The River That Gives Life Beyond the Walls

Jerusalem’s only real spring, the Gihon, rose in the Kidron valley below the city, and Hezekiah tunnelled its water inside the walls (2 Chronicles 32:30). No spring rose on the temple hill. Joel 3:18 foresaw “a fountain shall come forth of the house of the LORD”. The “right side”, facing east, is the south.

The east gate is shut, so Ezekiel is led out by the north and round the outside. “There ran out waters” renders a rare verb related to pakh, a small flask, the vial of oil Samuel poured over Saul in 1 Samuel 10:1. The river starts as a trickle, as if poured from a jug.

The flax line of 40:3 is finally put to use: it is the tool for long distances. A thousand cubits is roughly half a kilometre. The Hebrew says literally “waters of the ankles”, and Ezekiel is “brought through” them, walking beside the measuring man.

The pattern repeats twice within the verse: a thousand cubits, knees; a thousand more, loins, which in 1611 meant the waist and hips. By now Ezekiel is about a kilometre and a half from the house, still wading, and the guide keeps paying out the line.

“River” here is nachal, a wadi or torrent bed that usually runs only in the rainy season. The Kidron is such a nachal, and its valley does in fact descend east from Jerusalem through the wilderness to the Dead Sea. “Waters to swim in” is a phrase found only here.

“Hast thou seen this?” is the question the LORD asked three times in chapter 8 (8:12, 15, 17), each time after showing Ezekiel an abomination in the temple. The same question is now asked of a river flowing out of it.

“Very many” is the phrase used of the bones in 37:2: “there were very many in the open valley.” A river with trees on either bank also recalls the garden of Genesis 2:9–10, where a river “went out of Eden to water the garden”.

“The desert” is ha‘aravah, the Arabah, the rift valley through which the Jordan runs, and “the sea” is the Dead Sea, called the salt sea in Genesis 14:3. “Healed” is the verb of 2 Kings 2:21, where Elisha healed the bad water of Jericho, a few miles from this very shore: “I have healed these waters.”

“Rivers” is a dual form in Hebrew, “two rivers”. Zechariah 14:8 has living waters flowing out of Jerusalem half toward the eastern sea and half toward the western. “Every thing that liveth, which moveth” echoes the creatures the waters brought forth in Genesis 1:21.

En-gedi is the spring on the Dead Sea’s western shore where David hid from Saul (1 Samuel 24:1); En-eglaim is uncertain, perhaps near the northern end. “A place to spread forth nets” is what Tyre was sentenced to become in 26:5 and 14, a bare rock of ruin. Here the same phrase describes a thriving fishing shore.

“Marishes” is the 1611 spelling of marshes. Salt was not a waste product: every offering was to be salted (Leviticus 2:13; Ezekiel 43:24), and the Dead Sea shore was a source of it. The unhealed marshes keep supplying what the altar requires.

Psalm 1:3 describes a tree “planted by the rivers of water” whose “leaf also shall not wither”. “New fruit” is literally “firstfruits”, borne every month. “Medicine” renders terufah, from rafa, to heal, a word found only here.

The Hebrew opens with a word, geh, that makes no sense; a one-letter slip for zeh, “this”, is the usual explanation. Joseph has two portions because Jacob adopted his sons: “Ephraim and Manasseh, as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine” (Genesis 48:5).

“One as well as another” is literally “each man as his brother”: equal shares. Under Numbers 26:54 larger tribes had received larger territories. Here every tribe receives the same band of land, whatever its size.

The northern border closely follows Numbers 34:7–9, the border Moses gave before the conquest. Hethlon is otherwise unknown, and Zedad appears in Numbers 34:8. The line runs inland from the Mediterranean into what is now Lebanon and Syria.

Hamath is Hama on the Orontes in Syria; “the entering in of Hamath” was the proverbial northern limit of Solomon’s kingdom (1 Kings 8:65). Berothah may be the Berothai from which David took bronze (2 Samuel 8:8). Hauran is the basalt plateau east of Galilee.

Hazar-enan, “village of springs”, is also where the northern border ends in Numbers 34:9–10. Damascus lies just outside. The verse compresses the northern line into a single sentence and closes: “this is the north side.”

The eastern border is the Jordan. Gilead and all the land east of the river are left out, although Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh had settled there under Moses (Numbers 32). Ezekiel’s land matches Canaan as Numbers 34:12 defined it, west of the Jordan only.

Tamar lay near the southern end of the Dead Sea (1 Kings 9:18). “The waters of strife in Kadesh” is Meribah-kadesh, where Moses struck the rock and was barred from the land (Numbers 20:13; Deuteronomy 32:51). The border now runs through the place where Moses’ entry ended. The river is the Wadi of Egypt.

The western border is the Mediterranean coast, stated in a single line. The coastal plain, long held by the Philistines and Phoenicians, is included in full, a boundary Israel seldom if ever controlled in the whole of its history.

“Ye shall divide” makes the people the dividers, not a king or a conquering commander. The verse is a hinge: the borders have been drawn round the whole, and the next verses add who is to be included within them.

Leviticus 19:34 commanded that “the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you”, the same phrase used here. But the Law gave strangers no share in the tribal land. Ezekiel goes further: the settled stranger draws a lot with Israel’s own families.

There were precedents of a kind. Caleb was a Kenizzite by descent (Numbers 32:12), yet received Hebron within Judah (Joshua 14:13–14), and Rahab’s family “dwelleth in Israel” (Joshua 6:25). The chapter’s last ruling makes such cases a rule, and closes with “saith the Lord GOD”.