Ezekiel47chapter 47

Ezekiel 47:1-2

The guide brings the prophet back to the temple door, and water is running out from under the threshold itself, on the south side of the altar, the house's own front facing east where the glory returned in chapter 43. Fairbairn reads the source as the point: not a stream found nearby and dedicated, but a river that begins inside the sanctuary and flows from it. The vision that opened with the glory's departure now shows life pouring outward from the place the glory came back to.

Ezekiel 47:3-5

The man with the measuring line walks the prophet eastward in four stages of a thousand cubits each, and the river deepens at every stage, ankles, then knees, then loins, then water too deep to cross, a river to swim in. Keil reads the rising measure as the vision's own picture of grace, small at its source and only ever increasing the further it is followed, never receding. The prophet cannot walk this river to its end; he can only be carried further into it.

Ezekiel 47:6-7

The guide's question, addressed to the prophet by his standing title, turns him back to the river's bank, where very many trees stand on either side. Gill reads the question as making the prophet an eyewitness on record before the interpretation is given, the same pattern the vision has used since the throne chapter. The trees are named before their purpose is explained, held for the unit that follows.

Ezekiel 47:8-9

The river runs down through the desert into the sea, and the sea's own waters are healed by it, so that everything that lives wherever the river comes will live, with a very great multitude of fish. The east country and the sea point toward the Dead Sea, the one body of water east of Jerusalem too salt to sustain life, and the commentators across the tradition read the healing as this river's plain, stated effect on it. Henry notes the repetition, healed and live and live again, as the text's own emphasis rather than the exposition's addition.

Ezekiel 47:10-11

Fishers will work the healed shore from En-gedi to En-eglaim, their catch as varied as the fish of the great sea, but the vision does not erase every salt place: the miry ground and the marshes are left to salt, unhealed. Fairbairn reads the exception as keeping the vision honest, abundance given without pretending every square foot of ground is remade the same way. A source of salt still has its own use even beside a river of healing.

Ezekiel 47:12

On both banks of the river stand trees whose leaf never fades and whose fruit never fails, bearing new fruit every month because their water flows out of the sanctuary itself, the fruit for meat and the leaf for medicine. Revelation 22:1-2 takes up this verse almost feature for feature, the river of water of life proceeding from the throne, the tree of life bearing twelve fruits monthly with leaves for the healing of the nations, stated as the connection the text itself carries forward. Fairbairn reads Ezekiel's river as the earlier picture Revelation completes rather than a separate vision, one river of life shown twice.

Ezekiel 47:13-14

The oracle turns from the river to the land itself, promising the whole of it divided among the twelve tribes with one adjustment named outright, Joseph receiving two portions in place of Levi's tribal share, the double portion Jacob gave him at Genesis 48 carried into the final division. Gill notes the promise reaches back to the oath sworn to the fathers, the land Israel's own by inheritance rather than by conquest alone. The chapter that measured a river now measures a country.

Ezekiel 47:15-20

The border is traced in a single circuit, north through Hethlon, Zedad, Hamath and Damascus, east along Hauran and Gilead to the Jordan and the east sea, south from Tamar to the waters of strife at Kadesh, and west along the great sea itself. Keil reads the boundary as drawn wider than the land Israel ever actually possessed under David or Solomon, a promise stated at its fullest extent rather than a record of past borders. The positions on how literally the boundary is meant to be read stand with the same two readings already named for the temple's own measurements.

Ezekiel 47:21-23

The land is to be divided by lot among the tribes, and the chapter closes on a deliberate widening: the stranger who sojourns among them and begets children there is to be counted as one born in the country, given inheritance in whatever tribe he settles among rather than left landless. Henry reads the ruling as the same welcome Israel's own law already required for the sojourner, stated here as a fixed term of the final division rather than a mere suggestion. The chapter that began with water flowing out from the sanctuary ends with the land itself opened to the outsider who comes to dwell in it.