Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 2:13
For 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.
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. Isa 12:3; Isa 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.).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
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 Jer 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.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jer 2:13
My people have committed two evils.
Two astounding evils
I. The force of human freedom. Mightiest rivers cannot break from their source, nor greatest planets from their centre, but man can from centre and fountain of his being.
1. This freedom is a matter of personal consciousness.
2. It invests human existence with transcendent importance.
II. The enormity of human wickedness.
1. Ingratitude.
2. Injustice.
3. Impiety.
III. The egregiousness of human folly.
1. In withdrawing from the satisfying to toil for the unsatisfying.
2. In withdrawing from the abundant to tell for the scanty (Homilist.)
The two-fold sin of mankind
I. The nature of sin. This will be seen by observing–
1. What men leave. God–a fountain of living waters to them. The sum of all excellency, the source of all happiness.
2. What the follow. Broken cisterns.
(1) Worldly business.
(2) Worldly pleasure.
(3) Earthly distinction.
(4) Worldly ease.
II. How we should regard sin. As God regards it–with loathing and abhorrence. Learn–
1. The emptiness of mere outward profession.
2. Gods remedy for mans sin. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters.
The fountain of living waters
In a land like this, perpetually green with Atlantic showers, which at once refresh the thirsty soil and replenish the subterranean reservoirs, it is not easy to understand the gratitude, reverence, almost affection, with which men who live under a fiercer sky, and upon a parched earth, look upon a fountain of living waters. Some remnant of the feeling, descending to us from an earlier and simpler time, may be noticed in connection with such a strong outgush of pure waters as, at Wells or at Holywell, springs into the upper air, at once a river: men have thought that there must be some healing efficacy in so bountiful a manifestation of one of natures most beneficent forces; and soon they have imagined a legend, and built a shrine, and to the natural holiness have added a superstitious sanctity. But it is almost the same in the thirstier lands of the East with any rill of water, so it be perennial. A spring becomes a natural landmark of a kind to which expectation points, round which memories are wont to gather. When all the long day the caravan has toiled patiently through the pitiless brightness, and the path has lain for many a weary mile over the sand slopes shimmering in the heated air, or by the mountain pass where the sun-smitten rocks reflect the intolerable rays,–how grateful, as the shadows are lengthening, to descry afar off the fringe of palm trees on the horizon, and to quicken the march, till at last there is a bubbling in the cool grass, and shade overhead, water for the thirsty lips, rest for the tired feet! And how terrible the disappointment, if, when the journey has tended to some less fortunate spot, where the care of man has provided–poor substitute for the bounty of God!–a cistern to catch a precarious and failing supply, the travellers have found at nightfall only a broken reservoir, and the trace of help and refreshment passed away! What resource, but a night as comfortless as the day had been toilsome, and on the morrow, a renewed effort, with diminished strength and a courage sustained by despair, to reach some happier island in the desert, where the waters of God never fail to flow! There is a depth of spiritual meaning in this passage, which, ignorant as we may be of the precise occasion to which it applies, forbids us to interpret it in any but a religious sense. It was, so to say, the nature, the destiny, of the Jewish people to be always committing the two evils of which it speaks. Theirs was indeed a mixed character, in which elements as opposite almost as light and darkness perpetually struggled for the mastery. Their distinguishing mark as a nation was insight into God: they had discerned Him as one; they had learned that He was holy; they had fixed, for all coming time, the true point of contact between God and man in the god-likeness of humanity; and yet in their history, as told by their own lips, they show themselves false, fickle, sensual, cruel, as hardly any other people. In Judah of old, a distracted State, the sport of fierce political passions within and beyond her own borders, falling back now upon a hard Levitical religiousness, now madly rushing upon alien idolatries, now again wakened to better life by the thunder of prophetic rebuke;–in Judah of old it was possible for a man to climb, like Isaiah, to such heights of rapt communion with the all-holy God as human feet have since but rarely trodden, or to find a downward way to abysses of foul sensuality, masking itself in a pretence of religion, such as it is not good even to speak of. It is enough surely to forsake God; to pass through the dry and thirsty land of life as if no fountain of living waters sprang up to cheer and to fertilise it; to choose the sun-smitten sand, to toil up the parched torrent bed, when it is possible to rest beneath the palm trees shade, and to drink of the brook that murmurs through the grass. And yet this can hardly be: the thirst for the Divine cannot wholly die out of the human heart: there must be some reaching forth to the unseen, some attempt to find a stay in the Eternal. So the first evil has its natural issue in the second. Those who have turned away from the living fountain bend their wandering steps towards a cistern of their own making, a broken cistern which will hold no water; a cistern which, as the traveller draws nigh, offers to his thirsty lips only the slime, where water was long ago, baking in the sun. This it is to forsake the solemn worship of Jehovah for the wild dance of the devotees of Baal. It may not be easy to expound this passage; but, as it stands, it is impossible not to feel how deep and how vivid it is. It contains all the secret of religion; the secret which it is the object of preaching of every kind to reveal and to enforce; the one truth which prophets present in every form of living and burning words,–that all life worthy of the name is life in, and with, and for God; that life without God is a dream likest death, except that by Gods mercy it is always possible to awake from it. So I take this particular metaphorical representation of the central truth to indicate that an essential element of human nature is a longing for the Divine, as heat and weariness thirst for cool water: a sense of a higher law, a holier will, to which it would be peace and happiness to conform: a desire to find, amid the perplexity of things, a hand of guidance, and in their mutability and sorrowfulness a heart on which to rest: a yearning after something fixed and changeless, to set against the daily experience of loss and decay and death. The thirst is in us all: when sorrow strikes us down upon the sand; when disappointment bars our way in the mountain pass; when the mirage of earthly affections first allures and then deceives us, we feel it, and all the more keenly that we hardly know where to seek the spring that will refresh us. Would that always we had the courage to listen to the promptings of our nobler nature, and to enter upon the impossible task of quenching the souls thirst for God! Would that always we could recognise the demand of our true need, and bring our parched lips through every desert and over every obstacle to the living spring whereof who drinks shall never thirst again! (C. Beard, B. A.)
The fountain and the cistern
Jeremiah was the medium rather than the source of these words; and it is noteworthy that he does not lay claim to them. We find lying between the two verses a clause which invests them with Divine authority, namely, saith the Lord.
I. The character which God gives Himself. It is a fact, that all that God has made and sustains speaks to us of God; and it is essential to morality and religion, as well as to our happiness, that God should reveal Himself. Before we can know that He is worthy of our supreme love, reverence, and trust, and that we should obey His will, He must make Himself known. We cannot conceive of God giving Himself a false character. God sets Himself forth as the fountain of living waters. His estimate of Himself is high, but not too high. He does not speak of Himself as a stream or reservoir of water. He is a fountain, and not merely a fountain among other fountains, but the fountain. If there be other fountains, they spring from Him; and He casts them completely into the shade. He is not content with representing Himself as the fountain of waters. He applies the epithet living to the waters that issue forth from Him. He is a fountain that is ever gushing. There is no exhausting of Him. There is an immense difference between the water that is taken from a reservoir and that which is drawn from a fountain. The water which is taken from a fountain is peculiarly fresh, pure, sweet, and wholesome. For ages the angels have been enjoying God. Has He become distasteful to them? The waters that flow from Him never grow stale and fiat. They are living and life-giving. They undergo no change for the worse. This language–the fountain of living waters–is, of course, figurative, and on that account all the more beautiful and expressive. The grand idea which they suggest is–that God alone can satisfy individuals and communities. Creatures are good and useful. As things are, we cannot do without them. Earth is not a superfluous gift. We require light and air; we require bread and human society, and a multitude of other things; but creatures are not absolutely needed. If God chose, He could dispense with them. Assuredly, it is not in creatures to satisfy us. They yield us more or less pleasure; and it would ill become us to despise them; but we have a mind above them. Deal with them as we may, they leave us unsatisfied. We were made for God, and, till we find Him, there is a void within. He is the fountain of living waters, and besides Him there is no fountain. Thirst has an injurious effect upon the bodys life, beauty, health, and strength, and is a most painful sensation. Well, what do the thirsty need? Lead them to a bubbling fountain, and they are satisfied.
II. The two evils with which Judah is charged.
1. The first evil is desertion of God. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters. To forsake God in any physical sense, in the sense in which birds sometimes forsake their nests, and children home, is impossible. We can put local distance between us and our fellow creatures, but not between us and God. The forsaking referred to is departure of a moral kind, or departure in thought and affection. This species of departure from God was possible to the inhabitants of Judah. Like ourselves, they were morally free. They might either think about God or not, either love Him or not, either trust in Him or not, either do His will or not, either seek their happiness in God or not; and how did they act? It seems that the departure from God which we have characterised as possible, became actual. God did not turn His back on them; but they deserted Him, and in deserting Him they forsook the fountain of living waters. They forsook Him as a people, and in forsaking Him they committed an evil. They neither did God nor themselves justice, Morally, they backslided from Him–dismissed Him from their minds and hearts, and lapsed into A state of sin and idolatry. Instead of seeking their happiness in God, they began to seek it in other objects. What God pronounces an evil must be an evil. It is criminal to forsake God; and, as we would expect, it is as injurious as it is criminal.
2. The second evil is attempting to find a substitute for God. And hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, etc. These two evils go together. The one naturally leads to the other. The religious is perhaps mans strongest instinct. There is something which men of the world ever supremely fear and love, to which they look and pray in times of danger and distress, and on which they lean for happiness. Accordingly, when we cease to worship God–the right object of worship–there is not with us an end of all worship. There is merely a change of worship. Wrong objects are put in the place of God. Man is not competent to the supply of his own wants, and he knows it. He cannot rid himself of the consciousness of limitation and dependence. Hence, when he departs from God, he precipitates himself on a variety of objects, and devotes himself to a variety of pursuits, with the view of indemnifying himself, Nothing will do for those who renounce God, but trying their hand at cistern making They are driven to exert themselves in order to the discovery of a substitute for God; and are they successful? No. One cistern may be larger than another, or differ from another in shape, or other respects; but the best cisterns are leaky. Water may be poured into them, but, alas! they let it through. Whatever may be thought of them by the maker, they fall infinitely short of God, the fountain of living waters.
III. The summons to astonishment addressed to the heavens. Be astonished, etc. Were a fountain of living waters and a leaky cistern put before a person suffering from thirst, it would excite wonder were he to prefer the cistern to the fountain. We would be strongly tempted to call in question his sanity. Were a youth to leave a happy home–to forsake a father well able to provide for, protect, school, guide him, advance his temporal and spiritual interests, how would we feel on being introduced to him as a deserter from home? We would look on him with no small measure of pity and surprise; and how can we help being affected with the profoundest astonishment when with the minds eye we contemplate an intelligent and free creature turning his back upon God? (G. Cron.)
The misery of forsaking God
I. What has man substituted in the place of the happiness which might have been found in God?
1. Philosophy. They have sought enjoyment in calm contemplation on the relation of things, and on the abstract questions of philosophic inquiry. They have sought to raise themselves above suffering by rendering the mind insensible to the common ills of life, and they attempt to separate themselves from the common herd of mortals by their insensibility to the woes which affect the mass of men.
2. A part, men of leisure and of taste, fly to the academic grove, and look for happiness there. They go up the sides of Parnassus, and drink from the Castalian fount, and court the society of the Muses. Their enjoyment and their solace is in the pursuit of elegant literature. Their time is spent in belles-lettres–in the records of historic truth, or in the world of poetry and of fiction.
3. Another portion have substituted the pursuit of wealth in place of religion, and their happiness is there. This has become almost the universal passion of civilised man. Yet is not happiness so much sought in the pursuit of wealth itself as in that which wealth will procure. He looks on to the old age of elegant retirement and leisure which is before him; he sees in vision the comforts which he will be able to draw round him in the splendid mansion and grounds, and in the abundance which his old age will enjoy.
II. Has the plan succeeded?
1. What is happiness?
(1) It must be adapted to the nature of man or fitted to his true rank or dignity. There must be some permanency, some solid basis on which the superstructure is to be reared.
(2) There must be a recognition of immortality. This must be, because man is so made that he cannot wholly forget it.
(3) True happiness must be of such a nature that it will not be materially disturbed by the prospect of sickness, the grave, and eternity. My Athenian guest, says Croesus to Solon, the voice of fame speaks loudly of your wisdom. I have heard much of your travels; you have been led by a philosophic spirit to visit a considerable portion of the globe. I am here induced to inquire of you what man, of all you have beheld, has seemed to you most truly happy. After one or two unsatisfactory answers, and being pressed still for a reply, Solon said, I shall not be able to give a satisfactory answer to the question you propose till I know that your scene of life shall have closed with tranquillity. The man of affluence is not in fact more happy than the possessor of a bare competency, unless in addition to his wealth his end be more fortunate. Call no man happy till you know the nature of his death. It is the part of wisdom to look to the event of things; for the Deity often overwhelms with misery those who have formerly been placed at the summit of felicity (Herod. 1:24, 32). Our happiness must not be of such a nature as to be disturbed by the recognition of death, and the anticipation of a future world.
2. Can happiness be found away from God? My appeal is mainly to experience; and here the argument need not be long. The experience of the world on this point may be divided into two great parts–the recorded and the unrecorded. Of the recorded testimony of the world, I appeal to the records made on sick beds, and in graves; to the disappointments, and cares, and anxieties, evinced all over the world as the result of the revolt in Eden, and of wandering away from God. Recall for one moment what the forsaking of God has done. Whence is sorrow, disappointment, pain, death? The misery of our world all began at that sad hour when man ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. What might not this world have been if man had never forsaken the fountain of living waters! Alexander wept on the throne of the world. Charles V and Diocletian descended from the throne to seek that happiness in the vale of private life, which could never be found in the robes of royalty. Goethe, the celebrated German author, said of himself, in advanced age, They have called me a child of fortune, nor have I any wish to complain of the course of my life. Yet it has been nothing but labour and sorrow, and I may truly say that in seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of true comfort. It was the constant rolling of a stone that was always to be lifted anew. Who shall record the disappointment of those who seek wealth as their portion? The most instructive part of the history of our world is unwritten–at least is not written among mortals. It is recorded in the book that preserves the memory of human deeds with reference to the judgment, and will be developed only on the final trial It is the record of numberless individual failures and disappointments; the total history of that which makes up the vast experiment in our world to find enjoyment without the friendship of the Most High. (A. Barnes D. D.)
Broken cisterns that can hold no water.–
Broken cisterns
I. A sinners life is laborious. Have your dreams of ease in sin been fulfilled? Have you not found the life of sin to be a toilsome, thankless drudgery? Be honest to your own heart if you cannot confess it to man. Has not sin been an universal deceiver, a cruel, remorseless taskmaster? Have not all the fairy visions of our fancy been converted into bushes of thorns and barren rocks of desolation? God has made the broad road thus to prevent His children walking therein.
II. A sinners work is worthless. Our grandfathers could tell us what a great noise sounded through Europe in the days of their early youth at the strokes of a great cistern hewer. By a series of marvellous steps the mightiest military genres of modern days reached the cold and tottering summit of imperial power. He had devoted almost superhuman energies of body and mind to the task of hewing out a cistern, he had compelled millions of slaves to assist in this gigantic construction. Strong and glorious as the fabric was, God could not be outwitted; His decree went forth against the cistern, by His iron rod it was broken into a thousand shivers, and the exile of St. Helena sat himself down for weary months and years in the chill shadow of his own broken cistern which could hold no water, till his own heart broke, and he passed away, to render his account unto God. Power, glory, fame, are but a broken cistern to the soul of man. You may get it by becoming a vestryman, an alderman, a popular novelist, a member of Parliament, a Cabinet minister, or a hundred other ways, but the end will be the same dissatisfaction and unrest which overwhelmed the great Napoleon. Ah, when will saints give as much diligence to their high and holy calling as the servants of pleasure give to theirs?
III. A sinners state is appalling. Shall we witness the blindness, madness of our own friends and neighbours, of our fellow citizens, and have no bowels of compassion for them? Let us fervently, kindly, personally appeal to them; lot us watch for their souls, invent wise contrivances, and lovingly use them till the scales fall from their eyes, and we bring them to the Fountain of living waters.
IV. A sinners condition is not hopeless. God is still the Fountain of living waters. In Him abides the fulness which alone can supply all the lawful and infinite longings which rise up within the mysterious nature of man. Do we want knowledge, wisdom, love, life, peace, rest, immortality? They are all in God. From Him is ever issuing a stream bearing upon its bosom the richest spiritual blessings His mercy can provide. The grace of God is wider, deeper, richer, than in the era when the prophet of lamentation poured forth his sorrowful strains over the folly of sinners. (W. A. Esscry.)
Broken cisterns
Think over these cisterns which have been built, and have been offered to us in our time, and ask whether, after all, they are not broken, obviously broken before our eyes.
1. I thought of the immense part that, a few years ago, secularism seemed to play in the thought of London. A cistern offered to us of this kind, that man should confine his attention to the world in which he lives; that we should seek to make the most of our material and intellectual opportunities here; that we should use our time honestly and well, we should instruct one another in the affairs of the world and of life, but we should remit the consideration of religion and thoughts of God to another world if it ever comes, and not trouble ourselves with them here. That cistern of secularism, at which the men of England have been requested to drink, must always be an unsatisfying cistern–a broken cistern indeed. For what reason? Because you never can silence the deep craving of the human soul; you never can bring man within the limits of time and space, and get him quietly to remain there. If secularism could give us, as we wish, a more equal distribution of opportunities, and if every man had all that the world could offer, every man would still remain unsatisfied. Count Leo Tolstoi has told us himself how in his youth he was a nobleman with every advantage of wealth and education and social position, and, moreover, he was a man in perfect health, and there seemed to be not a cloud to cross his sky. And yet he has told how at that time his deep dissatisfaction and misery were such that he was constantly contemplating suicide.
2. And then I thought of that cistern which has been offered to us under the name of socialism. That cistern is so well constructed, and is so attractive, that I would be the last to deny that waters of a satisfying kind might for a time be stored within it. It proposes to make a framework of society in some future day complete and satisfying, but meanwhile it has no message to the millions of human souls that are passing, as it were, in a dull, dead flood, week by week, day by day, into the silent grave.
3. Then it occurred to me how much we had heard in our time of natural science and physical science as cisterns at which human beings were to quench their thirst. And I remembered how, in my earlier ministry, we were constantly told that the discoveries of science would take the place of religion, and that man would learn to live his life in the world, subject to its many limitations, in the clear light that science sheds upon the development of human life and its possible goal. Then I took up the utterance of a great scientific man today, Sir Henry Thompson, who has published his little pamphlet called The Unknown God, in order to show us what the creed of science really is. I turn over the pages of Sir Henry Thompsons book and see what a great and candid and earnest scientific man makes of this universe, and of this life in the light of science. When I read his broken and halting conclusions, and see what he offers me as the cup of cold water to quench the ardent thirst of my soul, I cannot hesitate to say, with all reverence to so good, so honest, and sincere a thinker: My friend, you have brought me to a broken cistern, which can give no water for the thirsty soul of man.
4. And then I thought of that which is much commoner than secularism, socialism, and science, as the solution of human life–I mean the widespread and absolute indifference to all higher things into which so many of our unhappy people fall. The men who seem agreed to live as if they were merely animals upon the earth, like the beasts with lower pleasures, like the beasts with lower pains. The men who put aside altogether ideals and dreams. The men who do not ask for either God or life or eternity. The men who do not concern themselves about moral improvement or the benefit of their fellow creatures, but drift along the path of life an aimless crowd, careless of the world, careless of themselves, indifferent to all that makes life truly worth living and significant. And it seemed to me that this was not so much a cistern which is offered, or even a broken cistern, but a dull, flat pool, a mere stagnant pond where men can never quench their thirst, but where they can be and must be poisoned by the malaria that rises from the stagnant waters. What is to happen to these men if the soul thirst should ever awaken within them? And when I thought of all these broken cisterns that can hold no water, I remembered from my text that meanwhile there is a fountain; it rises there in the far-off Galilean hills, and the stream flows through the thirsty centuries, and where it flows the margin of the stream is green and fertile. And today it seems as if it were in a sense easier to get to the spring than in any other day that has ever been. If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink. (R. F. Herren, D. D.)
True happiness to be found not in the world, but in God
I. The soul of man naturally thirsts after happiness.
1. This affords a strong argument for the dignity of the soul, and the certainty of a future state.
2. These inward and insatiable cravings, amidst the high enjoyments of sense and the world, should lead us to God, who alone can felicitate the soul He hath made; should deaden our desires towards the delights of life, and quicken them after those of religion.
II. Notwithstanding this native thirst in the souls of men after happiness, yet they are generally mistaken in their choice of it.
1. There are many who quite mistake the object of their happiness, and place it in those things which are not only foreign from but opposite to it. Wealth, ambition, pleasure.
2. Some are right in their notions of happiness, but seek it the wrong way. Instead of seeking Gods favour in the way of righteousness, through the mediation of Christ, by the assistance of His Spirit, they build their hopes of it either on a zeal for speculative opinions, party notions, formal services, modes of worship, voluntary mortifications, impulses of fancy, deep knowledge, rigid faith, or unscriptural austerities.
3. How many are they who have not only right notions of happiness but of the way to it, who yet fall short of it through neglect and indolence; and the fatal influence which the world and the things of it have upon their hearts! whereby they are rendered quite cold, lukewarm, and indifferent, in the things which concern their eternal salvation.
III. Mankind are naturally disposed to seek their happiness from this world, where it is not to be found.
1. The pleasures of this life are very scanty and confined. They are but cisterns of water–which can hold no very large quantity–not sufficient to answer all the occasions we may have for it, at least not for any considerable time.
2. They are also insipid and unsatisfying; like water in a cistern, stagnated and exposed to the sun; whereby it not only loses its quick taste and freshness, but contracts scum and dirt and foulness.
3. They are at the same time uncertain, and continually wasting away. The vessel that holds them is leaky.
4. They are not to be had without much pains. Even these broken cisterns we are obliged to hew out to ourselves, and be at great labour to procure.
IV. Men are naturally backward and averse to seek their happiness from God where alone it is to be found. The folly of this will appear by considering that the pleasures of piety have properties just the reverse of those belonging to worldly pleasures.
1. They are most full and capacious. Not contracted and limited, not diminished by successive draughts, as water in a cistern is–but free, and full, and ever flowing, as water at the fountain head.
2. They are the most exquisite and satisfying delights.
3. They are most durable and imperishable.
4. They are easy to be had. Freely offered. (J. Mason, M. A.)
The sin of peoples forsaking God and betaking themselves to the creature in His stead
I. Forsaking of God in Christ, and betaking oneself to the creature in His stead, are two signally ill things.
1. The forsaking of God in Christ.
(1) The object forsaken by the hearers of the Gospel must be considered as–God in our nature, for communion with guilty men (Mat 1:23). God in our nature, ready to communicate His fulness to us, for making us happy in time and eternity (Joh 4:10). A God we have professed to betake ourselves to for our happiness (Jer 16:19).
(2) How sinners forsake God in Christ. Lowering their esteem of Him, the value and honour they had for Him sinking low (Psa 50:21). The hearts falling off its rest in Him, and turning restless, so that the fulness of God cannot quiet it (Isa 30:15). Ceasing to cleave to Him by faith, and letting go believing gripes of the promise (Heb 3:12). Looking out some other way, for something to rest their hearts in (Psa 4:6). Growing remiss in duties, and slighting opportunities of communion with God a form of duties may be kept up, but the heart is away, what avail they? Having no regard to please Him in their ordinary walk (Eze 23:35). Laying aside the Word for a rule, and regulating themselves by another standard (Psa 119:53). Forsaking His people for their companions (Pro 13:20). Forsaking ordinances and the communion of saints therein (Heb 10:25-26). Throwing away the form of religion, casting off the mask, and giving the swing to their lusts.
(3) Why they forsake Him. There is a natural bent to apostasy in all (Hos 11:7). Many were never truly joined to the Lord, though they seemed to be so: so having never knit with Him, no wonder they fall away from Him (1Jn 2:19). They often have some idol of jealousy secretly preserved when they are at their best; and that upon a proper occasion does the business; like the young man in the Gospel, that went away from Christ grieved, because he had great possessions. Their not pressing it to the sweet of religion, in an experimental feeling of the power of it (Psa 34:8). The want of a living principle of grace in the heart, that may bear out in all changes of ones condition (Psa 78:37). They cool like a stone taken from the fire, and wither like a branch that takes not with the stock. Unwatchfulness. Thereby men are stolen off their feet (Pro 4:23). A conceit of being able to live without Him (Jer 2:31). Ill company carries many away from God (1Co 15:33).
(4) The ill of sin that is in forsaking God in Christ. It is a downright perversion and deserting of the end of our creation. There is in it a setting up another in the room of God. Fearful ingratitude for the greatest mercy and kindness (Jer 2:2; Jer 2:12). Notorious unfaithfulness to our kindest Head and Husband (Jer 2:20). Notorious unfaithfulness to our own interest and folly with a witness. An affronting of God before the world, casting dishonour on Him, bearing false witness against Him (Jer 2:31). A practical commendation of the way of the world, contemning God, and seeking their happiness in things that are seen (Pro 28:4). A sinning against the remedy of sin, making ones case very hopeless (Heb 10:26). An opened sluice for all other sins. The man that forsakes God, exposes himself a prey to all temptations, to be picked up by the first finder (Pro 27:8).
2. The betaking of oneself to the creature in Gods stead.
(1) The object taken up with in Gods stead.
(a) It is not God (Deu 32:21).
(i) It cannot satisfy.
(ii) It cannot profit.
(b) It is the world (1Jn 2:15); the great bulky vanity (Ecc 1:2); the passing world (1Jn 2:17); the present evil world (Gal 1:4).
(2) How sinners take up with the creature in Gods stead. Raising their esteem of and value for the creature, till it come to overtop their esteem of God in Christ, like Eve with respect to the forbidden fruit. Bending their chief desire towards the creature (Psa 4:6) to obtain it, and the satisfaction they apprehend is to be found in it. Embracing and knitting with it in love (2Ti 4:10). Seeking a rest for their hearts in it. Trusting in it, and having their chief dependence on it, notwithstanding the curse pronounced against such trust (Jer 17:5-6). Using their chief and most earnest endeavours for it. Rejoicing most in their enjoyment of it, and delighting most in it. Sorrowing most of all for the want of it, under the frowns of it.. Still cleaving to it, under never so many disappointments from it; nor forsaking it, but trying another means, when one misgives (Isa 57:10). Following the creature, whithersoever it goes, even quite over the hedge of the law of God.
(3) Why sinners take up with the creature in Gods stead. Because the heart of man is naturally wedded to the creature; and that bond not being truly broken, it is apt to return upon occasion to its natural bias. Because mans corrupt nature finds a suitableness and agreeableness in the creature to itself (Isa 57:10). Because the creature takes by the eye and other senses; God and His favour is the object of faith, which is rare in the world. Because the creature promises a present good, whereas the greatest things of God are reserved to another world. Because, by the power of a strong delusion, conveyed into the nature of man by the serpent in paradise, they expect a satisfaction and happiness in the creature (Gen 3:5-6). Because they must needs betake themselves to something within themselves, not being self-sufficient; so, having lost God, they fall of course to the creature in His stead.
(4) The ill of this practice, taking up with the creature in Gods stead. It is an egregious wrong done to God, and His infinite excellency (Jer 2:11). It is a wrong done to the creature, as being a putting it out of its proper place (Rom 8:21-22). It is a wrong done to the whole generation of the saints (Psa 73:12-15). It is an egregious wrong to the sinners own soul, putting the arrantest cheat upon it that one is capable of (Pro 8:36).
II. To forsake God in Christ, and take the creature in His stead, is a wretched exchange.
1. It is an exchanging of a fountain for a cistern.
(1) The water in the cistern is borrowed water; that in the fountain is from itself.
(2) The water must needs be sweeter and fresher in the fountain than in the cistern.
(3) The water in the cistern is no more but a certain measure in the fountain it is unmeasurable.
(4) The water in the cistern is mostly very scanty; the fountain is ever full.
(5) The water of the cistern is always dreggy; the fountain clear and pure.
(6) The water of the cistern is soon dried up; the fountain, never.
2. It is an exchanging of a fountain made ready to our hand, for a cistern that remains to be hewed out by ourselves.
(1) The fountain is always ready for us; the cisterns often are unready. There is access at any time to be had unto God, through Christ, by faith (Psa 46:1). But the creature is an unready help, so that the mans case is often past cure, ere help can be had.
(2) The fountain is made ready for us by another hand, the cistern must be prepared by our own (Zec 13:1; Joh 7:37).
(3) At the fountain one has nothing to do but drink; but it is no little pains that is necessary to fit out the cistern for us. Hard and sore work (Hab 2:13). Longsome work, that one comes but little speed in. Weary work.
3. It is an exchanging of a fountain for many cisterns.
(1) None of them are sufficient, but all defective.
(2) There is something disagreeable and vexing in them all (Ecc 1:14).
(3) They enlarge the appetite, but do not satisfy it (Hab 2:5). As one draught of salt water makes the necessity of another, so the gratifying of a lust doth but open its mouth wider; as is evident from the case of those, who having once given themselves loose reins, nothing can prevail to bind them up, till the grace of God change them. They go from ill to worse. Now, this is a wretched exchange; for the access to one fountain is far more ready than to many cisterns. He that has but one door to go to for sufficient supply is certainly in better case than he that must go to many; so he that has the fulness of a God to satisfy himself in, is in circumstances a thousand times better than he who must go from creature to creature for that end. The water is better that is altogether in one fountain, than that which is parted into many cisterns. United force is strongest; and that which is scattered, the farther it is scattered abroad, it is the weaker. It is with greater ease of mind that one may apply to the one fountain, than to the many cisterns. O what ease has the man that goes to Gods door for all, in comparison of him who begs at the doors of the creatures, ranging up and down among them! Use–Repent then of this folly, and take the one fountain instead of your many cisterns; go to one God instead of the multitude of created things.
Motive 1.–This will contract your cares now so diffusive, lessen your labour, and spare you many a weary foot.
Motive 2.–Ye shall find enough in God, that ye shall see no necessity of seeking any happiness without Him (Joh 4:14); more than shall supply the want of the corn and wine (Psa 4:7); that shall be commensurable to your whole desire (2Sa 23:5). (T. Boston, D. D.)
Forsaking the fountain for the broken cistern
I. The object forsaken.
1. Sin is an ungrateful rejection of God. The parental bond is broken, the conjugal tie is dissolved, the oath of suretyship is annulled.
2. We cannot forsake God without forsaking our own mercies. Sin is always the act of a suicide; we cannot reject the counsel of God against ourselves without rejecting His blessings also.
3. What is the fountain which Israel hath thus forsaken? Oh! it is deep as the unfathomed sea; free as the unbought air; more healing than Bethesdas pool; fresh as the stream which comes forth from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
II. The object preferred.
1. The deadening character of all worldly enjoyments. For all the ends of consolation and encouragement and hope the resources of the world are worse than unavailing; The cisterns are not so empty as they are poisonous.
2. Poor as the worlds enjoyments are, they are to be obtained only at great cost and labour. In drinking of the fountain you will have to stoop much, to kneel long, and to lie low. In drinking from the cistern, you will have to labour hard, to drag heavily, and to climb high.
3. Another characteristic of worldly enjoyments is their instability, their transitoriness, their incapacity for yielding any continued happiness, or for giving a man peace at the last. They are not cisterns only, but broken cisterns; vessels which let out their contents as fast as they put them in; cisterns which can hold no water. The world not only palls upon its votaries while drinking of its waters, but its tide is always ebbing away. Not only may we write upon it Marah for the bitterness of its taste, but also Ichabod for the evanescence of its glory. (D. Moore, M. A.)
Broken cisterns
I. The first cistern which attracts our attention is one of sensualism. The youth who is working at it with mallet and chisel, and with hot and fevered face, dreams that the highest enjoyment of life is that which comes through the senses. He will inform you that he regards man as an animal more than anything else, and that it behoves him to listen to the cry of his passions and to satisfy it. He will demand of you why his passions were lodged in his heart, if they were not to govern him. But the sensualist reasons as if he forgets two most important points. He forgets that the passions are no longer what once they were. He reasons as if the soul were still as it was when it came bright and sinless from its Creators hands; as if its original harmony and balance were undisturbed; as if there had been no obscuration of the moral sense and no inflammation of the passions. And he forgets, too, that while the soul has passions they have their due place assigned them in the economy of our constitution, and that that place is not the throne but the footstool. They can never sit in the throne but by revolt, rebellion, and usurpation. Their position is one of service, a service, too, assigned them by a pure conscience and an enlightened judgment. I said the sensualist forgets these two important points rebut does he not forget another? He strives to hew out a cistern of satisfaction by gratifying his passions; but has he not yet learned from observation, if his own experience has not taught him, that from their very nature the passions can never yield a constant happiness? The more they are indulged, the less they can be gratified. The pampered appetite becomes the jaded appetite, and at length becomes the diseased and ruined appetite. And the man who is hewing out for himself a cistern of sensual pleasure is like the dram drinker, who derives less stimulus and delight from the same quantity every day, who has accordingly to increase the dose to supply the same excitement; who at length gets beyond the range of gratification, but finds that the passion holds him fast in its serpent coils even when all its joys are forever fled.
II. We find another earnest worker who is hewing out a cistern of wealth. No sooner do we reach him than he begins to pour out his contempt of the man we have just left. He wonders how it is possible for any one with an atom of sense to spend his life and strength at such a cistern as that–a cistern which, even if it could be made to hold water, proclaims the mean and degraded character of the man who could drink it. Then turning to his own cistern he points with evident pride at this monument of his superior wisdom; expatiates on the various powers of wealth; tells us how money answereth all things, how it has ministered to the growth of nations, to the development of civilisation, to the creation and sustentation of commerce, to the advancement of the arts and sciences, to the physical and moral improvement of mankind, and even to the extension of the Gospel itself. Now what shall we say to this man? It will not serve any good purpose to call him hard names. You cannot scold a man out of any sin, still less out of the sin of covetousness. Nor must we bluntly deny all that he has said in praise of wealth. It is when we find men mistaking its functions and properties, and labouring to hew out of it a cistern of satisfaction, that we are constrained to remind them that such a cistern will hold no water. Christ speaks of the deceitfulness of riches. I wonder where the man is who can raise an intelligent and experienced protest against the epithet. Wealth is the feeder of avarice, not its satisfaction. It inflames the thirst, it does not quench it. But, would you learn the weakness of wealth as well as its power, look at the narrow limits within which after all its efficacy is bounded. If there are times when one feels that money answereth all things, there are times when one feels still more keenly that it answereth nothing. When the brain becomes bewildered, or its substance begins to yield and soften, what can a mans wealth do for him then? If you travel on the sea, and a destructive storm falls upon your vessel, will the waves that engulph the poor retire in bashful respect for a wealthy man? The digger of this well has said something about the power of wealth: is it not well that he should learn, too, its powerlessness in regard to many of the great needs and sorrows of life? It cannot give you health; it cannot give you talent; it cannot give you the real and abiding respect of your fellow men; it cannot give you peace of mind; it cannot save your wife or children; it cannot avert death and its preliminary horrors and pains from yourself.
III. But we must leave this worker, and make our way to another who is hewing out the cistern of intellectualism. He is clearly a higher type of man. There is a refinement about his appearance which shows that his communion has been with the thoughts of poets and philosophers He expatiates on the intrinsic greatness of man; on his immortality; on his reason, that vision and faculty divine; on the unapproachable supereminence of man over all the universe around him. Knowledge, he says, is the thing for man. For this we were made. It is the element in which we are to live, and without this there is no life worthy of man. And yet, somehow, there seems a shade of sadness upon that face now that his glowing excitement has passed away. Aye, it is even so. He tells us that he is not yet satisfied; that he is hoping to be; that with all his knowledge he feels more ignorant than wise; that if he gets fresh light he seems only to realise more fully the fact that he is standing on the border of a vaster territory of darkness; that if he solves one mystery it serves but to show a thousand more; and that he has been striving, too, for many years at some difficulties which have hitherto beaten him back in hopeless confusion. We assure him that this need not distress him, for with his limited capacities he cannot expect to understand all things at once, and that while it is true that death will for a moment interrupt his speculations and researches, there is eternity before him with its illimitable scope and opportunities. He is paler now than ever, and seizes convulsively his mallet and chisel, and works away with averted face at his cistern, muttering between every stroke, Death, death; ah! it is death which troubles one. What is death?–what will it be to me? Why should I die? and if I must die, why should I fear to die?
IV. While thus he muses and mutters, let us visit the cistern of morality. Its owner accosts us at once as follows: And so you have been visiting my learned neighbour yonder. He is incurable, and I would fain believe, insane, He has the fancy, that man is nothing but intellect, and that our whole mission in this world is to acquire knowledge. I have told him once and again, that if this were the chief end of man he need not to have had either affections or conscience, and that we are moral creatures as well as intellectual ones. Now, the cistern which I have been working at for years is the cistern of morality and good living, for it is clear that we ought to love God with all our hearts, and minds, and strength and our neighbours as ourselves; and that, in fact, our happiness lies in this, and in nothing else. And it is delightful to have something which ones own hands have made, to have a righteousness we ourselves have wrought out, and for which we are indebted to no one. Thus speaks the man, and while he speaks we have been looking at the cistern, which is not without its beauty, and which shows traces and proofs of long and careful working; and we have seen, or think we have seen, chinks great and small which do not promise well for the serviceableness of the cistern, if it be meant, as it is meant, to hold water. Has it been made exactly according to the pattern which you have specified, namely, that you love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself? Will it hold any water? And the man, chagrined to have the perfectness of his work called in question, replies: I know that as yet it will hold no water, but it is not finished. I am striving to fill up the defects and openings with mortar–with the mortar of sorrow for the past, and endeavours to do better for the future. But what, we ask, if the mortar be as porous as the stone? What if it will not hold water any more than the cistern? What if future obedience cannot repair the mischief of the past? What if repentance without Christ itself needs to be repented of? What if even an awakened conscience itself refuses to accept the part for the whole? And what if God say, By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified? And what if there be a special condemnation for those who, going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God?
V. As we retrace our steps and visit the other cisterns, lo! we find that the workers work no more. The end has come to all. And on the cistern of the scholar we find the inscription, as if traced by a mystic hand, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; but fools despise wisdom and instruction. And on the cistern of the worldling we find, So is every man that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God. And on the cistern of the sensualist we find, To be carnally minded is death. And as we look within we find that all is parched and dry as summer dust, and that the description is awfully exact and literal: Cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
Broken cisterns
Whilst two evils are specified, we are not to suppose they are ever committed separately: no man forsakes the living fountain who does not also hew out the broken cistern–for there is a search after happiness in which all men naturally engage; and if they do not seek happiness in God, where alone it may be found, they will inevitably seek it in the creature, though only to be disappointed. Yet notwithstanding that these truths are attested by universal experience, there is continually going on the same forsaking of the fountain, the same hewing out of the cistern, so pathetically and indignantly denounced in the text. There is something very striking in the expression hewed them out cisterns. What labour does it indicate, what effort, what endurance! Had the cisterns been ready made to their hands, there had not been so much with which to upbraid them. But God has caused that it shall be actually toilsome thing for men to seek happiness in the creature. Witness the diggings, so to speak, of avarice: the painful climbings of ambition: the disgusts and disappointments of sensuality. God makes it an aggravation of the sin of his being forsaken that He is forsaken for that which must demand toil, and then yield disappointment. He sets the fountain of living waters in contrast with broken cisterns–as though He would point out the vast indignity offered Him, in that what was preferred was so unworthy and insufficient. It is the language not only of jealousy, but of jealousy stung to the very quick by the baseness of the object to which the plighted affection has been unblushingly transferred. Wonder, O heavens, and be astonished, O earth. God speaks of His people as offering Him this indignity; but He does not speak to His people. He tells His grievance to the material creation, as though even that were more likely to feel and resent it than the beings who were actually guilty of the sin. And ye who are setting up idols for yourselves, ye who, in spite of every demonstration of the uselessness of the endeavour, are striving to be happy without God, we will not reason with you: it were like passing too slight censure on your sin, it were representing it as less blinding, less besotting, than it actually is, to suppose that you would attend to, or feel the force of, an ordinary remonstrance. It may move you more, ye worshippers of visible things, to find yourselves treated as past being reasoned with, than flattered with addresses which suppose in you the full play of the understanding and the judgment. Ye will not hearken: but there are those who witness and wonder at your madness: the visible universe, as if amazed at finding itself searched for that which its own sublime and ceaseless proclamations declare to be nowhere but in God, assumes a listening posture; and whilst the Almighty publishes your infatuation, He hath secured Himself an audience, whether ye will hear, or whether ye will forbear; for the accusation is not uttered till there have been this astounding call: Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, etc. But let us proceed to the case which is perhaps still more distinctly contemplated by the passage before us–that of the abandonment of the true religion for a false. If ever God discovered Himself as a fountain of living waters, it was when, in the person of His own Divine Son, He opened on this earth a fountain for sin and for uncleanness. The justifying virtue of the work of the Redeemer, the sanctifying of that of the Spirit–these include everything of which, as sinful but immortal beings, we can have need: by the former we may have title to the kingdom of heaven, and by the latter be made meet for the glorious inheritance. Nevertheless, can it be said that men in general are ready to close with the Gospel, to partake of it as the parched traveller of the spring found amid the sands? Even where religion is not neglected, what pains are bestowed on the making some system less distasteful to pride, or more complacent to passion, than practical, unadulterated Christianity! What costly effort is given to the compounding the human with the Divine, our own merit with that of Christ; or to the preparing ourselves for the reception of grace, as though it were not grace by which, as well as for which, we are prepared, grace which must fashion the vessel, as well as grace which must fill it. Truly, the cistern is hewn out, when the fountain is forsaken. Let Christ be unto you all in all, made unto you of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, and the fountain gives a river which, like the rock struck in Horeb, never ceaseth to make glad the believer. But turn away, though by a single step, from Christ, and, oh, the toil, the dissatisfaction, of endeavouring to make–what? a broken cistern, a cistern that can hold no water–if creature comforts are such cisterns to those who seek happiness, creature systems must be to those who seek immortality. For what shall endure the severity of Gods scrutiny, but that which is itself of Gods appointing and providing (H. Melvill, B. D.)
A broken cistern
The mother of Hume, the philosopher, was once a professor of Christianity. Dazzled by the genius of her son, she followed him into the mazes of scepticism. Years passed and she drew near to the gates of death, and from her dying bed she wrote him the following: My dear son,–My health has failed me. I am in deep decline. I cannot live long. I am left without hope or consolation, and my mind is sinking into a state of despair. I pray you hasten home to console me, or, at least, write to me the consolations that philosophy affords at the dying hour. Hume was deeply distressed at his mothers letter. His philosophy was a broken cistern in which was no water of comfort.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 13. Two evils] First, they forsook God, the Fountain of life, light, prosperity, and happiness. Secondly, they hewed out broken cisterns; they joined themselves to idols, from whom they could receive neither temporal nor spiritual good! Their conduct was the excess of folly and blindness. What we call here broken cisterns, means more properly such vessels as were ill made, not staunch, ill put together, so that the water leaked through them.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Committed two evils, viz. remarkable ones, and with a witness.
Living waters; a metaphor taken from springs, called living here, and Gen 26:19, and elsewhere, because they never cease or intermit; such had Gods care and kindness been over and to them; see on Isa 58:11; his Spirit continually proceeding from the Father and the Son to refresh their consciences. Compare Joh 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 Jer 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.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
13. two evilsnot merely oneevil, like the idolaters who know no better; besides simpleidolatry, My people add the sin of forsaking the true God whomthey have known; the heathen, though having the sin of idolatry, arefree from the further sin of changing the true God for idols (Jer2:11).
forsaken meThe Hebrewcollocation brings out the only living God into more prominentcontrast with idol nonentities. “Me they have forsaken,the Fountain,” c. (Jer 17:13Psa 36:9; Joh 4:14).
broken cisternstanksfor rain water, common in the East, where wells are scarce. The tanksnot only cannot give forth an ever-flowing fresh supply as fountainscan, but cannot even retain the water poured into them; the stoneworkwithin being broken, the earth drinks up the collected water. So, ingeneral, all earthly, compared with heavenly, means of satisfyingman’s highest wants (Isa 55:1;Isa 55:2; compare Lu12:33).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For my people have committed two evils,…. Not but that they had committed more, but there were two principal ones they were guilty of, hereafter mentioned; and it was an aggravation of these crimes, that they were the professing people of God who had committed them: and it may be observed, that such sin; they are not without it, nor the commission of it; and may be left to fall into great sins, and yet remain his people; covenant interest cannot be dissolved; this should be considered not as an encouragement to sin, but as a relief under a sense of sin:
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters; this is said of Christ, So 4:15, grace in him is compared to “water”, it being cooling and refreshing, cleansing and fructifying; and to living water, because it quickens dead sinners, revives drooping saints, supports and maintains spiritual life, and issues in eternal life; and because it is perpetual and ever flowing; and to a “fountain”, denoting that the original of it is in Christ, and the great abundance of it which is in him; it is as water in a fountain, in us as in streams: now to forsake this fountain is the first of these evils; which is done when the people of God are remiss in the exercise of faith on Christ; grow cold in their affections to him, and neglect his word and ordinances.
And hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water; this is the other evil; and such are the world, and the things in it, when cleaved unto, and rest and satisfaction are taken in them; the inventions and ordinances of men, when followed and attended to; moral duties, and evangelical services, when depended on; and even spiritual frames, when these are lived upon, and put in the room of Christ; yea, acts of faith, when they are rested in, and the object not so much regarded as should be: moreover, what may principally be intended are, in the first place, forsaking the worship of God, as the Targum interprets it, the assembling of themselves together to attend his service and ordinances, which is to forsake their own mercies; and, in the next place, following after idols, as the same paraphrase explains it, which have no divinity in them, and can yield no help and relief, or give any comfort, or afford any supply in time of distress and need. It is egregious folly to leave a fountain for a cistern, and especially a broken one: in a fountain the water is living, and always running, and ever springing up; not so in a cistern, and in a broken cistern there is none at all.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
If a reason is given here why the Prophet had bidden the heavens to be astonished and terrified, then we must render the words thus, “For two evils have my people done:” but I rather think that the preceding verse is connected with the former verses. The Prophet had said, “Go to the farthest lands, and see whether any nation has changed its gods, while yet they are mere inventions.” I think then the subject is closed with the exclamation in the preceding verse, when the Prophet says, “Be astonished, ye heavens.” It then follows, “Surely, two evils have my people done,” even these, — “they have forsaken me,” — and then, “they sought for themselves false gods.” When any one forsakes an old friend and connects himself with a new one, it is an iniquitous and a base conduct: but when there is no compensation, there is in it united together, folly, levity, and madness. If I despise what I know to be profitable to me, and embrace what I understand will be to my hurt, does not such a choice prove madness? This then is what the Prophet now means, when he says, that the people had sinned not only by departing from the true God, but also by going over, without any compensation, unto idols, which could confer no good on them.
He says that they had done two evils: the first was, they had forsaken God; and the other, they had fallen away unto false and imaginary gods. But the more to amplify their sin, he makes use of a similitude, and says that God is a fountain of living waters; and he compares idols to perforated or broken cisterns, which hold no water (40) When one leaves a living fountain and seeks a cistern, it is a proof of great folly; for cisterns are dry except water comes elsewhere; but a fountain has its own spring; and further, where there is a vein perpetually flowing, and a perennial stream of waters, the water is more salubrious and much better. The waters which rain brings into cisterns are never so wholesome as those which flow from their own native vein: and when the very receptacles of water are full of chinks, what must they be but empty? Hence then God charges the people with madness, because he was forsaken, who was a fountain and a fountain of living waters; and further, because the people sought unprofitable things when they went after their idols. For what is to be found in idols? some likeness; for the superstitious think that they labor not in vain, when they worship false gods, and they hope to derive some benefit. There are then some resemblances to the true in false religions; and hence the Prophet compares false gods to wells, because they were made hollow, suitable to hold water; but there was not a drop of water in them, as they were broken cisterns.
We now perceive what the Prophet meant, — that we cannot possibly be free from guilt when we leave the only true God, as in him is found for us a fullness of all blessings, and from him we may draw what may fully satisfy us. When therefore we despise the bounty of God, which is sufficient to make us in every way happy, how great must be our ingratitude and wickedness? Yet God remains ever like himself: as then he has called himself the fountain of living waters, we shall at this day find him to be so, except he is prevented by our wickedness and neglect. But the Prophet adds another crime; for when we fall away from God, our own conceits deceive us; and whatever may appear to us at the first view to be wells or fountains, yet when thirst shall come, we shall not find a drop of water in all our devices, they being nothing else but dry cavities. It follows —
(40) Blarney innovated here, because he seemed not rightly to distinguish between the two words that are here used. Both are rendered “cisterns” in our version; but they are two distinct words, though they are similar, and mean similar or the same things. The first is בארות, pits, and the other is בארת in our received text, but ought evidently to be ברות, or, as in one MS., בורת, which means “wells” or pools. The first is a feminine noun, the last is a masculine noun; and hence we find that the adjective added here to the last word is masculine, as in other places, see Deu 6:11; 2Ch 26:10; Neh 9:25; while the first is accompanied with adjectives in the feminine gender. The verse may be thus rendered, —
For two evils have my people done, — Me have they forsaken, the fountain of living waters; In order to dig for themselves pits, Broken wells, which cannot hold water.
It is singular that Adam Clarke should say that these cisterns were “vessels in put together,” since they were pits dug in the ground to receive rain-water. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(13) The fountain of living waters.The word rendered well, as in Pro. 10:11; Pro. 18:4; fountain, as in Psa. 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.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
13. My people have committed two evils As against the one sin of the heathen. A twofold contrast is implied in the language used: 1) Between a living fountain and a cistern; 2) Between a suitable cistern and a worthless one.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 2:13. And hewed them out cisterns By these cisterns are meant the foreign succours which they sought for from the Assyrians and Egyptians; succours, which became not only useless, but destructive to them. Others understand it of the false deities, upon which they built their confidence. “God,” says Lowth, “is the author of all blessings, both spiritual and temporal; and if men place their happiness either in false religions, or in the uncertain comforts of worldly blessings, they will find themselves as wretchedly disappointed as those who expect to find water in broken cisterns.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jer 2:13 For 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.
Ver. 13. For my people have committed two evils. ] Contrary to those two good things that I have commanded them, viz., “Depart from evil, and do good.” Psa 34:14 Lust doth first , draw a man from God, and then it doth , deceive him with a bait of the creature. Jam 1:14
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.
And hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns.
“ Turpe est difficiles habere nugas:
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum. ”
a
b Comment. in Rom 1:19 . So little reason was there that Alex. Hales should be called first Fons vitae, font of life, and then Doctor Irrefragabilis, irresistible teacher.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jeremiah
FOUNTAIN AND CISTERNS
Jer 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.
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 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. And it is temporary as well as partial. ‘He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again’-nay, even as with those who indulge in intoxicating drinks, the appetite increases while the power of the draught to satisfy it diminishes. But the crack in the cistern points further to the uncertain tenure of all earthly goods and the certain leaving of them all.
All godless life is a grand mistake.
III. The crime of a godless life.
We recall the New Testament modification of this metaphor, ‘The water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain of water.’ Arabs in desert round dried-up springs. Hagar. Shipwrecked sailors on a reef. Christ opens ‘rivers in the wilderness and streams in the desert.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
fountain = a well dug out, but having living water.
cisterns = a hewn cistern, holding only what it receives.
can hold no water = cannot hold the waters.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Fountain of Living Waters
For 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.
1. I see a wide extended valley. At its head, embosomed in trees of imperishable verdure and fragrance, amid which the birds sing strains of loveliest music, is a fountain that gushes with unabating force from depths which the eye of the vulture hath not seen. Its waters fling their diamond spray into the sunlight, and weave with its beams webs of unearthly glory. There is a safe and sheltered way to the fountain, forbidden to none, but open without fee or recompense to all. The way, however, is nearly forsaken, and the valley is covered throughout its length and breadth with busy workers, parched with thirst, and striving with might and main to hew out cisterns which the rains of heaven may fill, and from which they can drink at pleasure. This is the vision which the prophet saw, and God by his mouth tells us that amid all these cisterns there is none that will hold any water.1 [Note: E. Mellor, The Hem of Christs Garment, 239.]
2. In Hebrew the waters of a spring are called living (Gen 21:19), because they are more refreshing and, as it were, life-giving than the stagnant waters of pools and tanks fed by the rains. Hence, by a natural metaphor, the mouth of a righteous man, or the teaching of the wise, and the fear of the Lord, are called a fountain of life. The fountain of life is with Jehovah; He is Himself the Fountain of living waters; because all life, and all that sustains or quickens life, especially spiritual life, proceeds from Him. Now in Psa 19:8 it is said: The law of the Lordor, the teaching of Jehovahis perfect, reviving (or restoring) the soul; and a comparison of the statement of Micah and Isaiah that Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem with the more figurative language of Joel and Zechariah, who speak of a fountain going forth from the house of the Lord, and living waters going forth from Jerusalem suggests the inference that the living waters, of which Jehovah is the perennial Fountain, are identical with His law as revealed through priests and prophets. It is easy to confirm this suggestion by reference to the river whose streams make glad the city of God; to Isaiahs poetical description of the Divine teaching, of which he himself was the exponent, as the waters of Shiloah that go softly, Shiloah being a spring that issues from the Temple rock; and to our Lords conversation with the woman of Samaria, in which He characterizes His own teaching as living water, and as a well of water, springing up unto eternal life.
3. But to forsake the law of God is to forsake God. And here it is stated most emphatically that the people had forsaken God: They have forsaken me. And in forsaking God they had forsaken the source of all good. They had turned their backs upon the Fountain of Gods holiness and grace. Every road was well trodden except the way to the Fountain. All the broad highways led elsewhere, and the holy way was now just a little field-track only rarely frequented, on which walked a mere remnant thirstily looking for the consolation of Israel.
If you never go to church, never have anything to do with a church of any kind, you may think you are not dealing with the great question of religion: but if religion is something of importance to the world, merely by letting it alone you are dealing with it, dealing wrongly with it, and it is a serious question whether you have any right to let it alone. What right has any man, when great questions are up, touching the welfare and future of humanity, to stand back merely because he happens to be comfortable, and to let them alone? You must deal with religion. Letting it alone is dealing with it, and may be dealing with it in the very way in which you have no right. For, mark you, religion is one of the most permanent elements in human life.1 [Note: M. J. Savage.]
I
Forsaking the Fountain
What happens when a people forsakes the Fountain of living waters?
1. First of all, when a nation turns its back upon the Fountain and loses sight of the supreme holiness of God, its fine perception of all sacred things begins to grow dim. This is not a statement of chance. It is the expression of a law which has universal sway. We retain any kind of refined perception only by continual fellowship with the highest of its kind. That is so with literary perception. It is so with exquisite musical discernment. It is so with delicate artistic taste. And so it is with a fine perception of sanctity. To retain our spiritual sensitiveness, it is imperative that we continue to hold fellowship with the Divine. If the fellowship with God is destroyed, the general sense of reverence is impaired.
Religion, in its ultimate essence, is a sentiment of Reverence for a Higher than ourselves. Reverence can attach itself exclusively to a person; it cannot direct itself on what is impersonal. All the sentiments characteristic of religion presuppose a Personal Object, and assert their power only where Manhood is the type of Godhead.1 [Note: The Life and Letters of James Martineau, i. 240.]
This is the thing which I knowand which, if you labour faithfully, you shall know alsothat in Reverence is the chief joy and power of life;Reverence, for what is pure and bright in your own youth; for what is true and tried in the age of others; for all that is gracious among the livinggreat among the deadand marvellous, in the Powers that cannot die.2 [Note: Ruskin, Lectures on Art, 65.]
As for Carlyles religion, it may be said he had none, inasmuch as he expounded no creed and put his name to no confession. This is the pedantry of the schools. He taught us religion, as cold water and fresh air teach us health, by rendering the conditions of disease well-nigh impossible. For more than half a century, with superhuman energy, he struggled to establish the basis of all religions, reverence and godly fear. Love not pleasure, love God; this is the everlasting Yea.3 [Note: Augustine Birrell, Collected Essays, i. 24.]
2. The ebbing of reverence specially leaves the family unhallowed. The sanctity of family relationships finds the flower of its expression in family worship, and among the people of Israel this flower was withering away. They forsook the Fountain, and the family altar was overthrown. Surely we may here pass from ancient Israel directly and immediately to our own time. With what consternation and alarm do we look upon the general overthrow of the family altar. And the ruin is wider than is apparent in the lapse of common family devotion. For instance, is any one prepared to maintain that the fine reverence of children for their parents is a conspicuous feature of our modern life? There is a thinness in the relationship and an irreverence in the ordinary speech which do not conduce to the health and strength of our family communion.
Fine reverence is not synonymous with restraint, nor does its practice induce anything like staleness and dull reserve. Noble reverence is rather the essential secret of an exhilarant and healthy freedom. I, for one, would welcome back into our modern life the fine, stately courtesy with which children honoured their parents in generations past; that high-born, fine-fibred, healthy grace which had such splendid expression in the days of old. But I do not know how such a reverence is to be recovered, or how it is to be kept alive and maintained in true and exquisite sensitiveness, unless there is a family altar in the home, and the corporate life of the family is centred in the reverent worship of Almighty God.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The Christian World, Sept. 3, 1914.]
Although in his public life the Viceroy was of stern and unrelenting character and apparently indifferent to human life, the diary reveals in many places a tender heart and sympathetic nature. His devotion to his mother was most touching. Her last illness and death occurred in a distant province while he was immersed in important affairs of state at Tientsin. He memorialized the Dowager Empresses for a leave of absence to go to her bedside, in which he said: She is eighty-three years old, and her constitution is breaking up; and the thought of her absent son continually recurs to her and makes her illness more dangerous. When memorialist heard this his heart burned with anxiety, and his sleep and his food were worthless. Since he bade her farewell thirteen years ago, he has never seen his mothers face.
A leave of absence for one month was granted him, but before he could start on his journey news came of her death, and he petitioned for the usual retirement of three years for mourning, but the Dowager Empresses answered that the state of public affairs would only allow of one hundred days. But this did not satisfy his grief at the failure to reach his mother before her death, and he sent another lengthy memorial, saying: Remorse will haunt memorialist all his life, and there is a wound in his heart that prevents him privately from enjoying a moments respite from pain, and publicly from being of any service to the state. Even if he, separated beyond hope from meeting his mother, the living from the dead, were to spend three years in lamentations at her tomb, it would not avail to relieve his soul from the poignant and inexpressible regret he feels for his lack of filial duty. We find that years after, when absorbed in his official duties, he records that fourteen years had passed that day since his mother died, and that he secluded himself from all callers. With all the incidents of my life, its trials and lamentations, its moments of joy and pride, with all and every affair of life, I cannot forget my celestial mother, and all she was and is to me.
The unique correspondence with the Dowager Empresses brings out one of the most distinguished traits of Chinese characterveneration for parents, which has become sanctified into religious worship, and also has exercised a marked influence on the political relations of the people, the Emperor being the parental head of the nation. If the fifth commandment of the Mosaic code were as faithfully observed by Christian nations as the central doctrine of the Confucian philosophy is practised by the Celestials, the social order of the Western world would be greatly improved.1 [Note: Memoirs of the Viceroy, Li Hung Chang, p. xvii.]
3. When the Fountain is forsaken, and reverence is thereby impaired, the national chivalry also begins to decay. When we lose the sense of the sacredness of the family it is difficult to retain our sense of the sacredness of man. Take the history of any nation you please. Take the history of the English people. In those seasons when God has been forsaken, it has inevitably happened that man has not been revered. Oppression may have ridden rampant in the earth, but nobody has cared. Chivalry has flown away with reverence, and the sacredness of humanity has been lost.
The English people have felt most deeply the oppressions of other people when they themselves have lived nearest to God. Does anybody imagine for a moment that if our communion with the Almighty had been keen and undimmed, and we had consequently possessed a quick and vital sense of the sacredness of man, we should have quietly tolerated for so many years the barbarous iniquities of the Congo? One of the greatest and noblest boasts of the Apostle Paul was given in these words: Who is made to stumble and I burn not? And that was the flame of chivalry, kindled and kept alive in the Apostles ceaseless communion with his God. Let that holy zeal begin to smoulder and the burning chivalry will soon die out. When God is forsaken chivalry is smitten at the heart. Let reverence die, and chivalry cannot hold her place.
As he lay, said Dean Stanley in his funeral sermon at Westminster Abbey, the other day, cold in death, like the stone effigy of an ancient warrior, the fitful fever of life gone, the strength of immortality left, resting as if after the toil of a hundred battles, this was himself idealized. From those mute lips there seemed to issue once more the living words with which he spoke, ten years ago, before one who honoured him with an unswerving faithfulness to the end. Some saythus he spoke in the Chapel of Windsor Castlesome say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, or a man or a woman left to say, I will redress that wrong, or spend my life in the attempt. The age of chivalry is never past so long as we have faith enough to say, God will help me to redress that wrong, or if not me, He will help those that come after me, for His eternal will is to overcome evil with good. 1 [Note: Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of his Life, ii. 344.]
II
Hewing out Broken Cisterns
1. If the Fountain is forsaken we must have something to make up for God. We cannot turn our cravings away from the Father, and by the very turning find these cravings appeased. The delicate tendrils which have clung to the Almighty must seek their support elsewhere. Our spiritual instincts will demand attention, and they will need to be either narcotized or strenuously and constantly subdued. So it was with the people who had forsaken the Lord. The national life became a sort of restless vagrancy, and a wild quest took the place of a forsaken rest. See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways; a wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure. All of which means that this people, having forsaken the place of their rest, ran about everywhere, dipping into everything, in the attempt to satisfy the instincts which had been denied their appointed springs.
Tedium has been defined as a consciousness of time, just as in a morbid state one may become conscious of the throbbing of ones pulse. Having to wait at a railway station is a perfect torment to some people. For myself I remember this restlessness, which was very strong in me from about eighteen to eight-and-twenty. There was a constant craving to get on anyhow or any whither, only there must be no pause. I wonder how I should feel now if I were cut off from books, writing materials, and companions for some hours and were not travelling. I should be all right if some subject were buzzing in my head, as the Eastern Question has been lately, but without some such subject on which my thoughts settled naturally, I suspect I should be bored. I often grumble that I have no time to think. Should I think if I were condemned to solitary confinement for a week? What went on in mens minds when they were shut up in oubliettes? What goes on in the minds of sailors on watch or of sentries? Do they feel tedium, or does the mind, like the body, accommodate itself to the conditions in which it lives?1 [Note: Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, 427.]
2. Let us touch upon two of the most common of those broken cisterns at which the thirsty soul seeks to quench its cravings.
(1) There is the cistern of pleasure, embroidered with fruits and flowers, and bacchanalian figures, wrought at the cost of health and rest. It is in the very nature of passion not to yield the pleasure you seek from it if you push its gratification beyond the limits assigned to it in the constitution of our moral nature. It is with the passions as it is with the appetites, with which they have a close alliance and affinitythe more moderately they are satisfied within the limits of the claims of health, the higher is the satisfaction and the longer their susceptibilities of pleasure remain. The pampered appetite becomes the jaded appetite, and at length becomes the diseased and ruined appetite. And the man who is hewing out for himself a cistern of sensual pleasure is like the dram-drinker, who derives less stimulus and delight from the same quantity every day, and has accordingly to increase the dose to supply the same excitement; who at length gets beyond the range of gratification but finds that the passion holds him fast in its serpent coils even when all its joys are for ever fled.
The human soul cannot live as an animal, seeking only to satisfy the physical nature and following only animal instincts; there is in it a rational faculty, which must have regard to a rational, or good, purpose in life, and control the animal nature in accordance with this purpose. In each of us the animal nature asserts itself, and every soul has to go through a struggle with the physical senses for mastery. If there be no such struggle, then the animal nature becomes dominant and the higher nature remains undeveloped. Only when the animal is thoroughly subdued can the soul attain to self-realization and union with the Supreme. Control of the appetites, in itself, will not suffice: the desire for sense-gratification must be rooted out. All the world over man is deeply sunken in sensuality, and a great part of his miseries and diseases are due to this. Most men in civilized communities are slaves to the senses. They indulge the animal nature, and in most cases never try to conquer it. With some it is not enough to live like animals;for animals are pure and healthy in their instinctsnothing less than a debauching excess of sensuality will suffice them. They must wallow in slime. Indulgence in intoxicating liquorone of the grosser forms of sensualityis alone the cause of an almost inconceivable amount of misery. Then there are other forms of indulgence which, though much less obvious, are scarcely less serious in their consequences in wastage and disease. The external aspects of this sensuality are obvious; but the internal, or subjective, aspect, which is not the least serious, is understood only by few. Every sense-degraded soul is in misery and darkness, in degree according to the degree of its indulgence.1 [Note: R. H. Hodgson, Glad Tidings! 15.]
(2) We find in another part of the valley another earnest worker, who is hewing out a cistern of wealth. Now what shall we say to this man? It will not serve any good purpose to call him hard names. You cannot scold a man out of any sin, still less out of the sin of covetousness. Nor must we bluntly deny all that he has said in praise of wealth. In fact, he might have said a great deal more in its eulogy without exceeding the limits of truth. The power of wealththat is, its just and legitimate poweris enormous, and is increasing day by day; and there is no reason, except such as we find in the unsanctified and ill-regulated passions of men, why it should be ought else or less than an unmingled blessing. It is when we find men mistaking its functions and properties, and labouring to hew out of it a cistern of satisfaction, that we are constrained to remind them that such a cistern will hold no water.
Far the most penetrating of all the influences that are impairing the moral and intellectual nerve of our generation remain still to be mentioned. The first of them is the immense increase of material prosperity, and the second is the immense decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. The evil wrought by the one fills up the measure of the evil wrought by the other. We have been, in spite of momentary declensions, on a flood-tide of high profits and a roaring trade, and there is nothing like a roaring trade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, especially if they be newly acquired, in slackening moral vigour, is a proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened by any tradition of public duty such as lingers among the English nobles, nor as yet by any common custom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow in the United States. Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxury and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers mens aims and unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for pleasure.1 [Note: John Morley, On Compromise.]
What was the danger of the possession of wealth in the eyes of Christ? What makes it so hard for the rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God? The danger and the difficulty both lie in the tendency of wealth to breed a spirit of self-satisfaction and contentment, a spirit which infects the soul with indifference, kills all high aspiration, deadens the sense of need, and even in human relationships leads to selfishness. Nor am I speaking now of great wealth, as we understand that phrase in the modern world. The collection of huge wealth into the hands of one individual was probably not known to Jesus, or even if it was known, it was no danger to the men to whom He spoke. And we should go very far astray in our interpretation of His words if we imagined that His warning as to the perils of riches applies only to millionaires. In truth, it applies to all who are living in circumstances of ease and comfort, and whose habits of life tend to deaden their sense of need. I believe we sum up the Christian attitude to wealth when we say that our Lord regarded it as a stewardship with which we are entrusted. Like all other gifts of life it is to be put to the largest and most fruitful use. It is not to be used merely as though it belonged to us; we are to think of it as loaned to us by God, and therefore to be used according to His will and purpose. The talents are placed in our hands, but we are to remember who put them there and that the day will come when we must render account of the use we have made of them. Even the man to whom comparatively little has been given will be judged by his use of that little. He that is faithful in little is faithful also in much.1 [Note: S. M. Berry, Graces of the Christian Character, 169.]
How is the anxious soul of man befooled
In his desire,
That thinks an hectic fever can be cooled
In flames of fire;
Or hopes to rake full heaps of burnished gold
From nasty mire!
Whose gold is double with a careful hand,
His cares are double,
The pleasure, honour, wealth of sea and land
Bring but a trouble;
The world itself, and all the worlds command,
Is but a bubble.
The strong desires of mans insatiate breast
May stand possessed
Of all that earth can give; but earth can give no rest.
The worlds a seeming Paradise, but her own
And mans tormentor;
Appearing fixed, yet but a rolling stone
Without a tenter;
It is a vast circumference, where none
Can find a centre.
Of more than earth, can earth make none possessed;
And he that least
Regards this restless world, shall in this world find rest.
True rest consists not in the oft revying
Of worldly dross;
Earths miry purchase is not worth the buying;
Her gain is loss;
Her rest but giddy toil, if not relying
Upon her cross.
How worldlings droyl for trouble! That fond breast
That is possessed
Of earth without a cross has earth without a rest.1 [Note: Francis Quarles.]
The Fountain of Living Waters
Literature
Ball (C. J.), The Prophecies of Jeremiah (Expositors Bible), 74.
Foote (J.), Communion Week Sermons, 75.
McIntyre (D. M.), Life in His Name, 207.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Isaiah and Jeremiah, 249.
Mellor (E.), The Hem of Christs Garment, 236.
Melvill (H.), Sermons on Public Occasions, 256.
Meyer (F. B.), Jeremiah: Priest and Prophet, 24.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, x. 113.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, xix. (1896), Nos. 25, 38.
Woolsey (T. D.), The Religion of the Present, 87.
Christian World, Sept. 3, 1914 (J. H. Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, i. 481 (W. A. Essery).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
For my: Jer 2:31, Jer 2:32, Jer 4:22, Jer 5:26, Jer 5:31, Psa 81:11-13, Isa 1:3, Isa 5:13, Isa 63:8, Mic 2:8, Mic 6:3
forsaken: Jer 2:17, Jer 1:16, Jer 15:6, Jdg 10:13, 1Sa 12:10
the fountain: Jer 17:13, Jer 18:14, Psa 36:9, Joh 4:14, Joh 7:37, Rev 21:6, Rev 22:1, Rev 22:17
broken cisterns: Jer 2:11, Jer 2:26, Psa 115:4-8, Psa 146:3, Psa 146:4, Ecc 1:2, Ecc 1:14, Ecc 2:11, Ecc 2:21, Ecc 2:26, Ecc 4:4, Ecc 12:8, Isa 44:9-20, Isa 46:6, Isa 46:7, Isa 55:2, 2Pe 2:17
Reciprocal: Deu 30:19 – I call heaven Jdg 10:6 – the gods of the Philistines 1Sa 12:21 – vain things 1Ki 11:33 – they have forsaken 1Ki 18:18 – in that ye have 2Ki 21:22 – General 2Ch 21:10 – because 2Ch 29:6 – have forsaken him Psa 14:3 – all gone Psa 42:2 – living Ecc 7:29 – they Son 4:15 – a well Isa 1:4 – forsaken Isa 8:6 – that go softly Isa 12:3 – with joy Isa 31:1 – stay on horses Isa 59:13 – departing Jer 5:19 – Like as Jer 13:25 – because Jer 14:3 – pits Jer 18:13 – virgin Jer 18:15 – my people Jer 19:4 – they have Eze 16:30 – weak Eze 24:12 – wearied Eze 47:1 – waters issued Hos 1:2 – for Hos 6:10 – General Jon 2:8 – General Zep 1:6 – turned Luk 15:13 – and took Joh 4:10 – living Rom 3:12 – They are Gal 1:6 – so Heb 3:12 – an Rev 7:17 – shall lead
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
GODS COMPLAINT
They have forsaken Me.
Jer 2:13
An evil thing and bitter it is to forsake God.
I. It is so unreasonable.There is an element of thoughtlessness in all sin. If I had pondered the matter carefully and deliberately, I never would have yielded to it. If I had set before me the hardness of the way of transgressors, would I ever have entered on the bitter path? I have been blind, and negligent, and heedless in the extreme.
II. And it is so guilty.My conduct may have been thoughtless, but it is inexcusable too. I should have considered. I should have been wise. Lawlessness, rebellion against Gods Word, the slighting of His call and commandment, the wounding of His very soul: that is what I am chargeable with. Is it not criminal indeed?
III. And it is so dangerous.When I forsake my Guide and my Father, I am caught in the thorny thickets, or I stumble over the precipice, or I fall into the enemys hand, or I sink down wearied before it is noonday. Behind me is the path I have left, a witness against me. And in front of me is the Judgment Seat.
IV. And it is so hopeless.I have forfeited the power to rescue and restore myself. I am bewildered, helpless, undone. I am neither able nor yet willing to come back to God. Nothing avails to change menothing within myself, I meanin my fatal course. I but lose myself more and more.
And yet, and yet, there is forgiveness with Thee.
Illustration
Why should the chosen people hind themselves up with the fortunes of any heathen nation? Was not God their King? Would not He succour them in calamity? Why should they drink the waters of Sihor, the black Nile, or those of the great river, Euphrates? It was as though a hamlet of villagers were to refuse a fountain of crystal water rising at their doors, and betake themselves to hewing cisterns, with infinite labour, in the hills, which at the best could only hold brackish water. But God had failed them in nothing, in nothing had He shown Himself worthy of such behaviour. Ah, how true this is of us, who have sought help and satisfaction in money, pleasure, human love, neglecting the offers of the Son of God!
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Jer 2:13. One evil is enough to bring the condemnation of the Lord, but these people of his had committed two evils. One was to forsake the true fountain of living water. Had they stopped with that evil it would have been bad enough. But they did not pause in their unfaithfulness of leaving the true fountain. They pretended to provide themselves a better supply of water by hewing out their own cisterns which proved to be broken and unable to hold any water. In all ages of the world men have committed the same kind of folly that Is described in this verse by .the illustration of cisterns. They have become dissatisfied with the Lord’s plan of salvation and implied that He did not know just what man needed. Then they have proceeded to invent ways of their own for the benefit of sinful man. The inconsistency of such conduct is so evident that it is today a matter also at which to be appalled. If an infinite God did not know what was best for his own created beings, it is extremely foolish for those very creatures to think they can better the situation with their innovations.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
2:13 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 .
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The Israelites had committed two evils: one a sin of omission, and the other a sin of commission. They had forsaken Yahweh who, like a fountain, had provided for their deepest needs (cf. Psa 36:9; Joh 4:10-14; Rev 21:6). And they had pursued idols who, like broken cisterns, could not even hold water-much less provide it. The most reliable source of water in Israel was a natural spring, and the least reliable was a cistern.
"The best cisterns, even those in solid rock, are strangely liable to crack, and are a most unreliable source of supply of that absolutely indispensable article, water; and if, by constant care, they are made to hold, yet the water, collected from clay roofs or from marly soil, has the color 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. Who but a fool positive, or one gone mad in love of filth, would exchange the sweet, wholesome stream of a living fountain for such an uncertain compound of nastiness and vermin!" [Note: W. H. Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1:443.]