Ezekiel 47: Living Water Stream from Ezekiel’s Temple

Water Flowing from the Temple

Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and there I saw water flowing eastward from under the threshold of the temple, for the front of the temple was facing east. The water was flowing down from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar.
– Eze 47:1

Water of Symbolic Meaning

1. There was no spring in the literal temple in Jerusalem.
2. Although at the outer gate only “trickling” (Eze 47:2), the water gets every 500 m a lot deeper. So much that Ezekiel would need to swim because he could not stand anymore (Eze 47:5)
3. The trees this water would nourish produce fruit every month (Eze 47:12)

The Israelites abandoned the pure worship of Jehovah and instead worshiped to worthless idols. In Jehovahs eyes, this was like like giving up an oasis full of water and starting to search somewhere where there is no water at all.

They have left even me [Jehovah], the source of living water, in order to hew out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot contain the water.’
– Jer 2:13

All our lives depend on the water given by the maker of water: Jehovah (Re 14:7). But the Bible speaks of a type of water which would bring not only preserve life but bring everlasting life.

“Everyone drinking from this water will get thirsty again. Whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty at all, but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water bubbling up to impart everlasting life”
– Joh 4:13, 14

We will find similarities in the water which flows out of the Temple in Ezekiel’s Vision.

Stream of Water brings life …

… everything will live wherever the stream goes
– Eze 47:9

… to a Desert Plain

And he went on to say to me: “This water is going forth to the eastern region and must go down through the Arʹa·bah [or desert plain] …
– Eze 47:8

Which is located south to the Dead Sea

… The Dead Sea

… And it must come to the sea [Dead Sea]. It being brought forth into the sea itself, [its] water is also actually healed. Swarms of living creatures will be able to live wherever the waters flow. There will be an abundance of fish, because this water will flow there. The seawater will be healed, and everything will live wherever the stream goes.
– Eze 47:8, 9

The Dead Sea contains around 10 times more salt than the ocean. Except for some fungi and bacteria, there is no living thing in this sea.

Exceptions which are not healed

“It will have swampy places and marshy places, and these will not be healed. They will be abandoned to salt.
– Eze 47:11

Some miry places would be excluded from the healing. These hopeless cases will stay lifeless and desolated. The phrase “abandoned to salt” has very likely a negative meaning:

In limited quantities salt is beneficial on certain acid soils or when mixed with manure, but if allowed to accumulate in the soil, it kills vegetation and the land becomes barren and unfruitful, as was the case with the once-fertile Euphrates Valley. A city condemned to total destruction was sometimes deliberately sown with salt, this act expressing the desire that the place be perpetually barren and sterile.—De 29:22, 23; Jg 9:45; Job 39:5, 6; Jer 17:6.
– it-2 pp. 842-843 Salt

Comparing John’s “River” and Ezekiel’s “Stream”

1. They have its source from God
2. The Rivers are connected to the term “Life”
3. There are Trees on both sides of the River
4. The Trees give fruit ever month
5. The trees have leaves which do not wither

When I returned, I saw that on the bank of the stream were very many trees on both sides.
– Eze 47:7

“All sorts of trees for food will grow on both banks of the stream. Their leaves will not wither; nor will their fruitage fail. Each month they will bear new fruit, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruitage will serve as food and their .”
– Eze 47:12

And he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of its main street. On both sides of the river were trees of life producing 12 crops of fruit, yielding their fruit each month. And the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations
– Re 22:1,2