Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 19 · January 19
Broken Cisterns
“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.”
A man is kneeling in a pit cut into the rock. He has a bucket of lime plaster, and he is pressing it into the wall by hand, because the water level dropped again in the night.
That was ordinary life in Judah. The hills there are limestone, and limestone lets water seep away. So households cut cisterns, which were bell-shaped pits chipped out of the rock and plastered inside. The winter rain ran off the roof and filled them. It was honest work, and nobody is mocking it. In a dry land, a cistern could decide whether a family stayed or had to leave.
"Two evils," Jeremiah says. The first is walking away from God: "they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters." In Hebrew, living water means moving water, a spring that keeps running whether anyone is standing beside it or not. Nobody has to keep a fountain going. You only have to come to it.
The second evil is the hard work: "and hewed them out cisterns." Somebody chipped that hole out of solid rock with hand tools. So the sin shows up as effort, and from the outside effort looks exactly like faithfulness. Nobody drifts into cutting a cistern. It takes a decision and a great deal of sweat.
Then God names the flaw plainly: "broken cisterns, that can hold no water." Plaster cracks. In February you cannot see the crack, because the rain is falling and the pit is filling. You find out in August, in the dry months, and August is the very season you dug it for.
The man is still down there with his bucket. And the spring he walked away from is still running. God calls Himself that fountain, and He has not moved.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 19 is The Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26).