There Is a River

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of our God” (Psalm 46:4).

That sentence sits in the middle of a psalm about trouble and upheaval. Nations rage, kingdoms totter, and the earth melts. Yet, right in the middle of the chaos, the psalmist points to a river. Not a trickle of water. Not a seasonal stream. A river whose very presence brings gladness to the city of God. Yet, there is no river in Jerusalem that satisfies the physical interpretation.

We are thirsty people. We know it in our bodies when we’ve gone too long without water. We know it in our souls when nothing in this world finally satisfies us. The Bible begins with waters and ends with a river. And somewhere in the middle, it tells us of a river that flows from the temple of God and brings life to the place of death itself.

The Waters of Chaos

In the beginning, the earth was tohu va-bohu: a formless void (Gen 1:2). Darkness covered the face of the deep. “Deep” is tehom, the Hebrew etymological twin of the Akkadian “Tiamat” who became personified as the chaos dragon in the Babylonian Creation Myth Enuma Elish,[1] and later in the Flood story (Gen 7:11) describes the waters the burst forth in judgment against all living creatures. Finally, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. These were not peaceful, ordered waters. They were chaotic, uninhabitable, and threatening.

But God did not destroy the waters. Instead, He brought order to them.

On the second day, He made the raqia—the expanse or dome—and separated the waters above from the waters below (Gen 1:7). On the third day, He gathered the waters into one place (vs. 9). The Hebrew word used here is mikveh—a gathering or collection. Later in Israel’s history, mikveh would become the word for a ritual bath, a place of cleansing and new beginning. Even in the act of creation, God was already moving the waters from chaos toward life and order. This is likely why the church Fathers like Tertullian saying,

“Happy is our sacrament of water,” as he cites Genesis 1:2 (Tertullian, On Baptism 1.1).

The land appeared. God called the gathered waters “Seas.” What had been threatening and formless was now named, bounded, and declared good. God was building a temple—a cosmic sanctuary—and the proper ordering of the waters was part of that construction project.

“Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?” (Isa 66:1).[2]