Jeremiah 2:13

2:9-13 Before God punishes sinners, he pleads with them, to bring them to repentance. He pleads with us, what we should plead with ourselves. Be afraid to think of the wrath and curse which will be the portion of those who throw themselves out of God's grace and favour. Grace in Christ is compared to water from a fountain, it being cooling and refreshing, cleansing and making fruitful: to living water, because it quickens dead sinners, revives drooping saints, supports and maintains spiritual life, and issues in eternal life, and is ever-flowing. To forsake this Fountain is the first evil; this is done when the people of God neglect his word and ordinances. They hewed them out broken cisterns, that could hold no water. Such are the world, and the things in it; such are the inventions of men when followed and depended on. Let us, with purpose of heart, cleave to the Lord only; whither else shall we go? How prone are we to forego the consolations of the Holy Spirit, for the worthless joys of the enthusiast and hypocrite!

Jeremiah FOUNTAIN AND CISTERNSJeremiah 2:13 . The proclivity of the Jews to idolatry is an outstanding fact all through their history. That persistent national tendency surely compels us to recognise a divine inspiration as the source of the prophetic teaching and of the lofty spiritual theology of the Old Testament, which were in sharpest unlikeness and opposition to the whole trend of the people’s thoughts. It is this apostasy which is referred to here. The false gods made by men are the broken cisterns. But the text embodies a general truth. I. The irksomeness of a godless life. The contrast is between the springing fountain, there in the desert, with the lush green herbage round about, where a man has only to stoop and drink, and the painful hewing of cisterns. This emblem of the fountain beautifully suggests the great thought of God’s own loving will as the self-originated impulse by which He pours out all good. Apart from all our efforts, the precious gift is provided for us. Our relation is only that of receivers. We have the contrast with this in the laborious toils to which they condemn themselves who seek for created sources of good. ‘Hewn out cisterns’-think of a man who, with a fountain springing in his courtyard, should leave it and go to dig in the arid desert, or to hew the live rock in hopes to gain water. It was already springing and sparkling before him.

The conduct of men, when they leave God and seek for other delights, is like digging a canal alongside a navigable river. They condemn themselves to a laborious and quite superfluous task. The true way to get is to take. Illustrations in religion. Think of the toil and pains spent in idolatry and in corrupt forms of Christianity. Illustrations in common life. Your toils-aye, and even your pleasures -how much of them is laboriously digging for the water which all the while is flowing at your side. II. The hopelessness of a godless life. The contrast further is between living waters and broken cisterns. God is the fountain of living waters; in other words, in fellowship with God there is full satisfaction for all the capacities and desires of the soul; heart-conscience-will-understanding-hope and fear. The contrast of the empty cisterns. What a deep thought that with all their work men only make ‘cisterns,’ i.e. they only provide circumstances which could hold delights, but cannot secure that water should be in them! The men-made cisterns must be God-filled, if filled at all. The true joys from earthly things belong to him who has made God his portion. Further, they are ‘broken cisterns,’ and all have in them some flaw or crack out of which the water runs. That is a vivid metaphor for the fragmentary satisfaction which all earthly good gives, leaving a deep yearning unstilled.

Verse 13. - Two evils . Israel has not merely offended, like the heathen, by idolatry, but by deserting the only God who can satisfy the needs of human nature. The fountain of living waters . So Jeremiah 17:13 (comp. Psalm 36:9 ). Fountain; literally, tank or reservoir . Such reservoirs were "dug in the ground (see on Jeremiah 6:7), and chiefly intended for storing living waters, i . e . those of springs and rivulets" (Payne Smith). Cisterns, broken cisterns. A cistern, by its very nature, will only hold a limited amount, and the water "collected from clay roofs or from marly soil, has the color of weak soapsuds, the taste of the earth or the stable." Who would prefer such an impure supply to the sweet, wholesome water of a fountain? But these cisterns cannot even be depended upon for this poor, turbid drink. They are "broken," like so many even of the best rock-hewn cisterns (Thomson, 'The Land and the Book,' p. 287). How fine a description of the combined attractiveness and disappointingness of heathen religions, qualities the more striking in proportion to the scale on which the religions problem is realized (e.g. in Hinduism)! Jeremiah 2:13

13 . “Jehovah is a fountain of living water, having life in Himself, giving life to all.” (Co.) Israel has preferred cisterns, the contents of which, vapid and worthless in themselves, speedily disappear through leakage. For the figure of water as denoting spiritual blessing, cp. Isaiah 12:3 ; Isaiah 44:3 . “The perennial spring of water that leaps and flashes as though it were a living thing, breaking ceaselessly forth from a hidden source, is the best image of that higher life bestowed on him to whom God has unveiled his face.” Hort, The Way, the Truth, and the Life , p. 99. two evils ] The sin of the heathen is idolatry, whereas this people have in addition renounced the service of the one true God. cisterns ] These were very familiar objects to those whom the prophet addressed. “There are thousands of these ancient cisterns in upper Galilee, where Josephus says there were two hundred and forty cities in his day, and the site of every one was pierced like a honeycomb with them” (Thomson, The Land and the Book , p. 287). broken cisterns, that can hold no water ] “No comparison could more keenly rebuke the madness of a people who changed their glory for that which doth not profit.

The best cisterns, even those in solid rock, are strangely liable to crack … and if by constant care they are made to hold, yet the water collected from clay roofs or from marly soil has the colour of weak soapsuds, the taste of the earth or the stable, is full of worms, and in the hour of greatest need it utterly fails … I have never been able to tolerate this cistern water except in Jerusalem, where they are kept with scrupulous care, and filled from roofs both clean and hard” ( ibid .).

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me {t} the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (t) Signifying that when men forsake God's word, which is the fountain of life, they reject God himself, and so fall to their own inventions, and vain confidence, and procure to themselves destruction, Jon 2:8, Zec 10:2.

(13) The fountain of living waters. —The word rendered “well,” as in Proverbs 10:11 ; Proverbs 18:4 ; “fountain,” as in Psalm 36:9 , is used of water flowing from the rock. The “cistern,” on the other hand, was a tank for surface water. A word identical in sound and meaning, though differently spelt, is variously rendered by “pit,” “well,” or “cistern.”

The pagan are guilty of but one sin - idolatry; the covenant-people commit two - they abandon the true God; they serve idols. Fountain - Not a spring or natural fountain, but a tank or reservoir dug in the ground (see Jeremiah 6:7), and chiefly intended for storing living waters, i. e., those of springs and rivulets. The cistern was used for storing up rain-water only, and therefore the quantity it contained was limited.

Committed two evils, viz. remarkable ones, and with a witness. Living waters; a metaphor taken from springs, called living here, and Genesis 26:19 , and elsewhere, because they never cease or intermit; such had God’s care and kindness been over and to them; see on Isaiah 58:11 ; his Spirit continually proceeding from the Father and the Son to refresh their consciences. Compare John 4:10 7:38,39 . Cisterns: it is doubled, to show the multitude of their shifts; and broken is added, to show the helplessness of them, as being able to hold no water; but when a man hath made many hard shifts to get water, he cannot keep it, but it dries away; or if it abide, proves unwholesome: by which understand either their idols, which are empty, vain things, that never answer expectation; or the Assyrians and Egyptians, as Jeremiah 2:18 , which proved but broken reeds, and as all other supports or props, friends, traditions, merits, &c. are that are trusted to besides God; they are but cisterns at the best, whose water will putrify, or broken, riven vessels, through which they will soak, and leave nothing but mud and dirt behind them.

13. two evils—not merely one evil, like the idolaters who know no better; besides simple idolatry, My people add the sin of forsaking the true God whom they have known; the heathen, though having the sin of idolatry, are free from the further sin of changing the true God for idols (Jer 2:11). forsaken me—The Hebrew collocation brings out the only living God into more prominent contrast with idol nonentities. "Me they have forsaken, the Fountain," &c. (Jer 17:13; Ps 36:9; Joh 4:14). broken cisterns—tanks for rain water, common in the East, where wells are scarce. The tanks not only cannot give forth an ever-flowing fresh supply as fountains can, but cannot even retain the water poured into them; the stonework within being broken, the earth drinks up the collected water. So, in general, all earthly, compared with heavenly, means of satisfying man's highest wants (Isa 55:1, 2; compare Lu 12:33).