NOTES for Eze 47:1-9
In the biblical books the Kingdom is often described as an oasis in the desert, with a river of living water flowing through it and green trees along its banks. This image is no accident. In ancient times springs and fountains were regarded as manifestations of the supernatural power through which life becomes possible; hence the pagans' deification of springs and fountains. The ancients considered them manifestations of this power because they were struck by the very fact of their continual renewal: the water in a spring was always fresh and never ran out. It emerged from the mysterious depths of the earth and brought life to everything it touched.
Ever renewing itself, a spring never grows old. Behind this image the ancients saw a mystery of the universe, the mystery of the source of life that must be hidden somewhere within it. A Yahwist, of course, saw the source of life not in the world or in creation, but in its Creator. Yet Yahwism retained the image of a spring from which a stream of living water wells up as a symbol of eternal life that is ceaselessly renewed. In Ezekiel's vision, this spring lies beneath the foundation of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Not Solomon's Temple, for it had already been destroyed when the prophet was allowed to see what he saw, but another, new Temple, which the Jewish returnees from exile would in due course build in the land of their ancestors. At first glance, the meaning of Ezekiel's vision is perfectly clear: it is God's presence dwelling in the Temple that is the source of life for the people of God as they gather once more in the land of their ancestors. But there is more: the stream flowing from beneath the Temple's foundation becomes so deep that its waters seem sufficient for the whole earth.
Clearly this is an image of the Kingdom beginning in Jerusalem and then spreading over all the earth. It begins at the place God chose for Himself as the place of His presence, from which the voice of the Messiah He has sent will be heard. It then spreads throughout the world, throughout the earth, throughout the universe. And it will all begin when a comparatively small community of returnees comes back to the land of its ancestors and builds a new Temple where the one destroyed by the Babylonian army had stood, thereby taking the first step towards the Messiah and the Kingdom.