Bible Strands
Ezekiel 47:12
Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of all kinds will grow. Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. Each month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will be used for food and their leaves for healing.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Lord GOD speaks to Ezekiel following a vision of life-giving water flowing from the sanctuary, immediately after declaring that adjacent swamps will remain salt.
The words — יַעֲלֶה (ya'aleh) = it will grow up, and שְׂפָתוֹ (sefato) = its bank.
The thread — The text places perpetual fruit and unfading leaves on both riverbanks, echoing the sustained provision of Psalms 1:3 and Jeremiah 17:8, while Revelation 22:2 mirrors the river-side tree imagery with a monthly fruit yield.
Why it lands — The passage demands recognition that enduring provision and restoration depend entirely on the sanctuary's water, contrasting sharply with the stagnant salt marshes left to decay.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.
Cross-references
- Revelation 22:2 down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
- Psalms 1:3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.
- Jeremiah 17:8 He is like a tree planted by the waters that sends out its roots toward the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes, and its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year of drought, nor does it cease to produce fruit.
- Ezekiel 47:7 When I arrived, I saw a great number of trees along both banks of the river.
- Genesis 2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God gave growth to every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food. And in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
- Psalms 92:12 The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
- Job 8:16 He is a well-watered plant in the sunshine, spreading its shoots over the garden.
- Isaiah 60:21 Then all your people will be righteous; they will possess the land forever; they are the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, so that I may be glorified.
- Isaiah 61:3 to console the mourners in Zion—to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
- Jeremiah 8:22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?