Jeremiah 2:9-19, Forsaking the Source of Living Water

I was privileged years ago to attend Institutes in Biblical Counseling and hear the late Larry Crabbe do a devotional on this passage. He says of verse 13,

Digging leaky wells highlights our desire for immediate satisfaction on demand and on terms we can control. This is an immense problem. We experience soul-pain, a profoundly empty space that demands to be filled. We settle for lesser satisfactions than living water. We want pleasure that will fill us with joy. We dig wells when we are ruled by urges to feel good now. Whatever provides even a brief experience of ache-free happiness becomes irresistible. And we assume the responsibility to arrange for the pleasure we want. We dig our own wells. We don’t like being at the mercy of an unpredictable God.

You and I, like Israel, are cistern diggers, a concrete term for idolaters.

⁹ “So once more I bring charges against you,” declares Yahweh. “And I will bring charges against your children’s children. ¹⁰ Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been anything like this:

¹¹ Has a nation ever changed its gods? (even though they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. ¹² Be appalled at this, you heavens, be shocked and utterly desolated,” declares Yahweh.

¹³ “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.

¹⁴ Is Israel a servant, born into slavery? Then why is he being carried off like plunder? ¹⁵ Lions have roared; they have growled at him. They have laid waste his land; his towns are burned and deserted. ¹⁶ And the men of Memphis and Tahpanhes have cracked your skull.

¹⁷ Have you not brought this on yourselves by forsaking Yahweh your God when he led you in the way? ¹⁸ What will you gain by going to Egypt to drink water from the Nile, or to Assyria to drink water from the Euphrates? ¹⁹ Your wickedness will punish you; your apostasy will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake Yahweh your God and have no fear of me,” declares the Lord, Yahweh Almighty. (Jeremiah 2:9-19)

Yahweh pictures His complaints against His people as bringing charges against them in court. They are guilty of an incredible sin – they have changed their gods. Of course, the gods that nations adopt are not really gods at all (Moses says they are demons posing as gods, Deuteronomy 32:16,17; see Leviticus 17:7; 1 Corinthians 10:20-22), but they were faithful to the ‘horse that carried them,’ and Israel was not. Israel gave up their Glory, Yahweh whom they had gloried in.

From God’s perspective they have committed two infractions: 1) they have forsaken Him, their source of life-giving water, like a spring-fed well would provide, and 2) they have sought to provide their own life in a cracked and leaky cistern collecting run off water. Instead of depending on Yahweh, their life, they have gone to others for protection, metaphorically drinking the water of Egypt or Assyria. But leaky cisterns that they are, Egypt and Assyria cannot be depended on. Indeed, they have cracked Israel’s skull, destroyed her towns.

What we rely on to meet our needs instead of God, always turns to hurt us.

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Discussion Questions:

1. What would you expect the quality of cistern water to be?
2. Why do you think we choose cheap substitutes for God instead of trusting God to meet our needs?
3. What “cisterns” have you seen people use, or have you used yourself, to fill the empty space created by soul-pain?