Ezekiel 47:9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that lives, which moves, wherever the rivers shall come, shall live… I have seen nothing more grandly expressive of a small beginning which has infinite possibilities in it than the bubbling spring. It is so small that a child's thumb would cover the opening; but yet so mighty that you would find the greatest difficulty to suppress its upward pressure Like many living things, it is well-nigh omnipotent in its expansion. We have seen castles rent asunder and rocks split by the expanding energy of a seed. Perhaps next to that comes the bubbling spring. Only God knows the power that is behind it. Only He can measure the hidden and the almost immeasurable depths in many instances from whence it comes. The figure is very expressive as representing the history of a small but very mighty beginning. The stream that is only up to a man's ankles does not generally arouse great interest, or awaken great expectations; and yet we never know the possibilities of any stream. It would ill befit a man to sneer at the Thames, though a child may leap over it in one part. Almost every river of the world begins with such small beginnings as this; but men know better than to laugh at a bubbling spring. They can little realise the forces that are behind, and the replenishing power that is ready at hand, yet out of sight. Then we see that, like every true river, this stream progressed. "The waters were to the knees." It was deepening; but this was only the beginning. Yet "again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins." Still it gathers volume and force. "The waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over." Again, the word that is translated "river" here is very significant. It is not the word that is expressive so much of a large constant flow as of a rushing torrent. It is applied both to the torrent itself and to the wady, or ravine through which the torrent runs. It is expressive, therefore, of a stream that has energy in it. That is the point emphasised here. In addition to its adding to its resources and volume, it adds to its force. It is a torrential stream, that digs its own channel and makes its way. It is not the sluggish river that will flow along any old traditional rut that is provided for it: it is a river that will drive itself through the heart of a mountain rather than fail to reach its destination. The river is beautifying, beneficent, and life giving. All these points might be enlarged upon. Everything shall live whither the river cometh, Rivers are always a source of beauty, if they are of this kind. Oh, how beautiful the river is to the eye! and how charming with its liquid sounds to the ear! How beneficent, too, as it gives new energy and life to every drooping plant, and quenches the thirst of man and beast. I like to see a bird wash itself in the shallows of a clear crystal stream; and a child quench his thirst at the same source; and men fill their reservoirs from the same stream. What would a country be without a river? How poor Sussex is in many parts without a river to adorn its surface! Thank God, there are rivers down under the limestone, and you know how to pump up the water; but the surface of the country is for the most part robbed of the beauty and fertility which a river brings with it. We have to go far to see a river that now meanders along the plain, and then rushes down the precipices. We thus miss largely that which charms the eye, delights the ear, and is a source of unfailing life to creatures and to vegetation on every hand. In the picture before us we find that everything lives whither the river cometh. As the Dead Sea is reached, what do we find? That awful thing — the contradiction of all nature — a dead sea; dead in itself, with barely a ripple on its surface, with no fish in its waters, and no life on its shores — became a living sea. "But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt." Only so far as the river goes does it heal. If it flows into the Dead Sea itself it will heal its waters; but the marishes beyond shall not be healed, simply because the river does not reach them. That is the only limitation. Everything shall live whither the river cometh; but there is no life where the river does not flow. Look at the history of the world from the day Christ came and tabernacled among men, and died upon His Cross, and rose and ascended. What do we find? Whithersoever the story of the Cross has gone, there has been healing and life. The old Roman empire, rotten as it was to the core, derived some blessing from it. When an old Asiatic monk rushed into the arena to separate the gladiators one from the other, and fell under the shower of stones that were hurled upon him by the spectators, who were impatient to quench their thirst for blood with the sight of that deadly conflict, he ushered in a new era by his death. It is true that before that Asiatic monk fell, one Roman Emperor, who had been touched with Christian truth, proclaimed that human life was sacred, but, like the Local Option and other measures in our House of Parliament proclaimed to be right in principle, it remained largely inoperative. But the blood of that monk, amid the dust of the arena, sealed the death warrant of those ancient gladiatorial combats. The self-forgetful spirit of Christ and His holy religion had come into contact with this selfish and brutal spirit of the world and conquered it. And throughout the ages, wherever the truth as it is in Jesus has been proclaimed and lived, there the ills and wrongs of humanity have been gradually but certainly healed. But as in the case of the river which Ezekiel saw, while everything lives that it touches, there are regions beyond its reach which are still sterile and desolate. Oh that it may advance in its glorious mission, fertilising the desolate places of the earth wherever it goes, until the desert shall blossom as the rose, and the wilderness like Eden, the garden of the Lord! (D. Davies.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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