Ezekiel 47:5

Eze 47:5 Afterward he measured a thousand; [and it was] a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.

Ver. 5. A river that could not be passed over.] Representing, as the fathomless depth of the Scriptures - which is such as that we may well do by it as the Romans did by a lake, the depth whereof they could not sound, they dedicated it to Victory - so the abundance of spiritual graces in the Church, the love of Christ which passeth all knowledge, {Eph 3:19} the over abounding goodness of God, {1Ti 1:14} the super pleonasm of it, as the apostle hath it there. Oh, saith Chrysostom, speaking of this subject, I am like a man digging in a deep spring: I stand here, and the water riseth upon me; and I stand there, and still the water riseth upon me. It is indeed a sea that hath neither bank nor bottom.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eze_47:5

Waters to swim in.

Waters to swim in

I. The first thought of the text concerning the Gospel is this, the idea of abundance.

1. The abundant provision for the removal of sin and for making us accepted in the Beloved. Here is blood most precious, removing every spot, and a righteousness most glorious, conferring a matchless beauty, a beauty such as Adam in his perfection never had, for his was but human righteousness, but this day the children of God wear the righteousness of the Lord Himself, and this is the name wherewith Jesus is called--The Lord our Righteousness.

2. Gods stores for our sustenance and for our protection.

(1) For our sustenance there is bread provided from heaven such as angels have never tasted. There is water leaping from the rock such as the fathers drank not in the wilderness. There is no fear that either the heavenly granary or the celestial fountain shall ever be exhausted.

(2) And as for our protection. Think how the Lords right arm is uplifted, that His power may preserve the saints; how His wisdom goeth to and fro in the earth, watching for their good; how His heart of love beats high with constant affection for them; how the whole of Godhead bows itself to protect the chosen.

3. The provision made for our training and our perfecting. In addition to affliction He has provided all the truth of God in the Bible to sanctify us; He has given us the blood of Christ to purify us; He has sent forth the blessed and eternal Spirit to refine us, and, as subordinate agencies, he has provided all our comforts, and at the same time all our trials, all our companionships with holy men, and all the beacons of unholy lives, that we may be educated for the skies.

4. What waters to swim in have we by way of consolations and strengthenings. The Comforter puts into the inspired word a singular sweetness which the most able ministers cannot arrive at, even though they should be, like Barnabas, sons of consolation.

5. Think of what God has done for us by way of making us happy and noble. He has not only pardoned us, but He has received us into His family, and He has taken us there, not to be His hired servants, as we once thought He might do, but He has made us His own sons; and what is more than that, He has made us heirs, and not secondary heirs either, but joint heirs with Christ Jesus; so that we have come right up from the place of the slave into the position of the heir of all things.

6. And then, beyond! Think of that which remaineth in Immanuels land, beyond Jordan.

II. Our text gives us the idea of space, amplitude, room. Waters to swim in. Room enough.

1. First, as to thought. Think of God as He is revealed in Holy Scripture. The Father ordaining all things, according to the council of His will; take the whole line of truth which connects itself with the Father. Then consider the Son as man and as God, the surety of the covenant, the substitute for His people, the intercessor, prophet, priest, and king, the Lord who is yet to come you have a wide range of thought there. Then consider the Holy Spirit.

2. There are waters to swim in, next, not only as regards subjects of thought but matters of faith. Oh, how sweet to have something to believe where you get right out of reasons depths!

3. Then, blessed be His name, there are waters to swim in not only for thought and faith, but also for love. Some make the doctrines of the Gospel a cold stream, like the waters of the Arctic pole, and love would be frozen if she were to venture into them; but the Scriptures are like the Gulf Stream, warm as well as deep; and love delights to plunge into them, and swim in them. In the agonies of Christ there is, to the contemplative mind, a fulness of love unspeakable, which makes the heart feel, now I can love here without stint. I can love the dear companion of my life; I can love my children; but there comes the thought, I may make them idols, and I may thus injure both them and myself. That is not waters to swim in. But if we loved the Lord ten thousand times more than we do, we should transgress no command in so doing: nay rather, the only transgression lies in falling short. Oh that we could love Him more!

4. There is room for the exercise and expansion of every faculty within the range of the Gospel. There are waters to swim in, in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imagination there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there.

III. The text has the idea of trust, at least to my mind. The text speaks of waters to swim in, and swimming is a very excellent picture of faith. In the act of swimming it is needful that a man should float in the water. So far he is passive, and the water buoys him up. You must keep your head above water if you are to swim. We are told that the body is naturally buoyant, and that if a person would lie quite still upon the water he would not sink, but if he kicks and struggles he will sink himself. The first sign of faith is when a man learns to lie back upon Christ--to give himself up entirely to Him--when he ceases to be active and becomes passive, brings no good works, no efforts, no merits, to Jesus by way of recommendation, but casts his soul upon the eternal merit and the finished work of the great Substitute. That is faith in its passive form, floating faith. In the heavenly river you must float before you can swim. But the text does not speak of waters to float in, though this is essential. Many people never get beyond that floating period, and they conclude that they are safe and all is well because they fancy their heads are above water; whereas the man who is really taught of God goes on from the floating to the swimming. Now, swimming is an active exercise. The man progresses as he strikes out. He makes headway. He dives and rises: he turns to the right, he swims to the left, he pursues his course, he goes withersoever he wills, Now, the holy Word of God and the Gospel are waters to swim in. Let us learn to trust God in active exertions for the promotion of His kingdom, to trust Him in endeavours to do good. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The progress and expansion of Gospel influences

It began at Jerusalem as a tiny rivulet. By our Saviours preaching a few disciples were converted. These were the means of the conversion of a still larger number. But at the first, the stream was very shallow, for the whole church could meet in one upper room. Even after the Pentecostal increase it was but as a brooklet. Herod thought that he could leap across it, or could dam it up, but his persecutions swelled the stream. Very shortly after, the watercourse grew broader and deeper, till it attracted the attention of the Roman Emperors, and excited their alarm. They thought that it was time to drain the rivulet, lest it should become a torrent so great as to sweep them away. Their attempts to stay its course only added to its floods. Its current became more strong and wide than before, and on it went from age to age, till at last it had become a mighty river, watering the whole earth, and greatly blessing the nations. It is destined yet to grow until it shall be like the main ocean itself, for the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Signifying that the graces of God should never decrease, but ever abound in his Church.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 5. See Clarke on Eze 47:3.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(5) A river that could not be passed over.—The whole distance measured is 4,000 cubits, or less than a mile and a half, during which the waters, without external addition, have swollen from a mere streamlet to an impassable river, in direct opposition to the ordinary fact in nature. A large part (1,500 cubits, or half of 3,000 cubits) of this distance must have been within the precincts described in Eze_42:16-20, but the prophet takes no notice of this, as the whole is ideal, and the precincts were to set forth one truth, the river another. The point thus far brought out is plainly the increase of the kingdom of God—the same truth illustrated by our Lord in the parable of the mustard seed (Mat_13:31-32), and often declared by the prophets (see Isa_11:9; Hab_2:14; Dan_2:44; Dan_7:27; &c.). All history, since the Christian era, has been occupied with the fulfilment of the prophecy.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Afterward he measured a thousand,.... A fourth time a thousand cubits. Some think these four measurings respect the preaching of the Gospel in the four parts of the world; but rather they refer to four remarkable seasons of the ministry of it; as in the times of John the Baptist, and the disciples of Christ before his death; in the primitive churches of the three first centuries; at the time of the Reformation; and in the latter day glory, which is the fourth and last measuring:

and it was a river that I could not pass over; the prophet could not set his foot on the bottom, and wade through it, and cross over it, as he had done before:

for the waters were risen, waters to swim in; not to walk in:

a river that could not be passed over; by any man, on his feet; only by swimming, and perhaps not by that, at least not without difficulty: this may signify the large spread of the Gospel in the latter day, when the earth shall be filled with it, as the waters cover the sea; and the great light into it, and knowledge of it, that men shall then have, Isa 11:9, and yet that there are some doctrines exceeding deep, out of the reach and penetration of men, called the deep things of God, which human reason cannot attain, and where it cannot fix its foot, Co1 2:9, and which are only to be reached and embraced in the swimming arms of faith; and, though believed, cannot be accounted for, as to the modus of them, and are not to be dived into; such as the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, and the distinct manner of their subsisting in it; the generation of the Son; the procession of the Spirit; the incarnation of Christ; the union of the two natures in his person; the resurrection of the dead, &c.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The rivers in Palestine were for the most part mere watercourses, dry in summer, in winter carrying the water along the wadys to the sea. The river of the vision is to have a continuous flow.

Waters to swim in - When under Constantine the Roman empire had become Christian, the Church may be contemplated as the full river, to flow on through time until the final completion of Isaiah’s prophecy Isa 11:9.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

This was all done in vision, and these waters thus increased were visional waters; there was no such natural course of waters in the place, nor is it imaginable, that in three miles or thereabouts, which was the most of the current, the waters should so rise; but it is emblematical, and hath a deep mysterious meaning, and includes spiritual things, and their wonderful growth from small beginnings, and these from the temple also. But I refer this still to private meditations.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

After a fourth distance of a thousand cubits, the waters had risen, or, lifted themselves up, (comp. Job_8:11, in which the verb is used of a plant growing up) and become waters to swim in literally, waters of swimming (Wjc occurs only here; the noun hp; x only in Eze_32:6) a river that could not be passed over, on account of its depth. The word ljn; was applied either to a river that constantly flowed from a fountain, as the Amen, or to a winter torrent that springs up from rain or snow upon the mountains, and disappears in summer like the Kedron, which had seldom any water in it (see Robinson"s "Bibl. Res.," 1:402). That Ezekiel"s river broadened and deepened so suddenly, and apparently without receiving into it any tributaries, clearly pointed to miraculous action.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

for the water was so high [Heb. גָאוּ,lit. became haughty,] like גָדְלוּ, became large.

water for swimming [Heb. שָׂחוּ,] noer in O.F., to swim, water that one must swim in and not cross by foot lest it overpower him. שָׂחוּ means swimming, like (Isa. 25:11): “as the swimmer spreads out [his hands] to swim הַשׂחֶה לִשְׂחוֹת.”

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.