Lehi’s dream continues the expected associations of water with the tree. In Jewish legend we find:
In Paradise stand the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, the latter forming a hedge about the former. Only he who has cleared a path for himself through the tree of knowledge can come close to the tree of life, which is so huge that it would take a man five hundred years to traverse a distance equal to the diameter of the trunk, and no less vast is the space shaded by its crown of branches. From beneath it flows forth the water that irrigates the whole earth, “parting thence into four streams, the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.” But it was only during the days of creation that the realm of plants looked to the waters of the earth for nourishment. Later on God made the plants dependent upon the rain, the upper waters. The clouds rise from earth to heaven, where water is poured into them as from a conduit.
Several elements in this passage are motifs from Babylonian and Mediterranean symbolism. The rivers flow from the base of the tree, making an explicit connection between tree and river, like Lehi’s parallel association of a river with the tree. Additionally, it notes that all plants relied upon underground water in the garden. These are the primordial waters. With the Fall, the water source is rain, not underworld water.