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#4.
"Broken cisterns" (Jer. 2: 13).
pp. 121, 122
"With Thee is the fountain of life", said the Psalmist, and this blessed confession
formed the basis of our last meditation together. This, sadly, was not the universal
attitude of Israel; had it been, they would never have departed so wickedly from their
God, nor would they have crucified the Lord of glory.
"My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living
waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jer. 2: 13).
The chapter opens with a remembrance of "the love of thine espousals", when "Israel
was holiness unto the Lord" (Jer. 2: 1-3). The chapter ends with Israel as a "gad about"
(Jer. 2: 36), a maid that has "forgotten her ornaments", a "bride that has forgotten her
attire", "trimming" her way to seek illicit love (Jer. 2: 32, 33). Israel's departure from the
Lord is often likened to the sin of adultery and it is with such a figure that Jer. 3: opens.
"What iniquity", said the Lord, "have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone far
from Me, and have walked after vanity and become vain?" (Jer. 2: 5).
Here are the "two evils" of verse 13. Israel went away from the Lord, the Fountains of
living waters, "they followed after vanity", likened to the hewing out for themselves
cisterns; "they became vain", for these cisterns could hold no water. So the charge is
made throughout the chapter. We will not load the page with verse enumeration--the
reader can follow better without--but here are the charges: "They are gone far from
Me." They did not say "Where is the Lord that brought us up out of Egypt?" "They
walked after vanity", "they walked after things that do not profit", "Thou hast forsaken
the Lord thy God when He led thee in the way". Israel had not only hewn cisterns,
instead of turning to the Lord as the Fountain of living waters, but, to change the figure
without changing the fact, they had gone down to Egypt "to drink the waters of Sihor".
The Sihor, or Shihor, is a river of Egypt, probably on the southern boundary of Canaan,
whose name means "turbid", or "slimy". It was to this that Israel turned rather than drink
of the Fountain of life. Or, again, the prophet demands, "What hast thou to do in the way
of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?" Such is the sad context of this record to
departure. Let us now come a little closer to the actual passage. Reduced to its barest
simplicity the structure is:
A | 2: 1-3. Espousals.
B | 2: 4-37. Remonstrance and Pleading.
A | 3: 1-11. Adultery.
Lifting out verses 11-18 from a great mass of detail we observe that it falls into the
following disposition of subject-matter:--