Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary
The River From Under the Threshold
Ezekiel 47:1-12
1 He brought me back to the door of the temple; and behold, waters flowed out from under the threshold of the temple eastward, for the front of the temple faced toward the east. The waters came down from underneath, from the right side of the temple, on the south of the altar. · WEB
Water comes out from under the door of the temple, and a man with a line measures it four times to establish that it deepens without a tributary.
The vision's last movement begins at the door of the temple with a detail so small it is easy to miss: waters flowed out from under the threshold. Not from a spring in the hills, not from a reservoir, but from beneath the building itself, on the south side of the altar. The source is the sanctuary, and the whole passage turns on that.
What follows is the vision's method applied to a river. The man goes east with the line in his hand and measures a thousand cubits, then leads the prophet through — ankle deep. Another thousand — knees. Another thousand — waist. A fourth thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the waters had risen, waters to swim in. Four measurements, four crossings, and no tributary mentioned at any point. In ordinary geography a stream grows because other streams join it. This one deepens from nothing but distance from its source.
The question the guide asks — Son of man, have you seen this? — is the only interpretive prompt in the chapter, and the answer is left to the reader. Then the river's effect is described. It runs down into the Arabah and enters the sea, and the waters will be healed. The sea in question is the Dead Sea, which supports no life at all. Fish will be in it after their kinds, exceedingly many, like the fish of the great sea , and fishermen will stand from En Gedi to En Eglaim spreading nets. That last phrase has been used once already in this book, of Tyre scraped bare and left as a place for drying nets Ezekiel 26:5. Here the same industry marks a sea brought back to life.
One verse refuses to let the picture become total: its swamps and marshes will not be healed. They will be given up to salt. Salt was needed for every offering Ezekiel 43:24, so the exception has a use rather than being a failure. But it stands, unexplained, in the middle of a promise of universal healing.
The trees on the banks close the vision's imagery. Every tree for food, leaves that do not wither, fruit that does not fail, new fruit every month — and the reason given is a single clause that gathers the whole chapter: because its waters issue out of the sanctuary. The fruit is for food and the leaf for healing, which makes the trees useful in both their parts. A book that began with a priest exiled from a burned sanctuary ends its imagery with a sanctuary whose overflow makes a dead sea live.
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