The Discovery of Genesis (77 page)

“The head of most rivers is spring
water
— a fountain! Even the radicals for
water
, (older forms
,
too), are all vertical figures, as though arising from the ground.
and
might even be interpreted as flowing in four directions. A fountain! That’s it! The Bible is full of verses referring to the ‘fountain of life.’” I leafed through the concordance in the back of my Bible and looked under
Fountain.
My eyes fell on something interesting in Song of Solomon 4:12, 15:

A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
A garden locked, a fountain sealed. …
A garden fountain, a well of living water,
And flowing streams from Lebanon.

“That’s obviously the Garden of Eden after the Fall, ‘a garden locked,’ and it has a fountain of ‘living water’ with flowing ‘streams!’ The ‘garden’ was also called a ‘bride’!” My excitement mounted. “Now, why is the garden square?” for “squareness”
¹
did not fit my preconceived mental imagery of Eden.

Turning to Revelation 21 and 22, which I recalled also mentioned the tree of life in the heavenly Paradise, things rapidly began to fit into place. Associated with the tree of life again was the “river of life” that flowed from God’s throne — something I had never really understood. Of course God’s throne would be in the very center of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, so beautifully described by the prophet John. Christ’s youngest disciple, now grown old and at this writing a prisoner on Patmos, saw in vision a “four square,” golden city, surrounded by walls furbished with 12 kinds of shining gems set in the foundations.

Again my mind shifted to another cubical structure — the Most Holy Place of the portable sanctuary, erected from God’s explicit specifications given to Moses on Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. God had commanded (Exodus 25:8), “Let them make me a sanctuary, that
I may dwell in their midst.
” The beautiful tentlike structure was set up in the very center of the Israelite encampment with the various tribes (families) arranged in definite and orderly positions, forming a greater square. The tabernacle had two apartments. The smaller was four-square, the measurements of length, width, and height, being equal. In it reposed the sacred golden “ark,” a chest surmounted by elegantly wrought golden angels, hovering over the “mercy seat.” A glorious light shone out from between the angels, representing God’s very presence there. This “mercy seat” must be analogous to God’s throne (Exodus 25:17–22).

Inside the golden ark were deposited the Ten Commandments, written in stone by the finger of God Himself. There were also two other objects that I had not previously really given thought to. These were “Aaron’s rod that budded” and a “golden pot of manna” (Hebrews 9:4). Could Aaron’s rod have a symbolic meaning? Here was a dead stick that had miraculously been made to bud with blossoms and bear almonds (Numbers 17:6–8). This may be symbolic of that wonderful tree of life! And the pot of manna, of course, reminds us of Christ Himself, who said, in reply to questions about the manna: “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world. … I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never
thirst
” (John 6:33–35). (Compare “thirst” with “living water” in John 4:7–15.)

The square figure with which reference was made to the Garden was beginning to mean something; the celestial Holy City; the Most Holy Place in the wilderness sanctuary with surrounding square Israelite encampment; God’s dwelling place and meeting place with man.

The description of the temple seen in vision by Ezekiel was next recalled. Chapter 47 depicts water streaming from under the temple at the side of the altar. The inner room, the Most Holy Place, of the temple was also built in a square. The stream issuing from the temple became a great river, and trees with 12 kinds of fruit and leaves for healing were found along its bank — again, the same imagery. But Revelation 21:22–25 further states that there is “no temple in the [heavenly] city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” It also says that there is no night there, for the glory of God is its light. More pieces are fitted into the jigsaw puzzle.

But now I wanted to focus on the New Testament Messiah, represented by such a multitude of symbols and types in the Old Testament. Why did He say to the woman at the well in Samaria, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a
spring of water
welling up to
eternal life
” (John 4:14)? How incredible that the Chinese in the character for
eternal
obviously uses the
water
radical! A
point
' at the top of the figure
signifies an “anointing” or “dedication.”

On two occasions Jesus fed multitudes of 4 and 5,000 who had gathered to hear Him talk. He broke a few small loaves of bread, providing more than enough for all so that baskets of leftover bread were collected afterward. He exclaimed that only those who “ate His flesh and drank His blood” could be His disciples. This was hard to understand. Even His own disciples failed to grasp its meaning fully until after His death.