The Cisterns and Living Waters

The prophet Jeremiah gave these words from the Lord, “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” (Jeremiah 2:13).  The student manual gives this commentary on the passage: “Cisterns, as sources of a reserve water supply, were extremely important to people in the arid lands of the Old Testament, for it was on these that they relied to preserve themselves during the dry seasons.  Cisterns were carved out of rock.  They could only retain water; they could not produce it….  Thus, Israel was like a people in a drought who ignore a living spring that provides sufficient reserves and trust instead in broken wells that provide nothing. ”  I really like this imagery; we choose either to make our own cisterns and trust in those to provide us water in times of need, or we can turn to the source of living water for strength and help and sustenance in times of need. 

                There’s another passage in Isaiah that also talks about cisterns.  When the Assyrians were attacking Judah and threatening Jerusalem, the king of Assyria sent the blasphemous Rabshekah to speak to the people in order to frighten them into submission.  He told them, “Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern.”  In other words, he was telling them to trust in the Assyrians and to worry about their own physical possessions.  He told them, “Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you.  Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us” (Isaiah 36:14-16).  This reminds me of Korihor’s words that “every man conquered according to his strength” and that there “there could be no atonement made” (Alma 30:17).  In other words, according to Rabshekah and Korihor—there is no fountain of living water (Christ) and so you’ve got to focus on your own cistern. 

                I have to wonder if the Savior wasn’t referring to this passage in Jeremiah when He met with the woman at the well.  As they sat over a man-made well He said to her, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water” (John 4:10).  That’s the same phrase—“living water”—used in Jeremiah.  His message to her is really the same as that of Jeremiah: we should trust in the “fountain of living waters” and, symbolically speaking, not in the cisterns and wells built by men.  Jeremiah lamented in another passage, “O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 17:13).  The world today like Rabshekah would have us “be ashamed” of the “fountain of living waters,” but in the end it only has “broken cisterns” with no water at all to offer us.