Jeremiah 2 explained: The Spring and the Leaking Cisterns

Early love remembered (vv. 1-3)

God looks back on Israel's early days after leaving Egypt as a honeymoon, when the people followed him through the desert like a devoted bride. Israel was like the first part of the harvest, which belonged to God, and just as eating that holy portion brought guilt, anyone who harmed Israel was held guilty.

What did I do wrong? (vv. 4-8)

God asks what fault their ancestors ever found in him, since he rescued them from Egypt, led them through a deadly desert and gave them rich land. Instead, even the priests, rulers and prophets stopped seeking him, and the prophets spoke in the name of Baal, a Canaanite storm and fertility god.

Two wrongs, like broken tanks (vv. 9-13)

Cyprus in the west and Kedar, desert tribes in the east, stand for the whole world: no nation swaps its gods, yet Israel swapped the true God for idols. A cistern was a pit cut into rock to store rainwater, and here the people leave a fresh, flowing spring to dig cracked tanks that cannot even hold what is poured in.

Running to Egypt and Assyria (vv. 14-19)

Israel was meant to be free, yet invaders, pictured as lions, have ravaged the land, and Egypt, named through its cities Memphis and Tahpanhes, has humiliated it. Judah sat between rival empires and kept seeking alliances with them, which the prophet compares to drinking from their rivers instead of trusting God.

A vine gone wild (vv. 20-28)

Worship of other gods at hilltop shrines and under trees is pictured as a wife's unfaithfulness, a choice vine turned wild, and a stain no soap removes. The animals in heat show a people chasing other gods restlessly, and 'the valley' is probably the Valley of Ben Hinnom near Jerusalem, where Jeremiah elsewhere says children were sacrificed.

Claiming innocence (vv. 29-37)

The people insist they have done nothing wrong, yet they killed prophets and have the blood of the innocent poor on their clothes, people who were not even burglars caught in the act. Egypt will let them down just as Assyria did, and they will walk away from it with hands on their heads, an old sign of grief or shame.

Key verse: Jeremiah 2:13

Something to think about

Have you ever kept relying on something long after it stopped giving you what you needed, and what made it hard to let go?