FOUNTAIN (foun'tin), the rendering of several Hebrew words and one Greek word.
1. Ah'yin (Heb. eyel, a natural source of living water (Gen. xvi:7; Deut. viii:7, xxxiii:28; I Sam. xxix:1; Prov. viii:28, etc.).
2. Alah-yawn' (Heb. a spring of running water (Lev. xi:36; Josh. xv:9; Ps. lxxiv:i5; Prov. xxv:26); a well-watered place (Ps. lxxxiv:6); A. V. " well "; R. V. " a place of springs." FiguratiVe. (1) God is called a fountain of living waters and with him is the fountain of liv ing waters; Ile is the unsearchable and unfailing source of all. our happiness and comfort (Jer. : 13; Ps. xxxvi :9). (2) Jesus Christ is an open fountain, a fountain of gardens, a well of living 'waters, and streams from Lebanon (Zech. xiii). (3) The church is a spring shut up, and fountain sealed (Is. lviii 1). All the saints' springs are in her; in her dwells God, the fountain of living wat ers ; Jesus, the smitten, the water-yielding Rock of Ages; the Holy Ghost, that river of life, issuing from under the throne of God. and the Scrip tures and ordinances. (4) Spiritual knowledge and wisdom, and the fear of the Lord, are a foun tain, or well-spring of life; a delightful means of promoting the temporal and spiritual happiness of ourselves and others (Prov. xvi :22 ; xviii :4 ;
xiii :14) and (xiv :27). (5) Wives are called fountains and wells; they bring forth children, that, as streams, are dispersed in the streets, and are a great means of happiness and comfort to their husbands (Prov. v :15, 18). (6) Children are fountains, and the offspring of Jacob, his fountain; they are means of help and comfort to their parents, and, in due time, produce chil dren of their own (Prov. v :16; Deut. xxxiii :28). (7) Fountains and springs also denote prosperity and the means thereof (Hos. xiii :15). Thus, to turn dry land into springs of water is to afford great prosperity to a distressed nation, or to grant plenty of ordinances and powerful influences to a church or people that had been barrea and withered (Ps. cvii :35 ; Is. xxxv :7; xli :it, and xlix :ro). (8) To turn springs and rivers into a wilderness is not only to alter the soil of fields to the worse, as God has done in Idumea, Canaan, Egypt, etc., but to change great prosperity into sad adversity (Ps. cvii :33).