Translation
running down the middle of its main street,
Go to footnote numberand on each side of
the river was the tree of life,
Go to footnote numberproducing twelve fruits,
each month yielding its corresponding fruit,
and the leaves of
the tree are for the healing
Go to footnote numberof the ethnic groups,
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
This pure life is
central to the daily conduct of God’s followers; in every way it has
enough vitality
that it produces true and lasting life;
it also produces all the proper byproducts
in their appropriate setting;
and the desirability and vitality of
this true and lasting life will bring wellbeing to all people.
Footnotes
1
The street was where they walked, and “walk” is another word for “conduct.” This word picture is made much more powerful by the contrast of this pure clean river and what actually did run down the middle of the main street of each city in ancient times—the sewer! Their sewer system was usually an open ditch that ran down the middle of the street attracting all kinds of bugs and vermin, causing disease to be rampant.
A few cities of ancient times did have covered sewage systems of various types. From multiple online sources, I learned that contenders for the earliest sanitation system are: Knossos, the capital of Crete (also known as the Minoans), had flush toilets as far back as the 18th century B.C.; the city of Eschnunna, in modern day Iraq, had a sewage system that dates back to 2500 B.C.; several cities in the Indus valley had sophisticated sewages systems, but Mohenjo Daro keeps surfacing in online searches as possibly the earliest example, dating back to 3000 B.C. Though not the first to do so, it is said that the Persians, Athenians, Macedonians, other Greeks and Romans all built sewer systems in some of their cities that had some characteristics of modern systems. However, in most cities until recent times, the sewage simply lay in the street or ran through a ditch in the middle of main street. In walled cities, it ran under the city gate where it collected right outside the city. In Europe and America until the early 1800s, human waste was thrown out of the windows of homes, often from the second story windows, to accumulate in the street until the next rain would wash it away or dilute it.
What is our “sewage?” Think of the prevalence of pornography addictions, or alcoholism, sexual abuse, human trafficking, fraud, exploitation, the high rate of divorce, the lack of respect, the high degree of self-centeredness, and many more examples that could be given. That is our sewage! In contrast, the people that are committed to following God at all costs have washed the foul, nasty, contamination out of their lives and are characterized by purity. Such purity comes from God and His authority over us; it is not something we produce by our own efforts. If you allow God to do what He wants in your life, His purity will flow like a river.
2: "the tree of life"
This is referring to fully experiencing the new life God offers.
3
The concept of healing is similar to the concept of peace; they both encompass everything required for wholeness and wellbeing. There are spiritual, physical, relational, and emotional aspects involved, and a few economic and political aspects as well. We tend to separate those things into different categories, while the people of ancient times put them all together and described this entire cluster of things with words like “peace,” “wholeness,” “wellbeing,” and “healing.”
4
This word is often translated “nations” but its basic meaning is “ethnic group or cultural group.” I prefer not to use the word nations in this case because it tends to make us think about political and geographic distinctions instead of people that fall into categories naturally by such things as languages and cultures.