NOTES for Eze 47:1-9
Visions occupy a very special place in the Book of Ezekiel. This is explained by the distinctive character of Ezekiel himself, in whose spiritual life and prophetic ministry visionary experience played a vital role. It was through visions that he received revelations of great importance for the whole people. One of these was the vision of a new Temple, which did indeed replace the old one destroyed by the Babylonians. This Second Temple was built on the original foundations shortly after the exile ended.
But the Temple Ezekiel sees bears little resemblance to the one built by those who returned from Babylon, just as it bears little resemblance to Herod's Temple. It is rather a symbolic Temple, above all a symbol of the messianic age. It is no accident that a river of living water flows from beneath the Temple's foundations: living water was a symbol of the spiritual renewal prefigured by purifying washings, which freed those who washed from the consequences of the sin they had committed. But the water flowing from beneath the Temple not only cleanses but also renews everyone who immerses themselves in it, renewing them not only spiritually but physically, giving those who wash the fullness of life, both spiritual and bodily.
In this way God revealed to His prophet the messianic horizon of which the Second Temple would, in due course, become a part. From the standpoint of historical perspective, of course, this displayed the well-known distortion of prophetic perception, which brought events often very distant in time so close that the prophets' contemporaries expected them almost from day to day. Thus those who returned from Babylon to the ruins of Jerusalem were sure that the Messiah was about to appear: all that was needed was to restore—or, more precisely, rebuild—the Temple.
Yet such a vision can be called a distortion only from the standpoint of a linear and purely external perception of history. From a spiritual standpoint, the end of the exile and the restoration of the Temple really did bring the people onto the final stretch that ended at the threshold of the New Covenant. And the history of God's people was revealed to the prophet as many of his predecessors had seen it: sin, catastrophe and the loss of the God-given land as its consequence, followed by conversion, spiritual renewal and a return to the land of their fathers—not as the old people, but as a new people. A people who now have only one task left: to await the Messiah and follow Him into the Kingdom they have so long awaited.