Abraham originally came from the same general area as the garden.
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The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. (Genesis 12:1)
You, O LORD, are the God who chose Abram, who brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, and named him Abraham. (Neimiah 9:7)
And he replied, “My brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia, before he had settled in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go forth from your land and [from] your kinsfolk to the land that I will show you.’ So he went forth from the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. (Acts 7:2-4)*
Ur of the Chaldeans was at the westernmost tip of the “Fertile crescent”, roughly the same crescent shape that Abraham traveled from the city of Ur to the land of Canaan.
Our original father and mother, Adam and Eve, came from this area near the rivers, and Abraham, the “Father of Faith” to the Jews came from the same area. Jewish faith and their spiritual life originated with Abraham and rivers were always seen as a source of life and appear from the beginning of the Bible to the very end.
Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of its street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month; the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations. (Revelation 22:1-2)
John the Baptist calls people to repentance and baptism in a river. Even Jesus begins his ministry by being baptized in a river. The entire nation of Israel entered the promised land by crossing a river. Rivers had great symbolic meaning in the Bible, as sources if life and symbols of new beginning.
Somtimes however, crossing a river or moving away from a river meant the end.
…these are the ten tribes which were led away from their own land into captivity in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser the king of the Assyrians led captive; he took them across the river, and they were taken into another land. (ezra 13:40)
This passage speaks about the ten northern tribes of Israel which were taken into captivity and exile by the Assyrians and who never returned.
There were two types of water in Jesus time. There was plain old water from a well, and there was “Living” water. Living water was moving water from a spring or a flowing river. Living water was superior to stagnant water. It was considered pure.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13)
Jesus says that he will give the Samarian woman living water, and the woman realizes that she is talking to the Messiah.
***The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah? *
(John 4:28)
Upon realizing that she is talking to the Messiah, she immediately drops her jar of stagnant water from the well. Jesus even equates living water with the reception of the Holy Spirit.
On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: "Rivers of living water will flow from within him.’” He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. (John 7:37-39)
So when we see a river in scripture, we have to ask ourselve what the author is trying to tell us. It could be a new beginning, or the end of something. It could be a source of physical life or a metaphor for spiritual life… or a sign of baptism, like Noah’s flood.
Rivers, living water, lakes, springs, floods, the sea, they all have meaning. The beginning of all life on earth was near four rivers - that’s a lot of rivers in one place! This tells us how important it is.
-Tim-
