Ezekiel 47 continues Ezekiel’s eschatological vision. This vision features a renewed Temple, with impossible dimensions, suggesting that the Temple is a figure for God’s presence. Ezekiel sees a river flowing from under the Temple and is led by his guide into the water. The water gets progressively deeper until it became “deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed.” (Ez. 47:5, NRSV). Back on the riverbank, Ezekiel’s guide tells him that
This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh. Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes. People will stand fishing beside the sea from En-gedi to En-eglaim; it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.
(Ez. 47:8-12.) This amazing vision of a river teeming with living creatures and fish, and trees laden with fruit and healing leaves, echoes the creation creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 and is picked up again in Revelation 21-22. As a fisherman, I love this image of people spreading nets and enjoying abundance all along the banks of the river or sea. Here, the locations Ezekiel mentions are along the Dead Sea, so the image seems to reflect a change in at least part of that hyper-salty basin so that fish and other wildlife can thrive. Since the Temple Ezekiel describes seems metaphorical, we probably can assume this is also a metaphor for a broader renewal of creation. But the eschatological picture is not ethereal or abstracted from created reality. It is of regular people, doing regular things, in a real world.