The waters that flow forth from the threshold of the temple refer to the teaching of the church. . . . We can understand water up to the ankles as meaning first the human sins that are forgiven us who enter the waters of the Lord; they show the saving grace of baptism and are the beginnings of our progress.

This means that we go down into the water full of sins and foulness, and we come up bearing fruit in our hearts, fear and hope in Jesus in the Spirit.

From the temple of the Lord, that is, from his bosom, the Savior came forth and sweetened the Dead Sea and the bitter waters.

The rivers of fire signify the divine streams furnishing them with an abundant and incessant flow and nourishing the productive powers of life.

When the world falls into sin, nothing but a flood of waters can cleanse it again.

Thoroughly instructed in sacrificial matters, after he learned that sacrifices have to be offered for sins in a figurative manner, the prophet was taught that two expiations of souls were made through water and spirit.

After these things, the intellect comes to behold that which in Ezekiel the Prophet is indicated by the apparition of the torrent, which depicts the figure of the three stages of soul that draw nigh to things divine, and beyond the third there is no passage. The beginning of all these things is a good purpose directed toward God, the manifold labours of stillness, and the straightforwardness that is born of prolonged separation from the world.

We said a little time ago that the waters signify either the grace of baptism or the teaching of the gospel. If these waters go out from the threshold of the temple of the Lord and carry the teaching of the apostles, they have the power to make piles of gravel, sterile and infertile as they are, bear fruit, and they can irrigate every plain and every desert.

He was baptized and came up who draws all things into his net. Out of the stream from which Simon caught fish came the fisher of men, and he took him. With the cross, which catches all robbers, he caught that robber up into life. The living by his death emptied hell; he unloosed it and let entire multitudes fly away from it.

Their fruit for food and their leaves for healing mean the mysteries of the divine books, of which one refers to the letter, the other to the spirit, so that we can understand simple words among their leaves and the meaning that truly lies in their fruitful stock.