end of the world; and the enemies of it could no more prevail to stop the progress of it than that of a mighty river.

IV. The healing virtue of this river. The waters of the sanctuary, wherever they come and have a free course, will be found a wonderful restorative. Being brought forth into the sea, the sulphureous lake of Sodom, that standing monument of divine vengeance, even those waters shall be healed (Eze_47:8), shall become sweet, and pleasant, and healthful. This intimates the wonderful and blessed change that the gospel would make, wheresoever it came in its power, a a great change, in respect both of character and condition, as the turning of the dead sea into a fountain of gardens. When children of wrath became children of love, and those that were dead in trespasses an sins were made alive, then this was fulfilled. The gospel was as that salt which Elisha cast into the spring 54

of the waters of Jericho, with which he healed them, 2Ki_2:20, 2Ki_2:21. Christ, coming into the world to be its physician, sent his gospel as the great medicine, the panpharmacon; there is in it a remedy for every malady. Nay, wherever these rivers come, they make things to live (Eze_47:9), both plants and animals; they are the water of life, Rev_22:1, Rev_22:17. Christ came, that we might have life and for that end he sends his gospel. Every thing shall live whither the river comes. The grace of God makes dead sinners alive and living saints lively; everything is made fruitful and flourishing by it. But its effect is according as it is received, and as the mind is prepared and disposed to receive it; for (Eze_47:11) with respect to the marshes and miry places thereof, that are settled in the mire of their own sinfulness, and will not be healed, or settled in the moisture of their own righteousness, and think they need no healing, their doom is, They shall not be healed; the same gospel which to others is a savour of life unto life shall to them be a savour of death unto death; they shall be given to salt, to perpetual barrenness, Deu_29:23. Those that will not be watered with the grace of God, and made fruitful, shall be abandoned to their own hearts' lusts, and left for ever unfruitful. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. Never fruit grow on thee more for ever. They shall be given to salt, that is, to be monuments of divine justice, as Lot's wife that was turned into a pillar of salt, to season others.

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:8. And go down into the desert— That is to say, along the plain towards the lake, where Sodom formerly stood, called the Dead or Salt Sea. Almost all the writers who describe this sea or lake, observe, that nothing can live in it. The text tells us, that these living and salubrious streams, by mixing with the salt and brackish waters of the sea, shall render them wholesome, and fit for use; mystically implying the healing virtue of God's grace in curing the vices of corrupt man.

JAMISON, "the desert — or “plain,” Hebrew, Arabah (Deu_3:17; Deu_4:49; Jos_3:16), which is the name still given to the valley of the Jordan and the plain south of the Dead Sea, and extending to the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea.

the sea — the Dead Sea. “The sea” noted as covering with its waters the guilty cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. In its bituminous waters no vegetable or animal life is said to be found. But now death is to give place to life in Judea, and throughout the world, as symbolized by the healing of these death-pervaded waters covering the doomed cities. Compare as to “the sea” in general, regarded as a symbol of the troubled powers of nature, disordered by the fall, henceforth to rage no more, Rev_21:1.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:8 Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: [which being] brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.

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Ver. 8. These waters issue out toward the east country.] In Galilaeam anteriorem. (a) See Acts 9:31 - the churches in Galilee, "walking in the fear of the Lord and comforts of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied."

And go down into the desert.] Or, Plain; i.e., into the plains of Moab. [Numbers 22:1] The gospel worketh upon the worst, even to a transmentation.

And go into the sea.] The Dead Sea. The law of the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus, freeth men from the law of sin and of death. [Romans 8:2]

The waters shall be healed,] i.e., Made wholesome and useful; so great a cure is done upon corrupt nature by the grace of the gospel. He who was before vitiorum vorago, lacus libidinum, mare sceleribus amarum ac mortuum, a lake of lusts, a guzzle of vices, a dead sea of wickedness and wretchedness, shall by a strange change become a pleasant river, pure, clear, sweet, and savoury; beset not with such mock fruit as the banks of the Dead Sea are said to be, but with trees richly laden with the choicest fruits; as was to be seen in the penitent thief, who, as soon as gospelised and converted, bestirred him and bore abundance of fruit in a very little space.

PETT, "Verse 8

‘Then he said to me, “These waters issue forth towards the eastern region and will go down into the Arabah, and they will go towards the sea. Into the sea will the waters go which were made to issue forth, and the waters will be healed.” ’

The eastern region and the slopes down into the Arabah (the Jordan rift valley) rarely saw water. They were dry and arid and barren, apart from the occasional oasis. But even more arid was the area around the Dead Sea. Yet the point is that God can water the barren places, and instantaneously make them fruitful. And then follows the most wonderful illustration of all. The Dead Sea, that sea saturated with salt, in which nothing could live, would itself become a fresh water lake. Its waters would be healed. So God chose one of the deadest places on earth to illustrate how

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His waters would bring life to the world, and how He would prepare for His people a new Eden in a new earth out of the most impossible circumstances (Revelation 22:1-5).

PULPIT, "Toward the east country ( הקדמונה אל־הגלילה); literally, the east circle, in this case probably "the region about Jordan" (Joshua 22:10, Joshua 22:11), above the Dead Sea, where the valley or ghor widens out into a bread basin, equivalent to ככד הירדן (Genesis 13:10). The LXX. render, or τὴν γαλιλαίαν, designing by this, however (presumably), only to Graecize the Hebrew word גלילה as they do with the term הערבה, desert, or, plain, which they translate by τὴν ἀραβίαν. The Arabah signified the low, sterile valley into which the Jordan runs near Jericho, in which are the Dead Sea (hence called "the sea of the Arabah," Deuteronomy 3:17; Deuteronomy 4:49), and the brook Kedron, or "river of the Arabah" (Amos 6:14), and which extends as far south as the head of the Elanitic gulf. The whole region is described by Robinson ('Bibl. Res.,' 2.596) as one of extreme desolation—a character which belonged to it in ancient times (Josephus, 'Wars,' 3.10. 7; 4.8. 2). The part of this Arabah into which the waters flowed was situated north of the sea, clearly not the Mediterranean, but the Dead Sea, "the sea of the Arabah," as above stated, and the "eastern sea" as afterwards named (Ezekiel 47:18), into which they ultimately flowed. The clause, which being brought forth into the sea, may either be connected with the proceeding words or formed into an independent sentence. Among those who adopt the former construction a variety of renderings prevails. The LXX. reads, "(And the water) comes to the sea ( ἐπὶ τὸ ὕδωρ τῆς διεκβολῆς), to the sea of the pouring out," i.e. the Dead Sea, into which the river debouches. With this Havernick agrees, rendering, "to the sea of that outflow." Ewald reads, "into the sea of muddy waters," meaning the Dead Sea. Kimchi, "into the sea where the waters are brought forth," i.e. the ocean (the Mediterranean), whoso waters go forth to encompass the world. Hengstenberg, Kliefoth, Keil, and Currey, who adopt the latter construction, borrow באו from the antecedent clause, and translate, "To the sea (come or go) the waters that have been brought forth;" with which accords the Revised Version. The last words record the effect which should be produced by their entering into the sea. The waters shall be healed, i.e. rendered salubrious, from being hurtful (comp. Exodus 15:23, Exodus 15:25; 2 Kings 2:22). The translation of the LXX; ὑγιάσει τὰ ὕδατα, is inaccurate. The unwholesome character of the Dead Sea is described by Tacitus: "Lucius immenso ambitu, specie maris sapore corruptior, gravitate odoris accolis pestifer, neque vento impellitar neque pisces ant suetas aquis volucres patitur" ('Hist.,' 5.6). Yon Raumer writes, "The sea is celled Dead, because there is in it no green plant, no water-fowl in it, no fish, no shell. If

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the Jordan carry fish into it, they die." "According to the testimony of all antiquity and of most modern travelers," says Robinson ('Bibl. Res.,' 2.226), "there exists within the waters of the Dead Sea no living thing, no trace, indeed, of animal or vegetable life. Our own experience goes to confirm the truth of this testimony. We perceived no sign of life within the waters."

9 Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live.

BARNES, "The rivers - literally, as in the margin. Perhaps with reference to the circumstance that this “brook or river” is to come into the Dead Sea through the same plain as the Jordan. The one river (Jordan) always flowed, but now, when another river comes in, and “two rivers” flow into the sea, the waters shall be healed.

CLARKE, "Every thing - whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live -Life and salvation shall continually accompany the preaching of the Gospel; the death of sin being removed, the life of righteousness shall be brought in.

There shall be a very great multitude of fish - On the above plan this must refer to genuine converts to the Christian faith; true believers, who have got life and salvation by the streams of God’s grace. The apostles were fishers of men; converts were the fish caught. See below. As the waters flow into the Dead Sea, where no fish, it is said, can live, its waters must be healed, that is, made capable of preserving life; and so its nature be thus far most surprisingly altered.

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GILL, "Ezekiel 47:9 And it shall come to pass, [that] every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.

HENRY 9-10, "V. The great plenty of fish that should be in this river. Everything living moving thing shall be found here, shall live here (Eze_47:9), shall come on and prosper, shall be the best of the kind, and shall increase greatly; so that there shall be a very great multitude of fish, according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceedingly many. There shall be as great plenty of the river fish, and as vast shoals of them, as there is of salt-water fish, Eze_47:10. There shall be no great numbers of Christians in the church, and those multiplying like fishes in the rising generations and the dew of their youth. In the creation the waters brought forth the fish abundantly(Gen_1:20, Gen_1:21), and they still live in and by the waters that produced them; so believers are begotten by the word of truth (Jam_1:18), and born by it (1Pe_1:23), that river of God; by it they live, from it they have their maintenance and subsistence; in the waters of the sanctuary they are as in their element, out of them they are as fish upon dry ground; so David was when he thirsted and panted for God, for the living God. Where the fish are known to be in abundance, thither will the fishers flock, and there they will cast their nets; and therefore, to intimate the replenishing of these waters and their being made every way useful, it is here foretold that the fishers shall stand upon the banks of this river, from En-gedi, which lies on the border of the dead sea, to En-eglaim,another city, which joins to that sea, and all along shall spread their nets. The dead sea, which before was shunned as noisome and noxious, shall be frequented. Gospel-grace makes those persons and places which were unprofitable and good for nothing to become serviceable to God and man.

JAMISON, "rivers — in Hebrew, “two rivers.” Hence Hebrew expositors think that the waters from the temple were divided into two branches, the one emptying itself into the eastern or Dead Sea, the other into the western or Mediterranean. So Zec_14:8. However, though this probably is covertly implied in the Hebrew dual, the flowing of the waters into the Dead Sea only is expressed. Compare Eze_47:8, “waters ... healed,” which can apply only to it, not to the Mediterranean: also Eze_47:10, “fish as the fish of the great sea”; the Dead Sea, when healed, containing fish, as the Mediterranean does.

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:9. And it shall come to pass— As no fish can live in the Dead Sea, so, on the contrary, the waters which flow from the fountain of salvation shall give life to all who drink of them. See Exodus 7:18. By the fishers in the next verse may be understood the apostles, and other ministers of the gospel. En-gedi was situated at the beginning of the Red Sea, near the Jordan; and En-eglaim where it

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disembogues itself.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:9 And it shall come to pass, [that] every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.

Ver. 9. Whithersoever the river shall come, shall live.] Not die immediately, as they used to do in the Dead Sea, so bituminous and sulphurous were the waters thereof; (a) but live the life of grace here, and of glory in heaven. See Zechariah 14:8, Acts 5:20.

And there shall be a very great multitude of fish,] i.e., Of Christians. See Matthew 4:19. {See Trapp on "Matthew 4:19"} Christ himself, from the initial Greek letters of his names and title, was by some of the ancients called ιχθυς, a fish. (b)

And everything shall live whither the river cometh.] The gospel is the true aqua vitoe, the true aurum potabile, the true physic for the soul, (c) as one said once concerning the library at Alexandria.

PETT, "Verse 9-10

“And it will come about that every living creature which swarms in every place where the two rivers come, will live, and there will be a very great quantity of fish. For these waters are come there, and the waters of the Sea will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river comes. And it will be that fishermen will stand by it. From Engedi even to Eneglaim will be a place for the spreading of nets. Their fish will be after their kinds, an extremely great quantity like the fish of the Great Sea.”

The river has now split into two rivers, so great is its flow, until it becomes a fresh 60

water sea. It is continually growing. The picture is in direct contrast to that of Pharaoh (Ezekiel 29:3-5). There he was transplanted from the waters along with his fish, and all were cast into the wilderness and died for lack of water, victims of the scavengers. But here the wilderness becomes a great twofold river, and the fish multiply. And the waters heal wherever they go. The result is an abundance of life. In neither case is it to be taken pedantically literally.

The illustration of the fishermen is in order to emphasise the quantity of the fish, and God’s provision for man. Whenever expert fishermen are found in quantities you can be sure that the fish are plentiful. We are not intended to apply the detail. The point is that abundant life has come where there was only aridity and death, and that what was once desert-like and ugly has become pleasant and beautiful, a new Paradise.

Engedi was an important oasis and fresh water spring west of the Dead Sea allotted to Judah at the conquest (Joshua 15:62), an oasis in a barren land. Now it would have become part of a large river-fed area where fish abounded, right up to Eneglaim (which would be another oasis, only mentioned here and otherwise unknown, possibly near Qumran).

PARKER, "The Life-giving River

Ezekiel 47:9

The river would have been of small consequence to us but for this declaration. Ezekiel is not describing poetically a river which he saw in vision or in dream. The poet may deal only in words, but the poet-prophet deals in realities. The river means something; it means beauty and fruitfulness and issues a thousandfold. The whole story of the river is told in these words—"Every thing shall live whither the river cometh." In the earlier part of the verse we have the same thought—"It shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live." We do not need to spiritualise this river, for it spiritualises itself. The river is Christian life, Christian revelation. It is the revelation of Christ; it is the

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dispensation of the Spirit; it is the outflow from heaven of all blessing and truth and goodness. No other interpretation would fit the occasion; small poetical annotations would not rise to the dignity of the central thought. Here is a divine outflow, making for itself a channel everywhere, and wherever the channel is the banks are full of green trees, and the trees are fruit trees, and the leaves are medicinal, and the whole vision is a glimpse of heaven. We might profitably commit the first twelve verses of this chapter to memory. Teach your children such recitations. They will outlive the comic Song of Solomon , the foolish and impossible romance, the pile of words that ends in evaporation. Fill the memory of your child with such words as these, and they will come up in old age a rich and imperishable inheritance.

Ponder the words. "Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house." The heathen have a proverb that we might as Christians well copy. The heathen proverb says, "Follow the gods wherever they lead." Have we exceeded that thought? Is not heathenism a rebuke to us in this matter? Have all the great thoughts of the human mind not been anticipated? Is not antiquity the really modern thought and modern literature? It is like going back, not to ten miles farther down the stream—that would be nothing; it is like going back to the well-head. You like to go back to the spring, the fountain, and the origin of the uncommon water. Who has not, who has entered upon the danger and enterprise of exploration at all, desired to find the sources of the Nile? No man has been content to go twenty miles down the river and say he has come to that point and means to stand there. Twenty miles is nothing, fifty miles is a mockery; that is not going back to antiquity. You must find the source, the fountain, or you have found nothing, and all your journeying is a fool"s enterprise. Who is this anonymous "he" who is always bringing men to new visions, and undreamed-of rivers, and revelations that glow and shine like summer skies? Who is that other person? Has he no name? Did he not sign on our roll of signatures? We cannot get rid of him; he finishes the experiment, or he begins it, or he interrupts it in the middle. There is a ghostly quantity or force always having its own way. We cannot explain it. Why did you pray so long? You cannot tell. Why did your thoughts fix themselves in one tremendous centralisation upon a point? We cannot tell; tomorrow we shall know. There is a Ghost in the world. You may vote out God, and you may vote out all the theological terms, and come down to the plain vulgar word ghost; but there it is. When you come to the full comprehension thereof you will return to the old words and say they are best—God, Father, Sovereignty, Providence. Some men have to go a long way round to get at their theology, but if they are honest men they will come to it at the last, and we shall find that antiquity is the present day, and the present

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day is a poor experiment that may end in nothing.

What saw the prophet?—"waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward." Who knows what water is? Yet how we reject it! The universe could not live a day without water. It could live a little whilst the water was sinking down, but when the water really went out of it the universe itself would collapse. Christ is water; Christ is commonplace; Christ flows and trickles; Christ is not a measured wine, he is an unmeasured and immeasurable river, now a torrent, now a stream of silver, now a river that a lamb might gambol in, so shallow; and now a river so deep that navies might rock themselves in its abundance of water. There was a man who had a line in his hand, and he went forth eastward to measure a thousand cubits. Who is this man who is always measuring the world? He cannot lay that line down. Is the world growing, shrinking? Why this eternal measurement? Plato said, God is always measuring the world. We find these waters in Joel and in Zechariah and in the Apocalypse, and we find this measuring man everywhere. The earth is mapped in heaven. Heaven"s map will be the final geography. We may meet in military committees for the purpose of redistributing geographical areas, but the map of the old sinning earth is kept in the archives of heaven. One day, we shall see, the desert shall be marked out as gardenland, and stony places shall glow with flowers. What a marvellous river was this! The man "measures a thousand cubits," and "the waters were to the ankles"—hardly more than a pool: yonder a little bird was sitting at the brink, farther on a lamb was lapping its daily portion, a little farther on and green grass was waving above the little stream. It was a beauteous lake, hardly more than a mirror, laughing at the blue heavens, and doubling them. And then there was a second measure, another thousand cubits, and "the waters were to the knees"; another thousand, and "the waters were to the loins"; another thousand, and there "was a river," a river "to swim in." The waters never broke, they increased; at last they demanded a sea. The river must find the sea, or make one. All this motion means a grand finale. This increase means ultimate benediction. This is the way of the gospel in the world: first very little, then more, then still more, and then the mightiest and grandest of all objects. O Saviour of the world, what is thy kingdom like? It is like a grain of mustard-seed. So small? Yes, so small in itself, but when it is grown it is a cathedral for birds to sing in. Oh tell us more, thou gentle One! to what is the kingdom of heaven like? It is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened. We think that God should reveal himself in some tremendous exposure or declaration. God will not work after this manner; the path of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The year has its springtime; life has its

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infancy; the river reaches to the ankles at first, but at the last it cannot be passed over. Here is the law of progress, beneficent, continuous, and consummating increase.

Then said the anonymous one, "Son of Prayer of Manasseh ,"—literally, Adam,—"hast thou seen this?"—then be wise: in the little see the great; in the seed see the harvest; in hints see consummations. This is the very gift of God, the intellectual miracle, the spiritual coronation of Prayer of Manasseh , namely, that he shall see in beginnings the meanings of endings, that he shall see in the first chapter and the first verse of Genesis the meaning of the Apocalypse. That is the difference between the literalist and the prophet. The literalist gets no further on; the prophet is at the end when he is beginning. His soul burns with heaven.

Beautiful is this imagery, but not so beautiful as the reality. Sometimes history has to lag after symbolism. In the case of Christian missions or the propagation of the truths of the Cross, history shakes off the brightest symbolism as being inadequate to express the glorious realities. We are to judge of the river, fairly, clearly, by the life which it brings. The Lord is always willing to submit himself to practical tests. If Christ cannot give life, disbelieve him. Do not talk about his beautiful expression, his tender poetic strain, his gracious voice, his manifold appearances; but put the testing, crucial question, What does it total up to? and if the answer be other than life, let him be crucified; he is the prince of mocking poetasters, he is not the Son of God. Even when Christianity is willing to be judged in this way it by so much establishes a great claim upon the confidence of man. Christianity does not say, Examine my metaphysics, consider me as a philosophy, compare me as an effort in thinking with all the other religions in creation: Christianity says, Judge me by my fruit, see what I do, and if I do not make the dead live, then I am going forth on false pretences. Is it true that wherever Christianity has gone—the spiritual idea, the true conception of God, the right view of the Cross of Christ—is it true that wherever this has gone life has gone? We hold it to be true upon every ground, and we undertake to prove its truth not by tropes but by figures statistical and by facts human, palpable, and accessible. He would not enter upon any very perilous experiment who undertook to prove that the Christian idea—by that involving the whole work and function of Christ—has done more for the commerce of the world than any other force. Christianity has turned over more money than any other thought of man. Christianity has kept more workpeople, paid more wages, patronised more art, than any other religion, or any other conception of the human

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mind. The highest artists could not have lived without the religious genius and the religious fact. This is true in sculpture, in oil, in music, in architecture, in literature, in poetry. Take out of the world all the cathedrals, all the churches, chapels, religious houses; take away all the monuments that Christianity has erected; take away all the pictures that represent religious or Christian subjects; burn all the oratorios and all the music that derives its sublimity from Christian inspiration; take away all the books that have been printed, all the engravings that have been published, representing Christian thought and Christian history; go into the nursery and into the drawing-room and into the studio, and take out of them everything that the Christian thought has done,—and then, viewed commercially, you have inflicted the greatest possible loss upon the civilised world. "Every thing shall live whither the river cometh": plenty of business, plenty of work,—clearing forests, building cities, exchanging merchandise; the seas alive with vessels, and the desert encroached upon for more city-room.

This religion of Christ is a great business thought. It is the principal factor in civilisation of an active kind. There has been civilisation without it, there is civilisation today that ignores Christianity; but what a languid civilisation, what a self-enjoying and self-destroying civilisation! How wanting in pathos, in pity, in care for others; how exclusive, how selfish, how little! We do not call that civilisation from the point of view of the Cross. When Christianity uses the term civilisation it means to use it in its deepest and most inclusive senses. So judged, Christianity keeps the widest market-place in the world, circulates most money, keeps the world alive. Not the less truly so that some who carry on the merchandise of the world do not know under what inspiration they are working. Who cares for atmosphere? Who cares to go into subtle questions about spiritual relationships, spiritual movements for operating upon the mind and heart? Who knows the mystery of dreams that have ended in temples and in civilisation? Yet there must be a sanctuary in which all these things are adjusted, regulated, and directed to certain positive issues.

Or, leaving the commercial thought altogether and looking at moral progress, only those who have not studied the history of missions can be wanting in sensitiveness on this point. If men would read the Acts of the Apostles published yesterday they would see that the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament is being continued in many a glowing supplement. How many people have heard, from a missionary point of view, of New Guinea? It was a heathen country, given over to all manner of

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debasement and corruption and foulness and cruelty. To-day it blossoms as the rose. Why? Because the gospel has been instituted there, preached there, received there; and men who once would have devoured you are now inquiring about the very highest possibilities of thought and destiny. In the name of justice, find the cause of this transformation, and acknowledge it. Did a band of purely scientific persons go over there and colonise? Not they. Was New Guinea transformed by a little brigade of botanists? Never. Who went first? The man who always goes first—the Christian. Then crowds follow, and the crowds that follow are apt to think they made the highway on which they travel. Not a stone of it did they lay. Have you heard of Madagascar and the islands of the Pacific—of any missionary field at all? The missionary has gone and found it given over to all manner of evil, all manner of cruelty, and he has left it a comparative paradise. The question ought to be asked, What did it? and the answer Isaiah , The river came, the river brought life with it. It may seem to be a simple thing to say, but it contains a whole philosophy of civilisation, that the river does not come to the city, the city comes to the river. What a gracious thing it was for the Thames to come to London! The Thames never did come to London; the Thames made London. We as a city are built on the Thames. Rome stands on the Tiber. How kind of Rome to receive the Tiber! How very condescending of London to make way for the Thames to roll through almost her very centre! The river did not come. Where water is men go. Build a magnificent palace, anywhere, and then find out at the end there is no water in the neighbourhood: now you may sell your palace to any fool who will buy it. What is wanting? The river. Has a river anything to do with building? Everything. No water, no life; no river, no home. Yet how many persons act as if they thought London had brought the river, and act as if they thought that they were the creditors of religion, and not debtors to it! The truth Isaiah , men do not go back to facts; they do not force themselves back to first principles and starting-points; they accept civilisation as it is without tracing it to its fount and origin. Has the river brought life to your house? Wherever it has come it has brought life, has tamed ferocious nature, has made the feeble strong, has made the sick at heart hopeful and glad. Has the river come into your soul? If Song of Solomon , you are a new man. You live now; your thought is quicker, more sensitive, larger, tenderer; now you think about other people, and when you put on all your wrappages you wonder if you could not find room for poor shivering poverty under one corner of your gaiety; when you make a feast you are, at all events, now disposed to give the leavings to the poor: by-and-by you will reverse the arrangement and let the poor sit down first. "Every thing shall live whither the river cometh"—honesty and beauty, and all holy purpose, and all generous thought and effort; everything shall live: the domestic animals on your hearthstone, your horse in the stable, your man in the loft. When

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you are converted the poorest beggar that knocks at your door will know it.

PULPIT, "The nature of the healing is next described as an impartation of such celebrity to the waters that everything that liveth, which moveth—better, every living creature which swarmeth (comp. Genesis 1:20, Genesis 1:21; Genesis 7:21)—whitherseover the rivers (literally, the two rivers) shall come, shall live. The meaning cannot be that everything which liveth and swarmeth in the sea whither the rivers come shall live, because the Dead Sea contains no fish (see above), but whithersoever the rivers come, there living and swarming creatures of every kind shall spring into existence, shall come to life and flourish. The dual form, נחלים, has been accounted for by Maurer, as having been selected on account of its resemblance to מים ; by Hävernick and Currey, as pointing to the junction of another river, the Kedron (Hävernick), the Jordan (Currey), with the temple-stream before the latter, should fall into the sea; by Kliefoth, as alluding to a division of the river waters after entering the sea; by Neumann and Schroder, as referring to the waters of the sea and the waters of the river, which should henceforth be united; and by Hengstenberg, with whom Keil and Plumptre agree, as a dual of intensification (as in Jeremiah 1:1-19 :21), signifying "double river," with allusion to its greatness, or the strength of its current. None of these interpretations is free from objection; though probably, in default of better, the last is best. Ewald changes the dual into נחלם, a singular with a suffix, while Hitzig makes of it a plural; but neither of these devices is satisfactory. As a further evidence that the waters of the sea should be healed by the inflowing into them of the waters of the river, it is stated that the sea should thereafter contain a very great multitude of fish (literally, and the fish will be very many), of which previously it contained none. The next clauses supply the reason of this abundance of fish, because these waters (of the river) shall—or, are (Revised Version) come thither—(into the waters of the sea), for (literally, and) they, the latter, shall be (or, are) healed, and everything shall live (or, connecting this with the foregoing clause, and everything shall be healed, and live) whithersoever the river cometh—the river, namely, that proceedeth from the temple.

10 Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En 67

Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea.

BARNES, "“En-gedi” (see 1Sa_23:29) was about the middle of the western shore of the Dead Sea.

En-eglaim does not occur elsewhere. Its form indicates that it was one of the double cities of Moab (see Eze_25:9 note). It has been identified with “Ain-el-Feshkah” to the north on the western bank of the Dead Sea. On this supposition, “from En-eglaim to En-gedi” would be the line of coast from the most northern fountain to the principal fountain southward.

CLARKE, "The fishers shall stand upon it - On the above plan of interpretation these must mean -

1. The apostles of our Lord Jesus.2. The preachers of the everlasting Gospel. See Mat_4:19.From En-gedi - At the southern extremity of the Dead Sea.Unto En-eglaim - At the northern extremity of the same.Their fish shall be according to their kinds - Every kind of fish, and the fish all excellent of their kinds. All nations, and kindreds, and people shall be called by the Gospel; it shall not be an excluding system like that of Judaism, for its Author tasted death for every man.

GILL, "And it shall come to pass,.... In Gospel times: what follows had a fulfilment in the first times of the Gospel, and will have a greater in the latter times of it: that the fishers shall stand upon it; upon the brink of the river, or the shore of the sea, whose waters will be healed by this river running into them. These "fishers" are the apostles of Christ, who, of fishermen, were made fishers of men by him; to whom he gave a call, and a commission, and gifts qualifying them to preach the Gospel; whereby they caught men, and brought them to Christ; and so were the instruments of saving them, even of great numbers, both in Judea, and in the Gentile world; of which some instances of their fishing, after their call to the ministry, were emblematical; Mat_4:18,

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likewise all other ministers of the Gospel are here meant, especially those that will be in the latter day; compared to fishers for the meanness and contemptibleness of their employment in the eyes of the world; for their labouriousness in it, and for their patient waiting for success therein; and for the bad weather, storms, and tempests, they are exposed unto, the reproach and persecution of men; and their being the happy means of drawing souls out of the abyss of sin and misery unto Christ, for life and salvation: and their "standing" upon the brink of the waters to catch fish may denote their constancy their work; their strict attachment to the doctrines of the Gospel, and their waiting for success in it. From Engedi even unto Eneglaim; two places, which, according to Jerom, lay, the latter one at the entrance of the Dead sea, and the former at the end of it; but Reland (k)observes that this could not be, if Josephus is to be credited, who makes Engedi to be about forty miles from Jerusalem (l); therefore could not be far from the beginning of the Dead sea, and not where it ended; since the Dead sea, or the lake of Asphaltites, was in length seventy three miles, and, consequently, Engedi must be more than seventy five or ninety miles from Jerusalem; but that it was at the beginning of it is still further manifest from the same writer making the lake to be just such a number of miles from Jerusalem (m) as he does Engedi; and whereas Engedi was on the western shore of the lake, as appears from Pliny (n), it is probable there was another city on the eastern shore, opposite to it, called Eneglaim; and there was a city on that side, the name of which was Agallim, which, according to Eusebius, was eight miles from Areopolis: and so it may signify the extent of the Gospel ministry, which, in the latter day, will be from one end of the earth to the other; and which took a large circuit in the times of the apostles, and particularly by the Apostle Paul, Rom_15:19. They shall be a place to spread forth nets; that is, the above said places shall be made use of for that purpose; which design the Gospel, and the ministry of it, compared to a net, for its meanness in the esteem of the world; and yet is a piece of curious artifice and wisdom, even the manifold wisdom of God, and is contrived for the gathering in of sinners to Christ; and, though it may be like a net "per accidens", the means of troubling the world, and drawing out the corruptions of the men of it; yet its principal design, and the use that is made of it, is to draw souls out of the depths of sin unto the grace of Christ; see Mat_13:47, the spreading and casting of nets design the preaching of the Gospel, and the opening and explaining the doctrines of it, which are shut up and hidden to men; and to do which requires wisdom and skill, strength, diligence, and patience, and is done at a venture; and sometimes is cast where fish are, and sometimes not; but here, and at this time, with great success. For their fish shall be according to their kind, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many: that is, there shall be fish of all sorts, small and great, and in large numbers, as in the great ocean, or as in the Mediterranean sea. These signify regenerated persons, who are born of water and the Spirit by the word of God, which is their element; they cannot live but in these waters of the sanctuary, and where the doctrines of grace are preached. Now many of all nations, and men of all ranks, will be called; kings, princes, nobles, as well as peasants; men high and low, rich and poor, and multitudes of them, like the fishes of the sea; which will be the case when the Jews will be converted, and the fulness of the Gentiles brought in.

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TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:10 And it shall come to pass, [that] the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a [place] to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.

Ver. 10. The fishers shall stand upon it.] Upon the Dead Sea, where formerly they had little enough to do. This sea is the wide world dead in sins and trespasses. [Ephesians 2:1] These fishers are Christ’s apostles and ministers, who are called fishers of men, [Matthew 4:19] and their preaching compared to fishing. [Matthew 13:47] They fish with various success, as did Peter; [Luke 5:5] but may enclose a great multitude, as he did; [Acts 2:41] and as Farellus, who gained five cities to Christ, who brought them to hand by whole shoals. Histories tell us of five hundred and eighty Jews converted to the Christian faith at Axvernum by one Avitus, a bishop, and baptized. (a)

From Engedi.] Called also Hazazontamar; [2 Chronicles 20:2] that is, the city of palms, where grew the best balsam in the world, though it were near to the Dead Sea. (b)

Even unto Eneglaim.] Which is likewise a place adjacent to the Dead Sea, where Jordan falleth into it, as Jerome testifieth.

They shall be a place to spread forth nets.] Dr Preston being asked why he preached so plainly, and did so much dilate his sermons, being of such abilities? answered, he was a fisherman. Now such, if they should wind up their net, and so cast it into the sea, they should catch nothing; but when they spread the net, they catch the fish. I spread my net, because I would catch souls, said he; and indeed he had a very happy hand at it. (c)

The fish shall be according to their kinds.] The sea, they say, hath as many kinds of living creatures as the earth hath. "There is that leviathan, and there are creeping things innumerable." [Psalms 105:1-45]

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PULPIT, "As another consequence of the inflowing of this river into the Dead Sea, it is stated that the fishers (rather, fishers, without the article) should stand upon its banks, from Engedi, even unto Englaim; there shall be a place to spread forth nets. The Revised Version more correctly renders, fishers shall stand by it; from Engedi even unto Eneglaim, shall be a place for the spreading of nets; or, more literally, a place of spreading, out for nets (comp. Ezekiel 26:5). Engedi, עין גדי, meaning "Fountain of the kid;" originally styled Hazezon-Tamar (2 Chronicles 20:2), now called 'Ain Jidy (Robinson,' Bibl. Res.,' 2.214), was situated in the middle of the west coast of the Dead Sea, and not at its southern extremity, as Jerome supposed. Englaim, עין עגלים, signifying "Fountain of two calves," was located by Jerome, who cars it En Gallim, at the northern extremity of the Dead Sea, and is usually identified with the modern 'Ain Feshkhah, or "Fountain of mist," at the northern end of the west coast, where the ruins of houses and a small tower have been discovered (Robinson, 'Bibl. Res.,' 2.220). Ewald cites Isaiah 15:8 to show that Englaim was on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, which, Smend notes, was given up by the prophet to the sons of the East.

11 But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.

BARNES, "The exception, which reserves for sterility places to which the living water does not reach, probably indicates that the life and health are solely due to the stream which proceeds from beneath the throne of God. Compare Isa_57:20-21.

CLARKE, "The miry places - “Point out,” says Calmet, “the schismatics and heretics who do not live by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, but separate from his Church; and the evil Christians who dishonor that Church, of which they are corrupt members.” A description applicable to the Roman Catholic Church, that is both schismatic and heretic

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from the Church of Jesus Christ, which is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; for the Church of Rome, leaving this foundation, is now built on the foundation of councils and traditions, and lying miracles; the popes in their succession being its only corner stones.

GILL, "But the miry places thereof, and the marshes thereof,.... That is, of the sea; the waters of which were healed, by the waters of the sanctuary coming into them: but the ditches and lakes, the miry and marsh ground, separate from the sea, which lay near it, and upon the borders of it, shall not be healed; these design the reprobate part of the world, obstinate and perverse sinners, that abandon themselves to their filthy lusts, and sensual pleasures; that wallow like swine in the mire and dirt of sin; are wholly immersed in the things of this world, mind nothing but earth and earthly things, and load themselves with thick clay; whose god is their belly, and who glory in their shame: also hypocrites and apostates may be here meant, who, despising the GospeL, and the doctrines of it, put it away from them, and judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life, and so receive no benefit by it; but, on the contrary, it is the savour of death unto death unto them; see Isa_6:9, they shall be given to salt; left to the hardness of their hearts; given up to the lusts of them; devoted to ruin and destruction and remain barren and unfruitful, as places demolished and sown with salt are; see Deu_29:23, or made an example of, as Lot's wife was; that others may learn wisdom, and shun those things that have been the cause of their ruin. The Targum is, "its pools and lakes shall not be healed; they shall be for salt pits.''

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:11. But the miry places, &c.— Hereby are meant, says Calmet, those wicked Christians, who dishonour the church whereof they are corrupt members. Salt here signifies sterility.

JAMISON, "marshes — marshy places. The region is known to have such pits and marshes. The Arabs take the salt collected by evaporation in these pits for their own use, and that of their flocks.

not be healed — Those not reached by the healing waters of the Gospel, through their sloth and earthly-mindedness, are given over (Rev_22:11) to their own bitterness and barrenness (as “saltness” is often employed to express, Deu_29:23; Psa_107:34; Zep_2:9); an awful example to others in the punishment they suffer (2Pe_2:6).

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:11 But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.

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Ver. 11. But the miry places thereof and the marishes, shall not be healed.] Sensual souls are seldom wrought upon by the word. Behemoth (the devil) lieth in those fens and quagmires. [Job 40:21] They are void of the Spirit. [ 1:18-19] They say unto God, "Depart from us," we had rather dance to the timbrel and harp; [Job 21:11] whoredom and wine, and new wine, take away their hearts. [Hosea 4:11] He who had married a wife, or rather was married to her, sent word flat and plain he could not come; others excused themselves more mannerly. [Luke 14:18-20] Such persons choose to remain in the sordes filth of their sins, and so are miserable by their own election.

They shall be given to salt.] Delivered up to strong delusions, [1 Thessalonians 2:15-16] vile affections, [Romans 1:26] just damnation. [Revelation 22:11]

PETT, "Verse 11

“But its miry places and its marshes will not be healed. They will be given up to salt.”

At first sight this seems to be a sign of the failure of the river. But in fact the people would not have rejoiced at the idea of losing valuable salt resources, and this is rather evidence of the discrimination and continual provision of God. Salt is good (Mark 9:50; Luke 14:34). So the salt reserves will be preserved. In the new earth will be everything a man can need. Fish and salt together would provide man with abundant food.

PULPIT, "The miry places thereof and the marshes thereof גביאו, "its pools and sloughs" (comp. Isaiah 30:14, where the term-signifies a reservoir for water, or cistern), were the low tracts of land upon the borders of the Dead Sea, which in the rainy season, when its waters overflowed, became covered with pools (see Robinson, 'Bibl. Res.,' 2.225). These, according to the prophet, should not be healed, obviously because the waters of the temple-river should not reach them, but should be given to salt . When the waters of the above-mentioned pools have been dried up or

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evaporated, they leave behind them a deposit of salt (see Robinson, 'Bibl. Res.,' 2.226), and Canon Driver, following Smend, conceives that the above-named miry places and marshes in the vicinity of the Dead Sea were to be allowed to remain as they were on account of the excellent salt which they furnished. (On the supposed (!) excellence of the salt derived from the Dead Sea, Thomson's 'Land and the Book,' p. 616, may be consulted.) If this, however, were the correct import of the prophet's words, then the clause would describe an additional blessing to be enjoyed by the land, viz. that the temple-river would not be permitted to spoil its "salt-pans;" but the manifest intention of the prophet was to indicate a limitation to the life-giving influence of the river, and to signify that places and persons unvisited by its healing stream would be abandoned to incurable destruction. "To give to salt" is in Scripture never expressive of blessing, but always of judgment (see Deuteronomy 29:23; 9:47; Psalms 107:34; Jeremiah 17:6; Zephaniah 2:9).

12 Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

BARNES, "Instead of the “vine of Sodom and grapes of Gomorrah” (Deu_32:32), nauseous and unwholesome, trees of life-giving and life-restoring virtue shall bloom similar in properties to, and exceeding in number, the tree of life in Eden (Rev_2:7; Rev_22:2, Rev_22:14).

leaf ... not fade — expressing not only the unfailing character of the heavenly medicine of the tree of life, but also that the graces of the believer (as a tree of righteousness), which are the leaves, and his deeds, which are the fruits that flow from those graces, are immortal (Psa_1:3; Jer_17:8; Mat_10:42; 1Co_15:58).new fruit — literally, “firstlings,” or first fruit. They are still, each month afresh, as it were, yielding their first-fruit [Fairbairn]. The first-born of a thing, in Hebrew idiom,

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means the chiefest. As Job_18:13, “the first-born of death,” that is, the most fatal death.

CLARKE, "Shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade - A description that suits the righteous, who are still producing -

1. The fruits of faith.2. The fruits of the Spirit.3. The fruits of love to God, obedience to his holy will, and love to all men. Benevolence, mercy, charity, kindness, etc.The leaf thereof for medicine - See Rev_22:1-5. Even the leaves, the holy profession of the righteous, is a spiritual medicine. Righteousness is thus encouraged in the world. The profession points out the salvation, as it shows the nature and sufficiency of that salvation; for a just creed contains all the articles of the Christian faith.

GILL, "And by the river on the banks thereof, on this side and on that side,.... On each side of the river, on the banks of it: shall grow all trees for meat; such as bear fruit, that may be eaten, and is good for food: by these "trees" are meant truly gracious souls, converted persons, real Christians, true believers in Christ; who like trees have a root, are rooted in the love of God, in the person and grace of Christ, and have the root of the matter in them, the grace of the blessed Spirit; and who also is their sap, of which they are full, and so grow in grace, and in the knowledge of Christ; grow up in him, and grow upwards and heavenwards in their affections and desires, and in the exercise of faith and hope: they are the trees of the Lord, trees of righteousness, good trees, that bring forth good fruit; and are often in Scripture compared to trees the most excellent, as palm trees, cedars, olives, myrtles, &c. and wherever the Gospel comes, these trees arise, and are watered and made fruitful by it; sometimes in lesser, and sometimes in greater numbers, as in the first times of the Gospel, and as they will in the latter day; see Psa_92:12, whose leaf shall not fade; as the leaves of trees in autumn do, and drop off and fall; to which some professors of religion are compared, who bear no fruit, only have the leaves of a profession, and this they drop when any trouble or difficulty arises, Jud_1:12, but true believers, as they take up a profession on principles of grace, they hold it fast without wavering; their root, seed, and sap, remain, and so never wither and die in their profession; see Psa_1:3, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed; which are the graces of the Spirit, and good works flowing from them: the graces of the Spirit are abiding ones, as faith, hope, and love; these never die, are an incorruptible seed, a well of water springing up unto everlasting life; and good works, which are fruits meet for repentance, and evidences of faith, and by which trees are known to be good, always continue to be wrought by believers, in the strength and grace of Christ, from whom they have all their

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fruits of every kind, Hos_14:8, it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months; or, "first fruits" (o); that is, everyone of these trees, or every true believer, shall be continually in the exercise of grace, and the performance of duty; they shall be constant and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; they shall never cease from yielding fruit, or doing good; they shall still bring it even in old age; see Psa_92:14, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary; because the waters, which issued out of the sanctuary, ran by these trees, and watered them, and made them fruitful, and therefore called their waters: the fruitfulness of these trees, true believers, is not owing to themselves, to their free will and power; to their own industry, diligence, and cultivation; but to the supplies of grace they receive by means of the Gospel, and the doctrines of it; which bring forth, or cause to bring forth fruit, wherever they come with power, Col_1:6, and the fruit thereof shall be for meat; not for saints themselves, who live not, neither on their graces, nor their works; though indeed they do eat the fruits of their doings, Isa_3:10, that is, enjoy good things, consequent on their works, through the free favour and good will of God; but for meat for others; for their fruit, which appears in their words and actions, are very beneficent to others; their fruit is a tree of life, Pro_11:30 and their lips feed many, Pro_10:21, with knowledge and understanding; with the Gospel, and the doctrines of it; and with the comfortable experience they have of its truths and promises: yea, their fruit are meat and food for Christ himself; who comes into his garden, and eats his pleasant fruits, feeds and feasts, and delights himself with his own grace in his people, and the exercise of it, Son_4:9, and the leaf thereof for medicine; or, "for bruises" (p); for the healing of them, which is only done by the blood of Christ; who is the only physician, the sun of righteousness, that rises with healing or pardon in his wings; and the whole language of this passage is borrowed from hence by John, and applied to Christ the tree of life, Rev_22:2 and the Gospel professed by true believers directs to him for healing, or for the remission of sin, and is the means of applying it, Psa_107:20 and a cheerful constant profession of Christ and his Gospel, which is the Christian's leaf, does good like a medicine, both to the Christian himself, and to others; who are animated and encouraged thereby to go on with pleasure in the ways of God.

HENRY, "VI. The trees that were on the banks of this river - many trees on the one side and on the other (Eze_47:7), which made the prospect very pleasant and agreeable to the eye; the shelter of these trees also would be a convenience to the fishery. But that is not all (Eze_47:12); they are trees for meat, and the fruit of them shall not be consumed, for it shall produce fresh fruit every month. The leaf shall be for medicine,and it shall not fade, This part of the vision is copied out into St. John's vision very exactly (Rev_22:2), where, on either side of the river, is said to grow the tree of life,which yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves were for the healing of the nations.Christians are supposed to be these trees, ministers especially, trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord (Isa_61:3), set by the rivers of water, the waters of the

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sanctuary (Psa_1:3), grafted into Christ the tree of life, and by virtue of their union with him made trees of life too, rooted in him, Col_2:7. There is a great variety of these trees, through the diversity of gifts with which they are endued by that one Spirit who works all in all. They grow on the bank of the river, or they keep close to holy ordinances, and through them derive from Christ sap and virtue. They are fruit-trees, designed, as the fig tree and the olive, with their fruits to honour God and man, Jdg_9:9. The fruit thereof shall be for meat, for the lips of the righteous feed many. The fruits of their righteousness are one way or other beneficial. The very leaves of these trees are for medicine, for bruises and sores, margin. Good Christians with their good discourses, which are as their leaves, as well as with their charitable actions, which are as their fruits, do good to those about them; they strengthen the weak, and bind up the broken-hearted. Their cheerfulness does good like a medicine, not only to themselves, but to others also. They shall be enabled by the grace of God to persevere in their goodness and usefulness; their leaf shall not fade, or lose its medicinal virtue, having not only life in their root, but sap in all their branches; their profession shall not wither (Psa_1:3), neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed; that is, they shall not lose the principle of their fruitfulness, but shall still bring forth fruit in old age, to show that the Lord is upright (Psa_92:14, Psa_92:15), or the reward of their fruitfulness shall abide for ever; they bring forth fruit that shall abound to their account in the great day, fruit to life eternal; that is indeed fruit which shall not be consumed. They bring new fruit according to their months, some in one month and others in another: so that still there shall be one or other found to serve the glory of God for the purpose he designs. Or each one of them shall bring forth fruit monthly, which denotes an abundant disposition to fruit-bearing (they shall never be weary of well-doing), and a very happy climate, such that there shall be a perpetual spring and summer. And the reason of this extraordinary fruitfulness is because their waters issued out of the sanctuary; it is not to be ascribed to any thing in themselves, but to the continual supplies of divine grace, with which they are watered every moment (Isa_27:3); for, whoever planted them, it was that which gave the increase.JAMISON, "Instead of the “vine of Sodom and grapes of Gomorrah” (Deu_32:32),

nauseous and unwholesome, trees of life-giving and life-restoring virtue shall bloom similar in properties to, and exceeding in number, the tree of life in Eden (Rev_2:7; Rev_22:2, Rev_22:14).leaf ... not fade — expressing not only the unfailing character of the heavenly medicine of the tree of life, but also that the graces of the believer (as a tree of righteousness), which are the leaves, and his deeds, which are the fruits that flow from those graces, are immortal (Psa_1:3; Jer_17:8; Mat_10:42; 1Co_15:58).new fruit — literally, “firstlings,” or first fruit. They are still, each month afresh, as it were, yielding their first-fruit [Fairbairn]. The first-born of a thing, in Hebrew idiom, means the chiefest. As Job_18:13, “the first-born of death,” that is, the most fatal death.

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:12. Whose leaf shall not fade— Flourishing like the trees of paradise; a very proper emblem of the righteous and faithful; still bringing forth fruit unto holiness, and whose end is everlasting life. See the description of the new

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Jerusalem, Revelation 22:1-5.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:12 And 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.

Ver. 12. Shall grow all trees for meat.] Arbores esibiles; these are Cρηστοι, useful Christians, such as whose lips are feeding, and their tongues trees of life. [Proverbs 11:30; Proverbs 15:4] {See Trapp on "Proverbs 11:30"} {See Trapp on "Proverbs 15:4"}

Whose leaf shall not fade.] They will not fail to make a bold and wise profession of the truth. See on Psalms 1:3, Jeremiah 17:8.

Neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed.] But as the lemon tree, which ever and anon sendeth new fruits as soon as the former are fallen down with ripeness. Or as the Egyptian fig tree, which yieldeth fruit seven times a year, saith Solinus, and if you pull off one fig, another groweth up presently in the place thereof.

Because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary.] Hence their so great fruitfulness, viz., from the divine influence, [Hosea 14:8] the Word and Spirit going together. [Isaiah 59:21] Hence it is that the saints are "neither barren nor unfruitful." [2 Peter 1:8]

And the leaf thereof for medicine.] God’s people, by their holy profession of religion, do much good to many souls, as did various of the martyrs and confessors. Lucianus, an ancient martyr, persuaded many Gentries to the Christian faith by his grave countenance and modest disposition, insomuch that Maximinus, that persecuting emperor, dared not look him in the face, for fear he should turn Christian. And so Beda (a) telleth us of one Alban, who, receiving a poor persecuted

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Christian into his house, and seeing his holy devotion and sweet carriage, was so much affected with the same, as that he became an earnest professor of the faith, and in the end a glorious martyr for the faith. The like is recorded of Bradford, Bucer, and others.

PETT, "Verse 12

“And by the river on its bank, on this side and on that side, will grow every tree for food, whose leaf will not wither, nor will its fruit fail. It will bring forth firstfruits every month because its waters issue out of the sanctuary. And its fruit will be for food and its leaf for healing.”

The final concluding picture emphasises that this is not to be taken totally literally. On both sides of the river will grow every tree for food. We are in a new Eden (Genesis 2:9). And the trees which grow will be such trees as man has never known. They will be renewed every month, producing, monthly, first firstfruits, and then a harvest, and yet their leaves will not wither. And this will be because they are fed by water from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaf for healing. They are God’s trees and God’s provision in a unique way.

Here we are clearly in a Paradise restored, with hugely abundant supplies. The idea of healing is not because men will continually need to be healed, but because having been initially healed their health will be continually maintained. It demonstrates their continual wellbeing in the only way that men of that day could understand.

So the whole glorious picture is of God from His heavenly sanctuary beginning a flow of blessing (water was always a sign of blessing) which will grow and grow, bringing life and fruitfulness wherever it goes and producing a new and better Eden with all that man can need, a picture that is taken up and expanded in Revelation which has these verses very much in mind.

PULPIT, "The effect of the river upon the vegetation growing on its banks is the 79

last feature added to the prophet's picture. Already referred to in Ezekiel 47:7, it is here developed at greater length. The "very many trees" of that verse become in this all trees, or every tree for meat, i.e. every sort of tree with edible fruit (comp. Le 19:23), whose leaf should not fade or wither, and whose fruit should not be consumed or finished, i.e. should not fail, but continue to bring forth new fruit, i.e; early or firstfruits, according to his (or, its) months; or, every month; the ל in לחדשיםbeing taken distributively, as in Isaiah 47:13 (compare ליום, "every day," in Ezekiel 46:13 ). This remarkable productivity, the prophet saw, was due, not so much to the fact that the tree roots sucked up moisture from the stream, as to the circumstance that the waters which they drank up issued out of the sanctuary. To the same circumstance were owing the nutritive and medicinal properties of their fruit and leaves respectively. The picture in this verse is unmistakably based on Genesis 2:9, and is as clearly reproduced by the Apocalyptic seer in Revelation 22:2. On this whole vision the remarks of Thomson, in 'The Land and the Book', are worthy of being consulted.

The Boundaries of the Land

13 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “These are the boundaries of the land that you will divide among the twelve tribes of Israel as their inheritance, with two portions for Joseph.

BARNES, "The ideal reallotment of the land to the twelve tribes of Israel is found in Ezek. 47:13–48:14.

The special mention of Joseph’s portions was in order to express that the twelve 80

portions were to be exclusive of Levi’s land, which was to be provided out of the “oblation.”

CLARKE, "Joseph shall have two portions - That is, In Ephraim and Manasseh, his two sons, who each had a separate inheritance.

GILL, "Thus saith the Lord God, this shall be the border,.... Of the land of Israel, as described in the following verses; which being different from, and much larger, and more extensive, than it was in the times of Moses or Joshua, or than it was either before or after the captivity in Babylon, shows that this must be understood either of the land of Canaan, as it will be when possessed and inhabited by the Jews, upon their conversion in the latter day; or rather of the church of Christ, which is far greater than it was under the former dispensation; and especially it will be still more extensive hereafter, when Christ's kingdom will be from sea to sea, and his dominion from the river to the ends of the earth; and from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same, his name shall be great among the Gentiles. This subject is reassumed from Eze_45:1after the insertion of various things of moment and importance there, a reserve upon the division of the land is made of a holy portion of it, for the sanctuary; for the priests, the ministers of it; for the Levites, the ministers of the house; and for a possession of the city, and of the prince; and the rest to be given to the house of Israel, the boundaries of which, are here fixed: whereby ye shall inherit the land, according to the twelve tribes of Israel; by which are meant, not literal Israel, or according to the flesh, these being not all Israel, or the children of God, and so not heirs, and shall not inherit; but spiritual Israel, or the special people of God, that shall dwell in the church, and enjoy all the privileges of it; these are the sealed ones of all the tribes of Israel, an equal number out of each tribe; see Rev_7:4. Joseph shall have two "portions" for his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and in virtue of the birthright which fell to him on the forfeiture of it by Reuben; he was an eminent type of Christ, with whom the saints are joint heirs; and who has two portions, one for himself as Mediator, and another for them.

HENRY 13-23, "We are now to pass from the affairs of the sanctuary to those of the state, from the city to the country. 1. The Land of Canaan is here secured to them for an inheritance (Eze_47:14): I lifted up my hand to give it unto your fathers, that is, promised it upon oath to them and their posterity. Though the possession had been a great while discontinued, yet God had not forgotten his oath which he swore to their fathers. Though God's providences may for a time seem to contradict his promises, yet the promise will certainly take place at last, for God will be ever mindful of his covenant. I lifted up my hand to give it, and therefore it shall without fail fall to you for an inheritance. Thus the heavenly Canaan is sure to all the seed, because it is what God, who cannot lie, has promised. 2. It is here circumscribed, and the bounds and limits of it are fixed, which they must not pass over to encroach upon their neighbours and which

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their neighbours shall not break through to encroach upon them. We had such a draught of the borders of Canaan when Joshua was to put the people in possession of it, Num_34:1, etc. That begins with the salt sea in the south, goes round and ends there. This begins with Hamath about Damascus in the north, and so goes round and ends there, Eze_47:20. Note, It is God that appoints the bounds of our habitation; and his Israel shall always have cause to say that the lines have fallen to them in pleasant places. The lake of Sodom is here called the east sea, for it, being healed by the waters of the sanctuary, it is no more to be called a salt sea, as it was in Numbers. 3. It is here ordered to be divided among the tribes of Israel, reckoning Joseph for two tribes, to make up the number of twelve, when Levi was taken out to attend the sanctuary, and had his lot adjoining to that (Eze_47:13, Eze_47:21): You shall inherit it, one as well as another,Eze_47:14. The tribes shall have an equal share, one as much as another. As the tribes returned out of Babylon, this seems unequal, because some tribes were much more numerous than the other, and indeed the most were of Judah and Benjamin and very few of the other ten tribes; but as the twelve tribes stand, in type and vision, for the gospel-church, the Israel of God, it was very equal, because we find in another vision an equal number of each of the twelve tribes sealed for the living God, just 12,000 of each, Rev_7:5, etc. And to those sealed ones these allotments did belong. It intimates likewise that all the subjects of Christ's kingdom have obtained like precious faith. Male and female, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, are all alike welcome to Christ and made partakers of him. 4. The strangers who sojourn among them, who shall beget childrenand be built up into families, and so help to people their country, shall have inheritance among the tribes, as if they had been native Israelites (Eze_47:22, Eze_47:23), which was by no means allowed in Joshua's division of the land. This is an act for a general naturalization, which would teach the Jews who was their neighbour, not those only of their own nation and religion, but those, whoever they were, that they had an opportunity of showing kindness to, because from them they would be willing to receive kindness. It would likewise invite strangers to come and settle among them, and put themselves under the wings of the divine Majesty. But it certainly looks at gospel-times, when the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile was taken down, and both one in Christ, in whom there is no difference, Rom_10:12. This land was a type of the heavenly Canaan, that better country (Heb_11:16), in which believing Gentiles shall have a blessed lot, as well as believing Jews, Isa_56:3.

K&D 13-23, "Boundaries of the Land to be Divided among the Tribes of Israel.Eze_47:13. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, This is the boundary according to which ye shall divide the land among you for an inheritance, for Joseph portions. Eze_47:14.And ye shall receive it for an inheritance, one as well as another, because I lifted up my hand to give it to your fathers; and thus shall this land fall to you for an inheritance. Eze_47:15. And this is the boundary of the land: toward the north side, from the great sea onwards by the way to Chetlon, in the direction of Zedad; Eze_47:16. Hamath, Berotah, Sibraim, which is between the boundary of Damascus and the boundary of Hamath, the central Hazer, which is on the boundary of Haruan. Eze_47:17. And the boundary from the sea shall be Hazar-Enon, the boundary town of Damascus; and as for the north northwards, Hamath is the boundary. This, the north side. Eze_47:18.And the east side between Hauran and Damascus and Gilead and the land of Israel, shall be the Jordan; from the boundary to the eastern sea ye shall measure. This, the east side. Eze_47:19. And the south side toward the south; from Tamar to the water of

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strife, Kadesh, along the brook to the great sea. This, the south side toward the south. Eze_47:20. And the west side; the great sea from the boundary to Hamath. This, the west side. Eze_47:21. This land shall ye divide among you according to the tribes of Israel. Eze_47:22. And it shall come to pass, ye shall divide it by lot among yourselves for an inheritance, and among the foreigners who dwell in the midst of you, who have begotten sons in the midst of you; they shall be to you like natives born among the sons of Israel; they shall cast lots with you for an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. Eze_47:23. And it shall come to pass, in the tribe in which the foreigner dwells, there shall ye give him his inheritance, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.The fixing of the boundary of the land which Israel was to divide in future according to its twelve tribes is commenced (Eze_47:13 and Eze_47:14) and concluded (Eze_47:22and Eze_47:23) with certain general statements concerning the distribution. The introductory statements are attached to the heading “this is the boundary,” which is

therefore repeated in Eze_47:15. גה is evidently a copyist's error for זה, which is adopted by all the older translators, contained in some Codd., and demanded by וזה in Eze_גבול .47:15 stands here for the whole of the boundary of the land to be distributed; and אשר which follows is an accusative, “according to which.” - ”According to the twelvetribes,” - for all Israel is to return and dwell as one people of God under one prince in its own land (Eze_36:24., Eze_37:21.). But the division among the twelve tribes is more precisely defined immediately afterwards by the clause abruptly appended, “Joseph portions,” i.e., two portions for Joseph. There can be no doubt that this is the meaning of the words in accordance with Gen_48:22 and Jos_17:14, Jos_17:17. Hence the notice-like form of the expression, which should not be obliterated by pointing חבלים as a dual, If the land was to be divided by lot according to twelve tribes, and the tribe of .חבליםLevi was to receive its portion from the terumah which was set apart, Joseph must necessarily receive two hereditary portions for his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, in accordance with the appointment of the patriarch in Gen_48:22. The commencement of Eze_47:14 is not at variance with this, as Hitzig imagines; for the words, “ye shall receive it for an inheritance, one as another,” simply affirm, that of the twelve tribes reckoned by Israel in relation to the נחלה, all were to receive equal shares, the one as much as the other. As the reason for this command to divide the land, allusion is made to the oath with which God promised to give this land to the fathers (cf. Eze_20:28).

The definition of the boundaries commences with Eze_47:15. In form it differs in many points from Num_34:1-5, but in actual fact it is in harmony with the Mosaic definition. In Num 34 the description commences with the southern boundary, then proceeds to the western and northern boundaries, and closes with the eastern. In Ezekiel it commences with the northern boundary and proceeds to the east, the south, and the west. This difference may be explained in a very simple manner, from the fact that the Israelites in the time of Moses came from Egypt i.e., marching from the south, and stood by the south-eastern boundary of the land, whereas at this time they were carried away into the northern lands Assyria and Babylon, and were regarded as returning thence. Again, in Ezekiel the boundaries are described much more briefly than in Num 34, the northern boundary alone being somewhat more circumstantially described. The course which it takes is represented in a general manner in Eze_47:15 as running from the great sea, i.e., the Mediterranean, by the way to Chetlon, in the direction toward Zedad. In Eze_47:16 and Eze_47:17 there follow the places which formed the boundary. The starting-point on the Mediterranean Sea can only be approximately determined, as the 83

places mentioned, Chetlon and Zedad, are still unknown. Not only Chetlon, but Zedadalso, has not yet been discovered. The city of Sadad (Sudud), to the east of the road leading from Damascus to Hums (Emesa), which Robinson and Wetzstein suppose to be the same, lies much too far toward the east to be used in defining the boundary either here or in Num_34:8 (see the comm. on Num_34:8). Among the names enumerated in Eze_47:16, חמת is not the city of Hamah on the Orontes, which lay much too far to the north, but the kingdom of Hamath, the southern boundary of which formed the northern boundary of Canaan, though it cannot be given with exactness. Berothah is probably identical with Berothai in 2Sa_8:8, a city of the king of Zobah; but the situation of it is still unknown. Sibraim may perhaps be identical with Ziphron in Num_34:9, which has also not yet been discovered, and is not to be sought for in the ruins of Zifran, to the north-east of Damascus, near the road to Palmyra; for that place could not form the boundary of Damascus and Hamath. The situation of the “central Hazer” has also not yet been determined. Hauran, on the boundary of which it stood, is used here in a more comprehensive sense that Αυρανῖτις in Josephus and other Greek authors, and includes the later Auranitis, together with Gaulanitis (Golan) and Batanaea (Bashan), and probably also Ituraea, as only Damascus and Gilead are named in Eze_47:18 in addition to Hauran, on the east side of the Jordan; so that the whole tract of land between the territory of Damascus and the country of Gilead is embraced by the name Hauran. חורן, Arab. Hawrân, is derived from the number of caves (ר in that (חור ,חdistrict, to which Wetzstein (Reiseber. p. 92) indeed raises the objection that with the exception of the eastern and south-eastern Hauran, where no doubt most of the volcanic hills have been perforated by troglodytes, the dwellings in caves are by no means common in that region. But the name may have originated in this eastern district, and possibly have included even that portion of Gilead which was situated to the north of the Jabbok, namely, Erbed and Suët, the true cave-country. For further remarks concerning these districts, see the comm. on Deu_3:4 and Deu_3:10. The statement in Eze_47:17, “the boundary from the sea shall be Hazar-Enon, the boundary of Damascus,” cannot have any other meaning than that the northern boundary, which started from the Mediterranean Sea, stretched as far as Hazar-Enon, the frontier city of Damascus, or that Hazar-Enon formed the terminal point on the east, toward the boundary of Damascus, for the northern boundary proceeding from the sea. חצר ן עינ or חצר עינן(Num_34:9), i.e., spring-court, we have endeavoured to identify in the comm. on Num_34:3 with the spring Lebweh, which lies in the Bekâa at the watershed between the Orontes and the Leontes; and the designation “the boundary of Damascus” suits the situation very well. Eze_47:17 has been aptly explained by Hitzig thus, in accordance with the literal meaning of the words, “and as for the north north-wards, Hamath is the boundary,” which he further elucidates by observing that נה צפ is intended as a supplementary note to the boundary line from west to east, which is indicated just before. ואת פאת ן צפ is a concluding formula: “this, the north side.” But ואת (here and Eze_47:18 and Eze_47:19) is not to be altered into זאת after Eze_47:20 and the Syriac version, as Hitzig supposes, but to be explained, as Eze_47:18 clearly shows, on the supposition that Ezekiel had דו ye shall measure,” floating before his mind, to“ ,תמwhich 'ואת .and that the northern boundary,” would form a correct logical sequel“ ,פ

The eastern boundary is defined in v. 18 in the same manner as in Num_34:10-12, except that in the latter it is more minutely described above the Lake of Gennesaret by the mention of several localities, whereas Ezekiel only names the Jordan as the 84

boundary. - פאת , with supplementary remarks, is not to be taken as the predicate to the subject הירדן, as Hitzig has correctly observed; for the meaning of פאה does not allow of this. The explanation is rather this: as for the east side, between Hauran, etc. and the land of Israel, is the Jordan. Hauran, Damascus, and Gilead lie on the east side of the Jordan, the land of Israel on the west side. The striking circumstance that Ezekiel commences with Hauran, which lay in the middle between Damascus and Gilead, -Hauran, Damascus, and Gilead, instead of Damascus, Hauran, and Gilead, - may probably be explained from the fact that the Jordan, which he names as the boundary, for the sake of brevity, did not extend so far upwards as to the territory of Damascus, but simply formed the boundary of the land of Israel between Hauran and Gilead. מגבולpoints back to the northern boundary already mentioned. From this boundary, the eastern terminal point of which was Hazar-Enon, they are to measure to the eastern sea, i.e., to the Dead Sea.

Eze_47:19. The southern boundary toward the south is to proceed from Tamar to the water of strife, Kadesh, (and thence) along the brook to the great (i.e., Mediterranean) sea. Tamar, a different place from Hazazon-tamar, called Engedi in Eze_47:10 (cf. 2Ch_20:2), is supposed to be the Thamara (Θαμαρά),

(Note: The statement runs thus: λέγεται δέ τις Θαμαρά κώμη διεστώσα Μάψιςἡμέρας ὁδόν, ἀπιόντων ἀπὸ Χεβρὼν εἰς Αἰλάμ, ἥτις νῦν φρούριόν ἐστι τῶνστρατιωτῶν. In Jerome: est et aliud castellum, unius diei itinere a Mampsis oppido separatum, pergentibus Ailiam de Chebron, ubi nunc romanum praesidium positum est. But on account of the Μάψις (Mampsis), which is evidently a corruption, the passage is obscure. Robinson's conjecture concerning Thamara is founded upon the assumption that the reading should be Μάλις, and that this is the Malatha mentioned by later writers as the station of a Roman cohort.)

which was a day's journey on the road from Hebron to Aelam (Aelath, Deu_2:8; 1Ki_9:26), according to Eusebius in the Onomast. ed. Lars. p. 68, and had a Roman garrison; and Robinson (Pal. III pp. 178 and 186ff.) accordingly conjectures that it is to be found in the ruins of Kurnub, which lie six hours' journey to the south of Milh, toward the pass of es-Sufâh. But this conjecture is bound up with various assumptions of a very questionable character, and the situation of Hurnub hardly suits the Tamar of our passage, which should be sought, not to the west of the southern point of the Dead Sea, but, according to the southern boundary of Canaan as drawn in Num_34:3-5, to the south of the Dead Sea. The waters of strife of Kadesh (Num_20:1-13), in the desert of Zin, were near Kadesh-barnea, which was in the neighbourhood of the spring Ain Kades, discovered by Rowland to the south of Bir-Seba and Khalasa by the fore-courts of Jebel Helal, i.e., at the north-west corner of the mountain land of the Azazimeh (see the comm. on Num_10:12; Num_12:16, and Num_20:16). Instead of ת מריב we have the singular מריבת in Eze_48:28, as in Num_27:14 and Deu_32:51. נחלה is to be pointed נחל from ,נחלה with ה loc.; and the reference is to the brook of Egypt; the great wady el-Arish ( Ρινοκορουρα), along which the southern boundary of Canaan ran from Kadesh to the Mediterranean Sea (see the comm. on Eze_34:5). - Eze_47:20. The Mediterranean Sea formed the western boundary. מגבול, i.e., from the southern boundary mentioned in Eze_47:19 till opposite (עד) to the coming to Hamath, i.e., till opposite to the point at which one enters the territory of Hamath (Hitzig), i.e., the spot mentioned in Eze_47:20 (? 17) as the commencement of the northern boundary in the

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neighbourhood of the promontory of esh-Shûkah between Byblus (Gebal) and Tripolis. -Eze_47:21. This land they are to divide among them according to their tribes. With this remark, which points back to Eze_47:13, the definition of the boundaries is brought to a close. There is simply added in Eze_47:22 and Eze_47:23 a further regulation concerning the foreigners living in Israel. The law of Moses had already repeatedly urged upon the Israelites affectionate treatment of them, and in Lev_19:34 the command is given to treat them like natives in this respect, and to love them. But the full right of citizenship was not thereby conceded to them, so that they could also acquire property in land. The land was given to the Israelites alone for an hereditary possession. Foreigners could only be incorporated into the congregation of Israel under the limitations laid down in Deu_23:2-9, by the reception of circumcision. But in the future distribution of the land, on the contrary, the גרים were to receive hereditary property like native-born Israelites; and in this respect no difference was to exist between the members of the people of God born of Abraham's seed and those born of the heathen. At the same time, this right was not to be conferred upon every foreigner who might be only temporarily living in Israel, but to those alone who should beget sons in the midst of Israel, i.e., settle permanently in the holy land. The Kal יפלו is not to be altered into the Hiphil as ,תפילוHitzig proposes, but is used in the sense of receiving by lot, derived from the Hiphilsignification, “to apportion by lot.”

COKE, "Ezekiel 47:13. This shall be the border— By the captivities of Judah and Israel, the several limits or borders belonging to the inheritance of each tribe were obliterated and forgotten; whereupon here is a new boundary and division of the Holy Land, which is to be understood in a mystical sense also. The places hereafter mentioned were the boundaries of the Holy Land, as will appear from an inspection of the map of Canaan.

JAMISON, "The redivision of the land: the boundaries. The latter are substantially the same as those given by Moses in Num_34:1-29; they here begin with the north, but in Numbers they begin with the south (Num_34:3). It is only Canaan proper, exclusive of the possession of the two and a half tribes beyond Jordan, that is here divided.

Joseph ... two portions — according to the original promise of Jacob (Gen_48:5, Gen_48:22). Joseph’s sons were given the birthright forfeited by Reuben, the first-born (1Ch_5:1). Therefore the former is here put first. His two sons having distinct portions make up the whole number twelve portions, as he had just before specified “twelvetribes of Israel”; for Levi had no separate inheritance, so that he is not reckoned in the twelve.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:13 Thus saith the Lord GOD This [shall be] the border, whereby ye shall inherit the land according to the twelve tribes of Israel: Joseph [shall have two] portions.

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Ver. 13. This shall be the border.] Here the prophet returneth again to the dividing of the land, begun Ezekiel 45:1-2, &c., having hitherto interposed many most memorable matters, and of great use to the Church.

Joseph shall have two portions.] He had so by his father’s will, and for his two sons adopted by his father.

PETT, "Verse 13-14

‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh, “This shall be the border by which you will divide the land for inheritance according to the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph shall have portions (i.e. two portions). And you will inherit it, one as well as another, concerning which I lifted up my hand to give it to your fathers, and this land will fall to you for an inheritance.”

God was here reiterating to the exiles that He would restore what they had lost, and He then outlined in the following verses the land that was to be theirs for the taking. The land was to be split equally between the tribes ‘one as well as another’. As often Joseph was to be split into Ephraim and Manasseh for this purpose, and Levi had no portion (Ezekiel 44:28 - apart of course from the portion mentioned in Ezekiel 44:4-5). Thus the number twelve was maintained. Yahweh had sworn (lifted up His hand) that it would be theirs, and theirs it would be. It was their inheritance.

The fact that the land was to be split relatively equally, and to some extent without regard to previous tribal portions, or tribal numbers, is also an indication that it is not to be taken literally. Add to this that the tribes are split into a group of seven, indicating the divine perfection of the event, and a group of five, indicating conformance with the covenant, and the case is even more certain.

Many Israelites would in fact already be in the land having escaped the 87

deportations. There were those in Galilee outside the range of the Samaritan importations; possibly those in Benjamin which was already in Babylonian hands prior to the final invasion, and may have escaped deportation; and some in areas to the south in the Negeb and the Shephelah which would possibly not been quite so affected (confirmed by Nehemiah 11:25-35). The King of Babylon was angry with those who had shown fierce resistance and probably finally saw the Judah and Jerusalem that he deported as a limited area. The idea is really that all twelve tribes will be represented in the land and be settled there, within the covenant, and within God’s divinely perfect plan. All with a fair share of the land.

PETT, "Verses 13-35

Chapter Ezekiel 47:13 to Ezekiel 48:35 The Division of the Land and the Establishment of ‘The City’.

Presenting Paradise to the people of Israel at their lowest ebb could only be by giving them a picture of the sharing of the land among ‘the twelve tribes’ and the establishment of God’s City under the Davidic prince. That was the expanded Mosaic dream, with every man living under his own vine and his own fig tree (1 Kings 4:25). But it would depend on their true response and obedience, and as ever that was lacking. Thus the vineyard would be taken from them and given to others (Mark 12:9; Luke 20:16; Matthew 21:41).

They could not dream that, under God, one day the vision of the ‘twelve tribes’ would become fulfilled in the redeemed from all nations of the world who would become the twelve tribes (James 1:1; compare 1 Peter 1:1 and the idealistic picture of the sealed of God in Revelation 7:3-8 who became the great multitude whom no man could number). This would occur as men from all nations were grafted into the olive tree (Romans 11:13-24) and adopted into the new covenant, becoming fellow-citizens with the true remnant of the old Israel - ‘the saints’ (Romans 9:6; Ephesians 2:19), and becoming the new seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:7-9; Galatians 3:29), thus themselves becoming the new Israel, the true people of God (Galatians 6:16), made near by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:12-13).

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That was God’s greater vision. It was regularly in one way or another portrayed by the prophets. In Abraham’s seed all the nations of the world were to be blessed (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 18:18; Genesis 22:18; Genesis 26:4; Genesis 28:14), Israel were to be a kingdom of priests to the world in a world which all belonged to Yahweh (Exodus 19:5-6), His servant Israel (the inner Israel who were to seek to restore the whole) were to be the servant to the nations to bring them salvation and the true worship of God (Isaiah 49:3-7), all nations would finally flock to a new Jerusalem to worship in a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 66:23; Isaiah 65:17; Zechariah 14:16-17), and so on. But that would first depend on Israel in the person of their Prince coming before God to receive the everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14; Daniel 7:27).

Thus having depicted the new Paradise Ezekiel will now portray the new sharing of the land among the people of God, the establishment of their prince, and the founding of a new city named ‘Yahweh is there’ (Ezekiel 48:35). This is his picture of the final fulfilment of God’s purposes and of His final triumph, presented to those who would be its earthly source (it was from them that the Gospel would go out to the world - Acts 1:8). It was given to them when they were at their lowest ebb, in order to lift them up and press them on towards full obedience. His people are to be redeemed and restored, in order to enter the everlasting kingdom. God’s triumph is put into words that may seem to us an anticlimax, but to the people of Israel it was their vision and their living hope. It would finally be fulfilled in a way better than he ever envisioned.

So as we look at these last two chapters from Ezekiel 47:13 onwards, we must not be tied down to the detail. We must see them rather as God’s promise, put in terms of the day, that all the dreams that He had given to His true people would come to fruition.

In fact even when they ‘returned to the land’ Israel did not seek to fulfil this vision literally. It was a vision from the past, a dream, not something that they wanted to carry into actuality. Instead of gathering together in twelve tribes, the divisions between the tribes became blurred and almost overlooked, although many did still proudly see themselves as of a particular important tribe (compare Philippians 3:5),

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but without trying to gather that tribe into a particular section of the land. (Jesus, Who was of Judah, happily lived in Nazareth and was ‘a Nazarene’).

Most of those who belonged to the tribes remained in foreign countries. Intermarriage blurred the distinctions. There were no longer literally ‘twelve’ tribes, and apart from in the earliest days never strictly were (the contents fluctuated, although not in a major way), and this is constantly recognised in that when the twelve tribes are listed the lists tend to differ slightly depending on their purpose (Genesis 29; Genesis 49:3-27; (the original twelve sons of Jacob) Numbers 1:5-15; Numbers 1:20-43 (here, and regularly, Joseph is divided into Ephraim and Manasseh, and Levi omitted - note 47:47); 2; 7; 13; 26; Deuteronomy 27:12-13 (the original twelve); Ezekiel 33:6-25 (Simeon omitted); Joshua 15-21; 1 Chronicles 2:1 (the original twelve); Ezekiel 27:16 (Gad and Asher omitted); Revelation 7:5-8 (Dan omitted, Ephraim called Joseph) compare the part lists in Judges 1; Judges 5:14-18). It is the ideal that matters, that the full tribal confederacy made up of ‘twelve tribes’ was sharing God’s inheritance, not the detail. The ‘twelve tribes’ simply represent all the people of God.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:13-23

The boundaries of the land, and the manner of its division.

Ezekiel 47:13

Thus saith the Lord. The usual formula introducing a new Divine enactment (comp. Ezekiel 43:18; Ezekiel 44:9; Ezekiel 45:9, Ezekiel 45:18; Ezekiel 46:1, Ezekiel 46:16). This. גה is obviously a copyist's error for זה, which the LXX; the Vulgate, and the Targum have substituted for it; the change seems demanded by the complete untranslatability of גה, and by the fact that וזה גבול recurs in Ezekiel 47:15. The border, whereby ye shall inherit the land; or, divide the land for inheritance (Revised Version). The term גבול, applied in Ezekiel 43:13, Ezekiel 43:17 to the border of the altar here signifies the boundary or limit of the land. (For the verb, comp. Numbers 32:18; Numbers 34:13; Isaiah 14:2.) According to the twelve tribes.

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This presupposed that at least representatives of the twelve tribes would return from exile; but it is doubtful if this can be proved from Scripture to have taken place, which once more shows that a literal interpretation of this temple-vision cannot be consistently carried through. Smend observes that the word commonly employed in the priest-cede to denote "tribes" is מטות (Numbers 26:55; Numbers 30:1; Numbers 31:4; Numbers 33:54; Joshua 14:1; Joshua 21:1; Joshua 22:14), which is never used by Ezekiel, who habitually selects, as here, the term שבטים(Ezekiel 37:19; Ezekiel 45:8; Ezekiel 48:1), which also was not unknown to the priest-cede (Exodus 39:14; Numbers 18:2; Joshua 13:29; Joshua 21:16; Joshua 22:9, Joshua 22:10, Joshua 22:11, Joshua 22:13). That is to say, if the priest-cede existed before Ezekiel, he had the choice of both terms, and selected shebhet; whereas if Ezekiel existed before the priest-cede, and prepared the way for it, the author of the latter rejected Ezekiel's word shebhet, and adopted another perfectly unknown to the prophet. This fact appears to point to a dependence of Ezekiel on the priest-cede rather than of the priest-cede on Ezekiel. Joseph shall have two portions; rather, Joseph portions, as חבלים is not dual. Yet that two were intended is undoubted (see Genesis 48:22; Joshua 17:14, Joshua 17:17).

14 You are to divide it equally among them. Because I swore with uplifted hand to give it to your ancestors, this land will become your inheritance.

BARNES, "As well as - Or, as. Ezekiel is speaking of “tribes,” not “individuals.” Each tribe is to have an equal “breadth” of land assigned to it.

GILL, "And ye shall inherit it, one as well as another,.... That is, the twelve tribes shall equally inherit it; one tribe shall not have more, and another less, but each alike: this was not the case, at the division of the land, in the times of Moses and Joshua; for to such tribes as were very numerous a greater inheritance was given; and to those that were fewer in number a lesser inheritance, Num_26:54, and upon the return from

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the Babylonish captivity, as the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were the largest, and indeed the only tribes that returned as such, they had the share of the land; but as this respects the dispensation, it signifies, that those who are true Israelites indeed shall share in the same Gospel church state, the privileges and immunities of it alike, with all the blessings of grace and eternal glory; they being all one in Christ Jesus, Gal_3:28, concerning the which I lifted up my hand to give it unto your fathers; that is, swore that he would give unto them the land of Canaan; typical of the Gospel church state and the heavenly glory; which are as sure to all the seed, by the word and oath of God, as that was: and this land shall fall unto you for inheritance; by lot, by the appointment of God, and a goodly one it is, Psa_16:6.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:14 And ye shall inherit it, one as well as another: [concerning] the which I lifted up mine hand to give it unto your fathers: and this land shall fall unto you for inheritance.

Ver. 14. And ye shall inherit one as well as another.] Spiritual blessings are divided in solidum in gold coin among the community of God’s people; they all partake of one and the same saving grace of God, righteousness of Christ, and eternal life, though there are several degrees of grace and of glory. See Galatians 3:26-29. All God’s sons are heirs, heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ. [Romans 8:17]

PULPIT, "Ye shall inherit it, one as well as another; literally, a man as his brother—the customary Hebrew phrase for "equally" (see, however, 2 Samuel 11:25). The equal participants were to be tribes, not the families, as in the Mosaic distribution (Numbers 33:54). Had the earlier principle of allotment been indicated as that to be followed in the future, it would not have been possible to give the tribes equal portions, as some tribes would certainly have a larger number of families than others. Nevertheless, the division was to be equal among the tribes, which shows it was rather of an ideal than of an actual distribution the prophet was speaking. Then what they should divide amongst themselves was to be the land concerning which Jehovah had lifted up his hand—a peculiarly Ezekelian phrase (see Ezekiel 20:5, Ezekiel 20:6, Ezekiel 20:15, Ezekiel 20:23, Ezekiel 20:28, Ezekiel 20:42), signifying "to swear" (comp. Genesis 14:22; Deuteronomy 33:1-29 :40)—to give it unto their fathers (see Genesis 12:7; Genesis 18:8; Genesis 26:3; Genesis 28:13). That the land was not divided after this fashion among the tribes that returned from exile is one more attestation that the prophet's directions were not intended to be literally

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carried out.

15 “This is to be the boundary of the land:“On the north side it will run from the Mediterranean Sea by the Hethlon road past Lebo Hamath to Zedad,

BARNES, "The borders of the land follow closely Num. 34, where they begin from the south, as the people came up from Egypt; in Ezekiel, they begin from the north, as they might return from Babylon. The occupation is ideal, but is grounded, as usual, on an actual state of things.

The border of the land toward the north - Names of places in the actual northern border are given (marginal references) not to mark exact geographical position, but to show that the original promise will be fulfilled.The way of Hethlon, was probably the defile between the ranges of Libanus and Anti-libanus, from the sea to Hamath. “Hamath” Amo_6:2, at the foot of Mount Hermon, on the Orontes. was the ancient capital of the Hittites. Its Scripture history may be traced in Gen_10:18; 2Sa_8:9; 2Ki_18:34. It was never included in the possessions of Israel. The border ran considerably south of the town at the “entrance of Hamath,” the northern opening of Coele-Syria.

CLARKE, "The way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad - Probably Hethlon is the same as Cuthlon, a city of Syria, between Antioch and Laodicea, according to Antoninus. Some of these places are not known; but see the same kind of division, Num_34:7-12.

GILL, "And this shall be the border of the land toward the north side,.... The description of the borders of the land begins on the north side; because the Gospel, and

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the interest of Christ, would be, as they now are, chiefly in the northern part of the world, before the latter day glory takes place, and from thence spread into the other parts of it: from the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad; the line of this border shall begin at the Mediterranean sea, commonly called the great sea, and so proceed to Hethlon, a city in Syria Damascene, and from thence to Zedad; of which see Num_34:8, the description is taken all along from the places which were on the border of Canaan, or in countries adjacent to it, which plainly point out the enlargement of it.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:15 And this [shall be] the border of the land toward the north side, from the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad;

Ver. 15. And this shall be the border of the land,] i.e., Of the Christian Church, the borders whereof are here set forth as far larger than those of the land of Canaan ever were.

From the great sea.] The Mediterranean Sea.

The way of Hethlon.] From one end of the kingdom of Damascus to another.

PETT, "Verses 15-17

“And this will be the border of the land. On the north side from the Great Sea by the way of Hethlon, to the entering in of Zedad. Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is between the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath, Hazer-hatticon, which is by the border of Hauran. And the border from the sea will be Hazar-enon at the border of Damascus, and on the north, northward, is the border of Hamath. This is the north side.”

The western boundary would naturally be the Mediterranean (the Great Sea), and the eastern boundary the Jordan (Ezekiel 47:18). The northern boundary was more complicated and with our lack of knowledge difficult to define in more than a

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general way.

Hethlon may be modern ‘Adlun, a coastal town some sixteen kilometres (ten miles) north of Tyre. The ‘entering in of Zedad’ is some point south of Zedad. Zedad may be either modern Sadad, 110 kilometres (seventy miles) east-north-east of Byblos, or Khirbet Sirada, a few miles north of Dan (reading Sarad with LXX and the Samaritan text - d and r were easily confused in the ancient Hebrew script). Hamath probably refers to the southern border of the district of Hamath often called ‘the entering in of Hamath’ (or Lebo-Hamath), Berothah may be modern Breitan, south of Baalbek (compare 2 Samuel 8:8). Sibraim is said to be between the border of Hamath and the border of Damascus. Hazer-hatticon (‘middle Hazer’) may be the same as Hazar-enon at the border of Damascus. Hauran is east of the sea of Chinnereth (Galilee) around the Bashan area in north Transjordan. ‘The sea’ may be the Sea of Chinnereth (Tiberias/Galilee). Note that the border of Hamath is to the north of the territory being described.

PULPIT, "The north boundary. And this shall be the border of the land toward the north side. The Revised Version follows Kliefoth and Keil in detaching the last clause from the preceding words, and reading. This shall be the border of the land: on the north side. From the great sea, the Mediterranean, by the way of Hethlon, as men go to (or, unto the entering in of) Zedad. The former of these places (Chethlon), which is again mentioned in Ezekiel 48:1, has not yet been identified, though Currey suggests for the "way," "the defile between the ranges of Lebanus and Antilibanus, from the sea to Hamath." The latter (Zedad) Wetstein and Robinson find in the city of Sadad (Sudud), east of the road leading from Damascus to Humo (Emesa), and therefore west of Hamath; but as Hamath in all probability lay to the east of Zedad, this opinion must be rejected.

16 Berothah[c] and Sibraim (which lies on the border between Damascus and Hamath), as far as Hazer Hattikon, which is on the border of

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Hauran.

BARNES, "“Berothah,” probably the same as “Berothai” (marginal reference), lay between Hamath and Damascus, as did “Sibraim.”

“Hazar-hatticon” is probably, as in the margin, “the middle Hazar,” to distinguish it from Hazar-enan Eze_47:17.

CLARKE, "Hamath - Emesa or Amesa, in Syria. - Calmet.Berothah - Berytus, now Baruth or Beeroth, which David took from Hadarezer, king of Syria, 2Sa_8:8; but these things are very uncertain.Sibraim - Sabarim or Sepharvaim, according to the Syriac, between Hamath and Damascus.Hazar-hatticon - The middle Hazar; or middle village, as the margin.Hauran - The city Aurana, and the district Auranitis, are in the north-east limit of the Holy Land.

GILL, "Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim,.... The line of the northern border should be drawn on by Hamath, the same with Antiochia in Syria, since called Epiphania, as Jerom observes, from Antiochus Epiphanies; and go on by Berothah, a city of Hadadezer king of Zobah, 2Sa_8:8, the same with the Barothena of Ptolemy (q), placed by him in Syria; and from thence the line would be carried on to Sibraim, a city in Arabia Deserta: which is between the border of Damascus; the chief city in Syria: and the border of Hamath; before mentioned. Calmet (r) imagines it to be that which Ishmael Abulfeda calls Hovvarin; which he says is a village of the country of Ems or Hamath, to the southeast of the city. Hazarhatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran; this seems to be explanative of Sibraim, which lay between the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath; and therefore is called the middle town or village, as "Hazarhatticon" signifies; and lay by the coast of Hauran, which Jerom calls a town of Damascus, with which it is mentioned, Eze_47:18, from whence the country adjacent is called Auranitis, as this place is here by the Septuagint. The Targum calls Hazar the fish pool of the Agbeans; but for what reason, and what is meant by it, I know not.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:16 Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which [is] between the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath; Hazarhatticon, which [is] by the coast of

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Hauran.

Ver. 16. Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim.] Towns of Arabia Deserta. All this is to set forth the amplitude of the Christian Church, spread far and near upon the face of the whole earth, and therefore rightly called Catholic. Roman Catholic is contradictio in adiecto, for it is a particular universal

JAMISON. "Hamath — As Israel was a separate people, so their land was a separate land. On no scene could the sacred history have been so well transacted as on it. On the east was the sandy desert. On the north and south, mountains. On the west, an inhospitable sea-shore. But it was not always to be a separate land. Between the parallel ranges of Lebanon is the long valley of El-Bekaa, leading to “the entering in of Hamath” on the Orontes, in the Syrian frontier. Roman roads, and the harbor made at Caesarea, opened out doors through which the Gospel should go from it to all lands. So in the last days, when all shall flock to Jerusalem as the religious center of the world.

Berothah — a city in Syria conquered by David (2Sa_8:8); meaning “wells.”Hazar-hatticon — meaning “the middle village.”Hauran — a tract in Syria, south of Damascus; Auranitis.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 47:16

The four names here mentioned belong to towns or places lying on the road to Zedad, and stretching from west to east. Hamath, called also Hamath the Great (Amos 6:2), situated on the Orontes, north of Hermon and Antilibanus (Joshua 13:5; 3:3), was the capital of a kingdom to which also belonged Riblah (2 Kings 23:33). Originally colonized by the Canaanites (Genesis 10:18), it became in David's time a flourishing kingdom under Toi, who formed an alliance with the Hebrew sore-reign against Hadadezer of Zoba (2 Samuel 8:9; 1 Chronicles 18:9). It was subsequently conquered by the King of Assyria (2 Kings 18:34). Winer thinks it never belonged to Israel; but Schurer cites 1 Kings 9:19 and 2 Chronicles 8:3, 2 Chronicles 8:4 to show that at least in Solomon's reign it was temporarily annexed to the empire of David's son. In Ezekiel's chart the territory of united Israel should extend, not to the town of Hamath, but to the southern boundary of the land of Hamath. Berothah was probably the same as Berothai (2 Samuel 8:8), afterwards called Chun (1 Chronicles 18:8), if Chun is not a textual corruption. The town in question cannot be identified either with the modern Beirut on the Phoenician coast (Conder), since it must have lain west of Hamath, and therefore at a considerable distance from the sea; or with Birtha, the present day El-Bir, or Birah, on the east

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bank of the Euphrates, which is too far east; or with the Galilaean Berotha, near Kadesh (Josephus), as this is too far south; but must be sought for between Hamath and Damascus, and most likely close to the former. Sibraim, occurring here only, may, on the other hand, be assumed to have lain nearer Damascus, and may, perhaps, be identified with Ziphron (Numbers 34:9), though the site of this town cannot be where Wetstein placed it, at Zifran, north-east of Damascus, and on the road to Palmyra. Smend compares it with Sepharvaim (2 Kings 17:24). Damascus was the well-known capital of Syria (Isaiah 7:8), and the principal emporium of commerce between East and West Asia (Ezekiel 27:18). Its high antiquity is testified by both Scripture (Genesis 14:15; Genesis 15:2) and the cuneiform inscriptions, in which it appears as Dimaski and Dimaska. Hazar-hatticon; or, the middle Hazar, was probably so styled to distinguish it from Hazar-enan (verse 17). (On the import of Hatticon, see Exodus 26:28 and 2 Kings 20:4, in both of which places it signifies "the middle.") The word Hazar ( חצר ), "an enclosure," or "place fenced off," was employed to denote villages or townships, of which at least six are mentioned in Scripture (see Gesenius, 'Lexicon,' sub voce). Hauran, αὐρανῖτις (LXX.), "Cave-land," so called because of the number of its caverns, was most likely designed to designate "the whole tract of land between Damascus and the country of Gilead" (Keil).

17 The boundary will extend from the sea to Hazar Enan,[d] along the northern border of Damascus, with the border of Hamath to the north. This will be the northern boundary.

BARNES, "And the north ... - Or, “and on the north, the border on the north shall be” etc.

CLARKE, "The border from the sea - The north border eastward is ascertained Eze_47:15, Eze_47:16; here it is shown how far it extends itself northward.

Hazar-enan - The village of Enan, Num_34:9, placed to the north of Caesarea Philippi. Ziphron, see Num_34:9, called Zaphion by the Syriac.98

GILL, "And the border from the sea shall be Hazarenan, the border of Damascus,.... Which was the furthermost part and end of the northern border, as fixed by Moses, Num_34:9, and the north northward, and the border of Hamath; if this is carrying on the border further, it seems to be another Hamath, distinct from the former, Eze_47:16, and this is the north side: of the land, and the description of the northern border of it, from the Mediterranean sea to Hazarenan.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:17 And the border from the sea shall be Hazarenan, the border of Damascus, and the north northward, and the border of Hamath. And [this is] the north side.

Ver. 17. And the border from the sea shall be Hazarenan.] Forasmuch as the borders in this description of the land are set to be such as never were in the Israelites’ possession, the Jewish doctors are, will they nill they, forced to confess that the land of Israel in the world to come shall be larger than ever it had been. Now gospel times are called "the world to come." [Hebrews 2:5]

PULPIT, "The northern boundary is further defined as extending from the sea, i.e. the Mediterranean on the west, to Hazar-enan, or the "Village of fountains," in the east, which village again is declared to have been the border, frontier city (Keil), at the border (Revised Version) of Damascus, and as having on the north northward the border or territory of Hamath. The final clause adds, And this is the north side, either understanding ואת, with Gesenius, as equivalent to αὐτός, ipse, "this same," or with Hitzig and Smend, after the Syriac, substituting for it here and in Ezekiel 47:18, Ezekiel 47:19 ואת as in Ezekiel 47:20; though Hengstenberg and Keil prefer to regard את as the customary sign of the accusative, and to supply some such thought as "ye see" (Hengstenberg), or "ye shall measure" (Keil), which Ezekiel 47:18 shows was in the prophet's mind. Compared with the ancient north boundary of Canaan (Numbers 9-34:7 ), this appointed by Ezekiel's Torah for the new land shows a marked correspondence.

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18 “On the east side the boundary will run between Hauran and Damascus, along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel, to the Dead Sea and as far as Tamar.[e] This will be the eastern boundary.

BARNES, "The eastern boundary is to commence by separating off the territory of Damascus and Hauran, and then to follow the line of the Jordan to the Dead Sea. Further, the land occupied by the trans-Jordanic tribes was also to be separated off from the land of Israel. The trans-Jordanic tribes in fact occupied their ground (in Joshua’s allotment) by sufferance. This did not belong to Canaan proper, the land of promise. Hence, the tribes, formerly on the east of the Jordan, have here allotments in Canaan, though “the oblation” Eze_45:1 extends to a considerable distance beyond the Jordan (see Plan, Ezek. 48). The whole arrangement being ideal and symbolic, the vision here, as in the case of “the waters” (Eze_47:1 note), departs from the physical features of the land for the purpose of maintaining symbolic numbers.

GILL, "And the east side ye shall measure Hauran,.... The line of the eastern border of the land shall begin at Hauran or Auranitis; see Eze_47:16, which lay to the south (s) of Damascus: and it follows, and from the land of Israel by Jordan, from the border unto the east sea; and so from Damascus, the metropolis of Syria; and likewise from Gilead, a mountain and country beyond Jordan; and also from that part of the land of Israel near to Jordan; and so from the northern border to the east sea, or sea of Galilee or Tiberias: and this is the east side: of the land, or the eastern border of it, reaching from Hauran to the lake of Gennesaret, or to the Salt sea, the sea of Sodom; see Num_34:10.

JAMISON, "east sea — the Dead Sea. The border is to go down straight to it by the valley of the Jordan. So Num_34:11, Num_34:12.

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COKE, "Ezekiel 47:18. Unto the east sea, &c.— Unto the Dead Sea on the east. Ezekiel 47:22. And to the strangers] Neither under Joshua, nor under Zerubbabel, were the Jews allowed to give strangers a part of their inheritance with them; this therefore can only be understood as a prediction of that which happened under the Lord Jesus Christ, when strangers were admitted into the heritage of Israel, and put in possession of the true land of promise, without distinction of Jew or Gentile; for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. See Romans 10:12 and Calmet.

REFLECTIONS.—1st, The waters of the sanctuary mentioned above are by many commentators supposed to signify the gospel of Jesus, the blessed effects and glorious extent of it being hereby represented. There was nothing like these streams flowing from the material temple at Jerusalem, and therefore they consider it necessary to take the vision in a mystical sense.

1. The fountain-head was in the sanctuary, and from the threshold of the house the waters issued. In the temple did Christ and his apostles daily teach, and thence did the word of the Lord go forth into the Gentile lands; and he himself is both the temple and the door, from which these living waters flow, and who gives them their quickening power and efficacy.

2. The course of the river was eastward; and then, either by dividing its streams, or by winding round, it turned west into the sea, the Dead Sea or the Lake of Sodom, or, as some suppose, into the Mediterranean. The gospel, which began to be preached at first in Galilee, and spread afterwards chiefly through the countries that lay east of Judea, went forth in process of time into all lands, even to the ends of the earth.

3. The waters, as they ran, grew wider and deeper: the prophet and his divinely-appointed guide, crossing them three times at the distance of a thousand cubits each from the fountain-head, found the river swoln from their ancles to their knees, then risen to their loins; and when the fourth time they would have crossed the waters, they were no longer fordable. And this may refer, [1.] To the spreading of the gospel in the world: from small beginnings the church of God has increased exceedingly,

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and shall go on still enlarging, till the whole earth shall be covered with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. [2.] To the truths of God, which the farther we search the deeper we shall find them. Some things are plain and obvious, and reach but to the ancles; in others more abstruse, experience and inquiry will lead us farther up to the loins; whilst in some, the farther we go, the more we are lost, and can only stand on the river's brink, and cry with St. Paul, O the depth! Romans 11:33. [3.] To the work of grace in the faithful soul, which by continual accessions of light and love from the great fountain-head, increases with the increase of God, till we come to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

4. Wherever these streams went forth, their wondrous virtue appeared: even the waters of Sodom were healed: for such is the mighty efficacy of the Saviour's grace, that it reaches to the most desperate; the vilest may find pardon through his blood, and renovation by the power of his Spirit: to the uttermost his salvation extends, and none are beyond it, who do not wilfully reject it. And whithersoever these rivers came, they communicated life; such is the quickening influence which attends the gospel of Jesus: wherever it is preached, dead sinners live, and, like a well-watered tree, the souls of believers are green and flourishing: but the obstinate and impenitent are left to their misery as the marshes and miry places; abandoned to eternal ruin.

5. Vast shoals of fish shall live in this river, and the fishermen cast in their nets, and dry them on the banks thereof; intimating the multitude of converts that by the preaching of the gospel shall be called into the church of Christ, and the diligence and laboriousness of the ministers of Christ, as well as the success of their ministrations; for their labour shall not be in vain in the Lord.

6. On the banks every useful tree for food or physic grew, their leaf never fading, their fruit ever abounding; see Revelation 22:2. These represent the souls of the faithful saints of God, the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, deriving from Jesus their life and vigour; watered every moment by his grace; green in their professions; in every good work bringing forth fruit to the glory of God; pouring the balm of friendly advice and consolation into the hearts of the tempted and afflicted; and, persevering in every labour of love, till their life of grace on earth shall be

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exchanged for the eternal life of glory in heaven.

2nd, The borders of the land here marked out are considerably larger than those described by Moses and Joshua, or than the country possessed by the Israelites after their return from the Babylonish captivity; which may be understood typically of the church of Christ, and the true Israel of God, which, under the gospel dispensation, should have a great increase.

Joseph has two portions, to complete the number of the twelve tribes, Levi being taken to attend the sanctuary, and having a portion adjoining thereunto. They are to divide the land into twelve equal shares; see Revelation 7:4-8 which was not the case at the first division of the country, when the greater tribes had more, and the smaller less. But now, in the militant church of Christ, believers are all entitled to the same blessings and privileges.

Here also the strangers are allowed to inherit among native Israelites, which before was forbidden; for now the middle wall of partition is taken down, and the Gentiles made fellow-heirs and of the same body, members of the glorious dispensation of the gospel of Christ.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:18 And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, and from Damascus, and from Gilead, and from the land of Israel [by] Jordan, from the border unto the east sea. And [this is] the east side.

Ver. 18. From Hauran.] A town of Arabia Deserts (Ptolemy calleth it Aurana), but Felix in this, that it is taken into the Church.

PETT, "Verse 18

“And the east side between Hauran and Damascus, and Gilead and the land of Israel, will be Jordan. From the north border to the east sea you shall measure. This

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is the east side.”

The ‘east sea’ is probably the Dead Sea. Hauran/Damascus and Gilead/Israel represent the northern end of the border represented by the Jordan.

PULPIT, "The east boundary. And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, etc. The Revised Version, after Keil and Kliefoth, translates, And the east side, between Hauran and Damascus and Gilead, and the land of Israel, shall be (the) Jordan; from the (north) border unto the east sea shall ye measure. Smend offers as the correct rendering, The east side goes from between Hauran and Damascus, and from between Gilead and the land of Israel, along the Jordan, from the border unto the east sea. In any case, by this instruction, first the land of Israel was defined as the territory lying west of the Jordan, and secondly its boundary should extend from the last-named north border at its easternmost point, Hazar-enan, down the Jordan valley to the Dead Sea. The practical effect of this would be to cut off the lands which in the earlier division (Numbers 34:14, Numbers 34:15) had been assigned to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Otherwise the boundary hero given corresponds with that traced in Numbers, though the latter is more minute. Hengstenberg, however, thinks the prophet cannot have intended to assert that the new Israel should not possess the land of Gilead as a frontier in the future as formerly, as in that case he would have been at variance, not only with preexisting Scripture (comp. Psalms 60:7; Micah 7:14; Jeremiah 1:19; Zechariah 10:10), but with subsequent history.

19 “On the south side it will run from Tamar as far as the waters of Meribah Kadesh, then along the Wadi of Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. This will be the southern boundary.

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BARNES, "The south border (compare Num_34:4) commences with “Tamar,” probably a village near the southern end of the Dead Sea. The word means “palm-tree;” and is given to more than one city in the holy land.

The river to the great sea - literally, “riverward to the great sea.” By the “river” is meant the torrent-stream entering the Mediterranean near “Rhinocolura” (El Arish).

CLARKE, "Tamar - Called Hazazon Tamar, or Engedi, 2Ch_20:2.The river - Besor, which runs into the sea near Gaza.

GILL, "And the south side southward from Tamar,.... Not Jericho, as the Targum, Jarchi, and Kimchi, called by this name from the palm trees which grew near it; according to Jerom, this is Palmyra, so called for the same reason; but it is rather Engedi, called Hazazontamar, 2Ch_20:2, the line of the southern border began here, and went on, even to the waters of strife in Kadesh; to the waters of Meribah in Kadesh; so called, from the strivings of the children of Israel with the Lord there, Num_20:1, the river to the great sea; it proceeded by the river of Egypt, the river Sihor, the Nile, which is before Egypt, Jos_13:3 and so on to the Mediterranean sea: and this is the south side southward; the south side of the land, and the southern border of it.

JAMISON, "Tamar — not Tadmor in the desert, but Tamar, the last town of Judea, by the Dead Sea. Meaning “palm tree”; so called from palm trees abounding near it.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:19 And the south side southward, from Tamar [even] to the waters of strife [in] Kadesh, the river to the great sea. And [this is] the south side southward.

Ver. 19. From Tamar.] Hazazon Tamar, (a) which was near the sea of Sodom. [Ezekiel 47:10]

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In Kadesh.] Not in Rephidim. [Exodus 17:7]

PETT, "Verse 19

“And the south side southward shall be from Tamar as far as the waters of Meriboth-kadesh, to the wadi of Egypt, to the Great Sea. This is the south side southward.”

Tamar would be south of the Dead Sea, the oasis of Meriboth-kadesh is probably Kadesh-barnea, modern ‘Ain Qadeis, and the Wadi of Egypt is probably Wadi El-‘Arish 80 kilometres (fifty miles) west of Gaza, which separated usable land from the desert.

PULPIT, "The south boundary. This should begin where the east boundary terminated, viz. at Tamar, "Palm tree." Different from Hazezon-Tamar, or Engedi (Ezekiel 47:10; 2 Chronicles 20:2), which lay too far up the west side of the sea, Tamar can hardly be identified either with the Tamar of 1 Kings 9:18 near Tadmor in the wilderness, or with the Thamara ( θαμαρά) of Eusebius between Hebron and Elath, supposed by Robinson to he Kurnub, six hours south of Milh, towards the pass of Es-Sufah, since this was too distant from the Dead Sea The most plausible conjecture is that Tamar was "a village near the southern end of the Dead Sea" (Currey). Proceeding westward, the southern boundary should reach to the waters of strife in Kadesh; better, to the waters of Meribotk Kadesh. These were in the Desert of Sin, near Kadesh-Barnea (Numbers 20:1-13), which, again, was on the road from Hebron to Egypt (Genesis 16:14). The exact site, however, of Kadesh-Barnea is matter of dispute; Rowland and Keil find it in the spring 'Ain Kades, at the north-west corner of the mountain-land of Azazimeh, which stretches on the south of Palestine from the south-south-west to the north-north-east, and forms the watershed Between the Mediterranean and the Arabah valley. Delitzsch and Conder seek it in the neighborhood of the Wady-el-Jemen, on the south-east side of the above watershed, and on the road from Mount Hot. Robinson ('Bibl. Rea,' 2.582) discovers it in 'Ain-el-Weibeh, not far from Petra. A writer (Sin; Smend?) in Riehm ('Handworterbuch des Biblischen Alterthums,' art. "Kades") pleads for a site on the

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west side of the Azazimeh plateau, and in the vicinity of the road by Shur to Egypt. Leaving Kadesh, the boundary should continue to the river, or, brook, of Egypt, and thence extend to the great sea, or Mediterranean. The punctuation of גחלה, which makes the word signify "lot,' must be changed into נחלה, so as to mean "river," since the reference manifestly is to the torrent of Egypt, the Wady-el-Arish, on the borders of Palestine and Egypt, which enters the Mediterranean near Rhinocorura ( ῥινοκόρουρα ). In Numbers 34:5 it is called the river of Egypt. And this is the south side southward (see on Numbers 34:17). The correspondence between this line and that of the earlier chart (Numbers 34:4, Numbers 34:5) is once more apparent.

20 “On the west side, the Mediterranean Sea will be the boundary to a point opposite Lebo Hamath. This will be the western boundary.

CLARKE, "The great sea - The Mediterranean.From the border - The southern border, mentioned Eze_47:19.

GILL, "The west side also shall be the great sea from the border,.... From the border of Egypt, and the river of it, to the Mediterranean sea, is the west side of the land, and the western border of it; hence the western point is often expressed in Scripture by the sea: till a man come over against Hamath; Antioch in Syria; see Eze_47:16. this is the west side; of the land, and of the western border of it.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:20 The west side also [shall be] the great sea from the border,

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till a man come over against Hamath. This [is] the west side.

Ver. 20. Till a man come over against Hamath.] To that place of the great sea, from which lieth a straight way from Hamath eastward.

PETT, "Verse 20

“And the west side shall be the Great Sea, from the south border as far as opposite the entering in of Hamath (or Lebo-hamath). This is the west side.”

The west boundary is simply the Great (Mediterranean) Sea between the north and south boundaries. For these boundaries compare Numbers 34:3-12 and 1 Kings 8:65.

PULPIT, "The western boundary. This, as in Numbers 34:6, should be the great sea from the border, i.e. the southern boundary last mentioned (Numbers 34:19), till a man come over against Hamath; literally, unto (the place which is) over against the coming to Hamath; i.e. till opposite the point (on the coast) at which one enters the territory of Hamath (comp. 19:10; 20:43).

21 “You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel.

GILL, "So shall ye divide this land unto you,.... As thus bounded, east, west, north, and south:

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according to the tribes of Israel; See Gill on Eze_47:13.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:21 So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel.

Ver. 21. So shall ye divide.] Epilogus est. There is one and the same "inheritance of the saints in light."

PETT, "Verse 21

‘ “So shall you divide this land to you according to the tribes of Israel. And it shall be that you will divide it by lot for an inheritance to you, and to the strangers who live among you, who will beget children among you. And they will be to you as the home born among the children of Israel, they will have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And it will be that in whatever tribe the stranger lives, there you will give him his inheritance”, says the Lord Yahweh.’

So the land would be divided up among the tribes of Israel, but there was now no need to evict strangers as long as they were willing to become a part of the covenant and worship Yahweh (there were now no Canaanites as such). This was in accordance with Leviticus 19:34; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:29; Isaiah 56:3-8. It is a clear indication that the land was now open to all who were willing to serve Yahweh. The new Israel was to be inclusive and not exclusive. ‘Yet will I gather others to him, besides his own who are gathered’ (Isaiah 56:8). Here we have the seeds of the worldwide expansion of the true Israel by the incorporation of the Gentiles. Gentiles who respond in faith to God and enter the covenant become one among the tribes of Israel.

The fact that it was to be divided by lot (compare Ezekiel 45:1; Joshua 14:1-2) does not fit well with specific allocation of the land. One is saying that the land became theirs in accordance with Yahweh’s will as in the days of Joshua, the other is saying that it was by divine fiat. But if the whole picture is idealistic and not literal then

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both can be true.

22 You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners residing among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.

BARNES, "And to the strangers - Here is quite a new feature in the distribution of the land. Not only the Israelites by descent, but those who join themselves to Israel by allegiance to the true God, shall have a right of inheritance. Here are opened out the blessings which were to accrue to the Gentiles through the seed of Abraham. Compare Rom_9:24, following. The difference which existed under the old covenant between Jew and Gentile is now at last done away. But while pagandom thus unites itself with God’s people, Israel is still as ever the chosen people, the center of this union. No new Church is founded side by side with the old. Pagandom is absorbed in Israel - the standard which God has set up for the nations - i. e., in the One True Church, which has subsisted from the beginning, and will subsist in eternity.

CLARKE, "And to the strangers that sojourn - In former divisions of the land, no place was given to strangers; but in this division, (which seems to have no other reference than to the Gospel, for literally such a division never took place), the strangers are to have an inheritance; intimating the calling of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ, to an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Glory be to God for his unspeakable gift! Amen. Amen.

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GILL, "And it shall come to pass,.... In the last days, under the Gospel dispensation: that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you; who were Israelites, both by natural descent, and by the Spirit and grace of God: the Gospel was first preached to Israel after the flesh, and made effectual to the conversion of many of them; and the first churches were made up of them, and they shared all the blessings and privileges thereof; as they also will in the latter day, when converted: and to the strangers that sojourn among them; not such as were strangers to spiritual and divine things; for this would contradict the rule in Eze_44:9, but converted Gentiles, so called because of their natural descent and civil state, being, with respect to both, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; yet were to be, as they have been, and will be, taken into the same Gospel church state with the believing Jews: which shall beget children among you; not only in a natural, but in a spiritual sense; be the means of begetting many souls again to the lively hope of a glorious inheritance: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; that is, the children begotten by the Gentiles shall be considered all one as those of the children of Israel, being born again of the same Spirit and grace; and so have an equal right to the same privileges, and to which they shall be admitted: they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel; this is a new thing, and what in a literal sense was never granted; for though in the times of Moses and onward, and by his direction from the Lord, such as have been called proselytes of the gate, and proselytes of righteousness, have been admitted to various privileges, by conforming to certain rules, rites, and ceremonies, yet never were allowed to have any inheritance in the land; and, after the captivity, Ezra and Nehemiah drove out the strangers, who by affinity with some had got among them: but this respects Gospel times, and the coalition of Jews and Gentiles in the same church state; where there is no difference, but Christ is all in all; where they are admitted to the same ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper; partake of the same blessings of grace, and promises of the word, and have an equal right to the heavenly inheritance: Eph_3:6, is the best commentary on this passage; which contains the same mystery the Apostle Paul was acquainted with, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel; See Gill on Eph_3:6. See Eph_2:12.

JAMISON, "to the strangers — It is altogether unprecedented under the old covenant, that “strangers” should have “inheritance” among the tribes. There would not be room locally within Canaan for more than the tribes. The literal sense must therefore be modified, as expressing that Gentiles are not to be excluded from settling among the covenant-people, and that spiritually their privileges are not to be less than those of

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Israel (Rom_10:12; Gal_3:28; Eph_3:6; Col_3:11; Rev_7:9, Rev_7:10). Still, “sojourneth,” in Eze_47:23, implies that in Canaan, the covenant people are regarded as at home, the strangers as settlers.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:22 And it shall come to pass, [that] ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.

Ver. 22. An inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you.] What can the spiteful Jews say to this? who stick not to say, that rather than the bastard Gentiles (so they call Christians) should share with them in their Messiah, they would crucify him a hundred times over and over. Under the Old Testament, though strangers lived with the children of Israel, yet they had no inheritance with them at any time, as now they are appointed to have.

23 In whatever tribe a foreigner resides, there you are to give them their inheritance,” declares the Sovereign Lord.

GILL, "And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth,.... Whatsoever particular congregation or church these strangers and sojourners (as all the Lord's people are in this world, and even in their church state), or those Gentiles before described, shall be nearest unto, and to which they shall propose themselves for communion, they shall be readily admitted: there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God; allow him a name and a place; put him in the possession of all church privileges and immunities; look upon him as a member, a brother, a fellow citizen, as an heir together of the grace of life, and as equally entitled to the inheritance of the saints in light; and for this they have the

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authority and order of Jehovah himself.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 47:23 And it shall come to pass, [that] in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give [him] his inheritance, saith the Lord GOD.

Ver. 23. See on Ezekiel 47:22.

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