Ebenezer Fountain
This Ebenezer Fountain is dedicated to Herb and Elsie Purnell, missionaries to Thailand and members of San Gabriel Community Church, who always encouraged us to make Ebenezer stones to remember the help and faithfulness of the Lord.
The engraving on the stone reads, “Ebenezer” which means “stone of help.” This comes from the account in 1 Samuel in which the Lord delivered Israel from the Philistines. After the battle, we read: ‟Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the LORD has helped us.”” (1 Samuel 7:12). The Ebenezer stone served as a visible reminder of Yahweh’s power to save and that He alone is God.
The script is written in a form of Hebrew writing called Paleo-Hebrew. It is read from right to left. After the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, the Jews adopted the alphabet of the more widely spoken Aramaic language. “Ebenezer” in the Aramaic “square script” looks like this: אבן העזר. However, archaeological discoveries from the time of Samuel (11th century BC) show that the people of Israel and their neighbors wrote in various forms of the Paleo-Hebrew script.