Jeremiah 2:13 means that God’s people had committed two wrongs at once: they had turned away from the Lord, who gives life as a spring of fresh water, and they had dug their own containers that could never hold water. The prophet Jeremiah speaks these words for God to the nation of Israel, which had abandoned its covenant relationship with the Lord for false security.
“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
Jeremiah 2:13 (WEB)
What Jeremiah 2:13 Means
The verse uses the image of water to describe two very different sources of life. God is called “the spring of living waters,” a source that flows freshly and constantly from the ground. Living water in that setting meant water that moves and renews, like a spring or a stream, as opposed to stagnant water sitting in a pit. The Lord is the one who gives continual, life-giving refreshment to his people.
The people in the verse did something unwise with that picture. Instead of drinking from the spring, they “cut out cisterns” for themselves. A cistern was a man-made pit or tank cut into rock to collect rainwater. Cisterns were useful in a dry land, but these particular ones were cracked and leaking, so they could hold no water at all. The point is sharp: they traded the reliable source for containers that failed them when they most needed water.
The verse does not promise that every hardship will disappear for those who follow God, and it does not describe how each person should live day to day. It names a pattern of turning from the source of life to things that seem capable of sustaining us but in the end cannot. It is an honest diagnosis of a spiritual problem, and it invites the reader to see where that same pattern might appear.
The Context of Jeremiah 2:13
The book of Jeremiah is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, who served in Judah in the years before Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 586 BC. Chapter 2 opens a series of messages in which God, through Jeremiah, reviews the history of his relationship with Israel. The audience is the nation of Judah and its leaders, and the language is that of a court case in which the people are called to account for their unfaithfulness.
The verses just before and after set the scene. In verses 10 and 11, God challenges the people to look at the surrounding nations and asks whether any nation has ever exchanged its gods, though those gods are no gods at all, for something else. Israel, by contrast, has traded its true glory for what cannot profit it. Verses 14 through 16 then describe the consequences the nation is already experiencing, including invasion and loss. Read in this setting, the image of broken cisterns is not an abstract warning but a description of a people who have already discovered that their chosen supports will not hold.
Key Phrases in Jeremiah 2:13
Psalm 36:9
For with you is the spring of life. In your light shall we see light.
(WEB)
This verse echoes the image of God as a source of life and refreshment. It describes the Lord as the fountain of life, showing that the living waters in Jeremiah are part of a wider biblical picture of God as the one who sustains and gives light to his people.
John 4:14
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
(WEB)
Jesus uses the language of water in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, offering a spring welling up to eternal life. Reading it alongside Jeremiah 2:13 shows how the Old Testament image of the living spring finds its fullest expression in Christ himself.
A Short Prayer From Jeremiah 2:13
Lord, you are the spring of living waters, and I confess how often I have gone looking for refreshment in places that cannot hold it. I have built my own containers and trusted them to keep me full, only to find them empty when the dry seasons come. Draw me back to yourself today. Teach me to drink from you first, and let your living water renew my heart, my hopes, and my everyday choices. Amen.
