Springs of waters

The word “spring” (Gr. pege) is used five times in the book of Revelation. Each time, it is linked with the word “water” (Gr. hudor), but with slight variations. Twice the phrase is “spring(s) of the water of life” (7:17; 21:6, where the word is singular), and three times it is “springs of waters” (8:10; 14:7; 16:4).

The uses of pege are patterned chiastically:

A. Lamb as shepherd guides to “springs of the water of life,” 7:17.

B. The third trumpet sounds, and the star wormwood falls into the springs of waters and poisons them, 8:10.

C. An angel calls on the people of the land and the nations to worship the God who creates heaven, earth, sea, and springs of waters, 14:7.

B’. The third bowl is poured on rivers and springs and turns them to blood, 16:4.

A’. Jesus, Alpha and Omega, promises the “spring of the water of life” freely to the thirsty, 21:6.

The parallels are verbal and conceptual. In the A and A’, the spring is the source of the “water of life,” and in both Jesus is said to be the one who provides it. Jesus is the source of the Spirit, who is life-giving water. The variation between the plural in A to the singular in A’ is noteworthy: the many sources and springs are eschatologically resolved into a single source of water.

B and B’ both occur in the “third” position in a sequence of seven – the third trumpet and the third bowl. Both involve the corruption or poisoning of a water source. Both evoke stories of the exodus (the bitter waters of Marah, the first plague). In Revelation overall, then, there are springs that give life, and these come from the Lamb/Alpha-Omega; and there are springs that kill. The springs that kill become deadly because of the judgments of God. God justly turns sources of life into sources of death.

The central passage that mentions springs is part of a summary of the Creator’s work. Scripture typically summarizes creation dualistically (heaven-earth) or triply (heaven-earth-sea) by zones. Revelation 14:7 describes the creation as a quaternity: heaven-earth-sea-springs. That’s a vertical mapping, from the highest (heaven) to the lowest (the springs under the earth, perhaps the springs that feed the sea itself, Genesis 7:11; 8:2; the word is ma’yan, a variation on ‘ayin, the normal Hebrew word for spring, which also means “eye”). The land has four corners, and heaven has four winds; the cosmos has a whole has, in this scheme, a fourfold structure as well.

The fourfold structure is strange. After all, heaven, earth, and sea are made of stuff (earth, water), but they are also environments within which things live. “Spring” is a different sort of thing, and to include it in a summary of the “things that God created” seems a category mistake, and an arbitrary one. Why not, for instance, heaven, earth, sea, and oil wells, or gold mines? What is it about “springs” that elevates them to the rank of creatures like “heaven, earth, sea”?

No doubt there is more to say than this, but at least this: Yahweh separated the waters so that there was sea and dry land, but the rest of the creation depends on the fact the land is not utterly dry. Unless water/sea and land mix, the land won’t support life. Water comes from heaven, but in addition God created water sources within the land, and together these water sources make the world fertile, give it the possibility of sustaining life. Springs are quite literally springs of the water of life. 

And that reflection leads to others: Sea is Gentile, land is Israel, but the water of the sea (purified) is necessary for the land to flourish. Or, another direction: human beings are made of earth, but in order to live we need the springs of the water of life; our dustiness is not alive at all unless we’re watered. And then we can also think again of the gift of the Spirit who is the life-giving water that produces abundant fruit in us.