Jeremiah 2
The book of Jeremiah opens its message proper with a word that sounds less like a courtroom and more like a remembered romance. The LORD tells the prophet to cry in the ears of Jerusalem: I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown (v. 2). Before a single charge is laid, the tone is set by tenderness. God recalls the early days of the covenant - the people newly redeemed from Egypt, following Him through a trackless desert, depending on Him for everything, bound to Him as a bride to a husband. That memory is not nostalgia for its own sake; it is the measure against which everything that has gone wrong will be weighed.3
For what follows is a covenant lawsuit. The LORD lays out His case like a wronged party calling heaven and earth to witness, and the indictment turns on a question no one can answer in His favor: What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me? (v. 5). He had done them nothing but good - brought them up out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, planted them in a plentiful land - and they had repaid Him by trading their glory for that which doth not profit (v. 11). The whole charge gathers into one image that has never lost its force: 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 (v. 13).
From there the oracle presses on relentless and grieved. It exposes the folly of running to Egypt and Assyria for help - chasing the waters of foreign rivers when the fountain was at home (vv. 18-19); it pictures Israel as a wild creature in heat, unrestrainable in her pursuit of other gods (vv. 23-25); it watches a people cry to carved wood and stone, Arise, and save us, who will be ashamed when the day of trouble comes (vv. 27-28). And running underneath it all is the wound of a forgotten love: Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number (v. 32). This is the voice not merely of an offended sovereign but of a spurned bridegroom - still pleading, even here, with the people who have left Him.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 2:1-13They Have Forsaken the Fountain of Living Waters
1Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. 3Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD. 4Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel: 5Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? 6Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?
The first word the LORD gives Jeremiah to carry is not an accusation but a memory: I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown (v. 2). The language is unmistakably the language of marriage. Espousals is betrothal, the binding of bride to groom; the LORD is recalling the courtship days of the covenant, when Israel, freshly redeemed from Egypt, followed Him out into a desert that was not sown - a place with no crops, no security, nothing to live on but Him - and went, trusting. That early dependence is named here as kindness and love. It is a stunning way to open a book that will be filled with judgment: God begins by remembering when His people loved Him. And He remembers it warmly, the way one remembers the best season of a relationship. Everything that follows - every charge, every grief - gets its weight from this opening tenderness. The tragedy is not that a stranger wandered off, but that a bride who once followed her husband into the wilderness has left him.3
With verse 4 the tone shifts into the form of a legal complaint. Hear ye the word of the LORD… Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me? (vv. 4-5). This is the shape of a covenant lawsuit, where the wronged party states His case and asks the accused to name any fault on His side. The question is devastating precisely because it has no answer. What had God done to deserve being abandoned? The honest reply is: nothing. He had been nothing but faithful. And yet they walked after vanity, and are become vain - a pointed line, because in Hebrew the word for the empty idols and the word for what their worshipers become is the same. We grow into the likeness of what we worship; chase emptiness, and you are hollowed out. Worse, no one even asked after Him: Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt? (v. 6). The God who had led them through a land of deserts and pits, of drought and the shadow of death, simply dropped out of their thoughts. They stopped looking for the One who had saved them.
7And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. 8The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit. 9Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your children’s children will I plead. 10For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. 11Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. 12Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD. 13For 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.
The LORD now points to the leaders who should have known better. The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal (v. 8). The collapse was total - priests who did not seek Him, scholars of the law who did not actually know Him, shepherds who betrayed the flock, prophets speaking in the name of a false god. The very people charged with keeping the nation near the fountain had walked away from it themselves. Then the LORD frames the absurdity of it with a challenge: look anywhere, east to Kedar or west to the isles of Chittim, and you will not find a nation that swapped out its gods - even though those gods are no gods at all (vv. 10-11). Pagans, for all their error, stayed loyal to their idols. Israel did something stranger and worse: my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. They alone, who had the living God, traded Him away. The heavens themselves are summoned to recoil at it: Be astonished, O ye heavens… be ye very desolate (v. 12). What Israel has done is not just sin; it is an offense against the order of things, a wonder of self-impoverishment.
And now the charge gathers into the image that is the beating heart of the chapter: 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 (v. 13). Notice that the LORD counts two evils, not one. The first is forsaking the fountain - turning away from a spring of running, living water that never fails. The second is the labor that replaces it: hewed them out cisterns. A cistern is a pit chiseled out of rock to catch and store rainwater - backbreaking work, and at best a poor substitute for a spring, since cistern water sits stagnant and warm. But these cisterns are broken. They are cracked, so they cannot even do the one thing a cistern is for; whatever is poured in seeps away into the ground. Hold the two pictures together and the folly is complete. On one side, a fountain - free, fresh, inexhaustible, requiring nothing but that you come and drink. On the other, a cracked tank that took enormous effort to dig and holds nothing. This is what idolatry always is, the chapter insists: not merely wickedness but a staggeringly bad trade - abandoning what costs nothing and satisfies forever, to slave over what costs everything and satisfies not at all.1
Jeremiah 2:14-25What Hast Thou to Do in the Way of Egypt?
14Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled? 15The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant. 16Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head. 17Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way? 18And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river? 19Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
The lawsuit now turns to consequences, and it does so with a sharp question: Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled? (v. 14). Israel was no slave - he was the LORD's firstborn son, His treasured possession. So why is he being plundered, his land laid waste, his cities burned, his head broken by Egypt's armies from Noph and Tahapanes (vv. 15-16)? The answer is not that God failed to protect His own. It is laid squarely at Israel's own feet: Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way? (v. 17). The disaster was self-inflicted. The one who had been leading them safely along the road was the very one they abandoned - and having let go of His hand, they should not be surprised to find themselves robbed on the highway. This is one of the chapter's steady notes: the misery of forsaking God is not an arbitrary penalty dropped from above but the built-in result of leaving the only safe place there is. Walk away from the One who leads you, and the wilderness that was no threat under His guidance becomes deadly.
Now the water imagery returns, and it sharpens the indictment beautifully. And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river? (v. 18). Israel, having forsaken the fountain at home, is pictured running off down two long roads - south to Egypt, north to Assyria - chasing political alliances, hoping the great powers will give them security. And the LORD frames it as going abroad to drink from foreign rivers: the Nile (here Sihor) and the Euphrates (the river). The folly is the same folly as the broken cisterns, now drawn on a map. Why travel hundreds of miles to gulp the muddy water of someone else's river when the living spring was in your own land? Trust in Egypt and Assyria is just another cracked tank - another attempt to find life and safety in something other than God. And the LORD warns that this path teaches its own bitter lesson: Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God (v. 19). He does not have to invent a punishment; the sin disciplines the sinner. Forsaking the fountain is its own slow education in how bitter the substitutes really are.
20For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot. 21Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me? 22For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord GOD. 23How canst thou say, I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways; 24A wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away? all they that seek her will not weary themselves; in her month they shall find her. 25Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.
The LORD reaches for image after image to expose how far the fall has gone. First the vineyard: Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me? (v. 21). He had planted the choicest stock, and somehow it had gone wild and sour - a cultivated vine reverted to a worthless one. Then the stain that will not scrub out: though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me (v. 22). No amount of self-cleansing can lift a guilt the LORD Himself can see. Then, most jarring of all, two pictures from the animal world. Israel is a swift dromedary traversing her ways (v. 23) and a wild ass… that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away? (v. 24) - a creature in heat, so driven by craving that nothing can hold her back from the chase. It is a deliberately undignified image for what idolatry had become: not a thoughtful choice but a compulsion. And it ends with Israel's own astonishing words, the confession of an addict: There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go (v. 25). The LORD pleads with her to stop wearing out her feet and parching her throat in the pursuit - and she answers that she would rather run herself ragged after the strangers she loves. Here the chapter touches the deepest layer of the problem. The trouble was never that the fountain failed. It was that the heart had set its love elsewhere.
It is worth pausing on the phrase the LORD presses in verse 19: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God. Two verbs of perception are stacked together - know and see - because the whole problem is that Israel will not. They have grown so used to the broken cisterns that they no longer taste how bitter the water has become. The LORD is not merely pronouncing a verdict; He is trying to make a numbed people feel their own condition, to wake up the palate that has forgotten what living water tastes like. And He names the root beneath the bitterness: my fear is not in thee. Where reverence for God drains away, everything else follows - the wandering, the alliances, the idols, the wild pursuit. This is the mercy hidden inside even the hardest verses of the chapter: the bitterness is allowed to do its work precisely so that the people will know and see and turn back before it is too late. A sip of how empty the cisterns are can be the very thing that sends a person looking again for the spring.
Jeremiah 2:26-37My People Have Forgotten Me Days Without Number
26As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets, 27Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us. 28But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah. 29Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD. 30In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion. 31O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?
The chapter exposes the sheer irrationality of idol-worship with a line that would be comic if it were not tragic: Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth (v. 27). A stock is a block of wood, a stump. Israel has taken carved wood and shaped stone - things they made with their own hands - and addressed them as the source of their life, calling a log “Father” and a rock “Mother.” They have it exactly backwards: the maker bowing to the made. And the LORD notes the telling detail: they have turned their back unto me, and not their face. In the good days they faced Him; now they have turned their backs - until trouble comes, and then suddenly they spin around and cry, Arise, and save us. The LORD answers that fair-weather faith with cutting precision: where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee (v. 28). Let the wood and stone you preferred do the rescuing. According to the number of thy cities are thy gods - they had a fresh idol on every corner, and not one of them could lift a finger in the day of need. This is the final bankruptcy of the broken cistern: it is not merely a poor substitute in ordinary times; it is utterly empty in the hour you need it most.
Verses 29 through 31 carry the lament of a God whose every effort to reach His people has been spurned. Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me (v. 29) - they have the audacity to argue their case against Him, when the fault is wholly theirs. In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction (v. 30): even the hard discipline meant to wake them up had not worked; the blows landed on a people too numb to learn. Worse, they had silenced the very messengers He sent to call them home - your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion. Then comes a question of wounded astonishment: Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? (v. 31). Had He been to them a barren desert, a place of gloom, that they should want to escape Him? The implied answer is the opposite - He had been their plentiful country, their light, their life. Yet His people say, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee. Here is the heart of the rebellion in their own words: a declaration of independence from God, a refusal disguised as freedom. They imagine that walking away from the fountain makes them lords - when in truth it only leaves them thirsty.
32Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number. 33Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways. 34Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these. 35Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned. 36Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. 37Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.
Now the LORD returns to where the chapter began - to the language of the bride - and lands the saddest line of all: Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number (v. 32). The image is exact. A young woman does not forget her jewelry; a bride does not misplace her wedding dress. These things are bound up with her identity, her joy, the most cherished day of her life - she could no more forget them than forget herself. They are unforgettable by definition. And yet, the LORD says, His own bride has forgotten Him - not once, in a lapse, but days without number, a forgetting stretched across so many days it cannot be counted. This is what makes the verse cut so deep. It is not the forgetting of a fact but the forgetting of a love - and a love that should have been the most unforgettable thing in her life, the way her wedding ornaments were. We do not forget what we treasure. So the verse quietly diagnoses the whole disaster: the issue was never that God became hard to remember. It was that He had ceased to be treasured. A forgotten God is, finally, an un-loved God - and that is the wound beneath every charge in the chapter.3
The chapter closes by following Israel's misplaced trust to its bitter end. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? (v. 36) - gad here means to wander restlessly about, flitting from one alliance to the next, first leaning on Assyria, then switching to Egypt, never settling, never satisfied. And the LORD tells them plainly how it ends: thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. They had already been let down by Assyria; now Egypt would let them down too. The final picture is one of a captive led away in disgrace: thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head (v. 37) - hands on the head being the ancient gesture of a prisoner or a mourner, shamed and helpless. The reason is given in the last line: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them. Every confidence they had placed in the broken cisterns - the idols, the foreign powers, the schemes - the LORD would not honor, because they were never trustworthy to begin with. It is a sobering end to the oracle, and yet even here mercy is folded inside the warning. To have one's false confidences fail is painful - but it is also the only thing that can finally send a person back to the One confidence that does not fail.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 2 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the bridal language of espousals (v. 2), for the loaded phrase meqor mayim chayyim, “fountain of living waters” (v. 13), and for borot nishbarim, the “broken cisterns” set against it.
- Jeremiah 2 ↔ John 4 & 7 · Revelation 2 · HoseaIntertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 2 to the rest of Scripture - the fountain of living waters forsaken (v. 13) read alongside the living water Christ offers in John 4:13-14 and 7:37-38, and the forgotten first love (vv. 2, 32) read beside the call to a church that had left thy first love in Revelation 2:4.
- Jeremiah 2 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 2 - the marriage imagery of the opening verses, the legal form of the covenant lawsuit, the cistern-and-fountain contrast in verse 13, and the geography behind the appeals to Egypt and Assyria in verse 18.
Where this echoes in Scripture
They Have Forsaken the Fountain of Living Waters
- John 4:13-14whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst... a well of water springing up into everlasting life.The fountain of living waters of verse 13 named in person - the water Christ gives that never fails.
- John 7:37-38If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.The living water of verse 13 cried aloud to all - the spring Israel forsook, freely offered.
- Jeremiah 17:13they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.The same image and the same charge as verse 13 - to forsake the LORD is to forsake the spring.
- Psalm 36:9For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.The truth behind verse 13 - that life itself has its source in God, not in anything we can dig.
- Isaiah 55:1-2Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters... wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?The same offer and the same folly - free water held out, against the labor spent on what cannot satisfy.
What Hast Thou to Do in the Way of Egypt?
- Isaiah 31:1Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses... but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel.The same folly as verse 18 - running to Egypt for the security that belongs to God alone.
- Isaiah 5:1-2he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine... and it brought forth wild grapes.The noble vine gone wild of verse 21 - the LORD’s choice planting turned degenerate.
- Hosea 2:5I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water... my oil and my drink.The same confession as verse 25 - a people chasing strangers for what God Himself supplied.
- Romans 1:25Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.The trade of verses 11 and 18 - the glory of God exchanged for what cannot profit.
- Jeremiah 2:13they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns.The image this whole section draws on a map - foreign rivers are just more broken cisterns.
My People Have Forgotten Me Days Without Number
- Revelation 2:4-5thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.The forgotten first love of verses 2 and 32 - and the same remedy: remember, and return.
- Jeremiah 3:22Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee.The door left open after this chapter’s charges - the LORD’s call to the bride to come home.
- Isaiah 44:9-10They that make a graven image are all of them vanity... Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing?The folly of calling wood “Father” in verse 27 - the maker bowing to the made.
- Luke 15:20when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.The heart behind verse 2 - the God who remembers, watching the road for the one who forgot to come home.
- Deuteronomy 8:11-14Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God... lest when thou hast eaten and art full... then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD.The very forgetting of verse 32, warned of long before - plenty dulling the memory of the One who gave it.