Jeremiah 2:13

"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. Isaiah 12:3; Isaiah 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.).