Meaning
In a country where no rain falls for half of the year, springs sume an importance unknown in more favored lands. In both eastern and western Palestine and even in Lebanon there are many villages which depend entirely upon reservoirs or cisterns of rain water. Others are situated along the courses of the few perennial streams. but wherever a spring exists it is very apt to be the nucleus of a village. It may furnish sufficient water to be used in irrigation, in which case the gardens surrounding the village become an oasis in the midst of the parched land. Or there may be a tiny stream which barely suffices for drinking water, about which the village women and girls sit and talk waiting their turns to fill their jars, sometimes until far in the night. The water of the village fountain is often conveyed by a covered conduit for some distance from the source to a convenient spot in the village where an arch is built up, under which the water gushes out. See CISTERN; SPRING; WELL; EN-, and place-names compounded with EN-.
Figurative:
(1) of God (Psa 36:9, Jer 2:13, Jer 17:13);
(2) of Divine pardon and purification, with an obvious Messianic reference (Zec 13:1);
(3) of wisdom and godliness (Pro 13:14, Pro 14:27);
(4) of wives (Pr 5:18);
(5) of children (De 33:28; compare Psa 68:26, Pro 5:16);
(6) of prosperity (Psa 107:35, Psa 114:8, Hos 13:15);
(7) of the heart (Ec 12:6; see CISTERN);
(8) of life everlasting (Rev 7:17, Rev 21:6).
Alfred Ely Day
