What Does Jeremiah 2:13 Mean?
For my people have done two evils; they have let go of me, the spring of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, shattered cisterns that cannot grip water.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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.THE KEY
The two evils are one exchange: leaving the living source for containers made by human hands that cannot hold life.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present exchange: the living source is forsaken while effort is spent shaping containers that cannot hold water. Its two evils move together, departure from what gives life and reliance on a substitute that cannot keep it. The emptiness is built into the broken vessel itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that enough effort can make a substitute source sustain life.
THE ROOT
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live, be alive, or revive.
“Living” comes from the root for life and revival. Set against water trapped in a broken cistern, the phrase points to water connected to a living source, not merely a quantity stored in a container.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive
חַי
This is the root’s direct form for what is alive, linking the waters to active life.
chayah: To live, revive
חָיָה
The verb carries the root from being alive to being restored to life, deepening the contrast with a vessel that cannot sustain what it holds.
נִשְׁבָּרִים
nishbarim
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter, or fracture.
“shattered” in this verse is nishbarim. The word describes a vessel whose structure is broken, not a sound vessel that happens to be empty. The fracture explains why the cistern cannot hold water: the substitute fails at the very thing it is built to do.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break, shatter
שָׁבַר
The verb names the breaking that leaves the cistern unable to retain water.
shever: Breaking, fracture, ruin
שֶׁבֶר
This noun carries the root’s result, the breach or ruin that makes the vessel incapable of holding what it needs.
THE PATTERN
Life is sustained by a living source that gives and flows, not by what a person can manufacture and hold.
For with you is the spring of life; in your light we see light.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.And the Breath and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who thirsts come. Let whoever wills take the waters of life as a gift.THE THREAD
O LORD, the gathering pool of Israel, all who leave you shall be ashamed; those who turn aside from me shall be written in the earth, for they have left the LORD, the spring of living waters.This verse repeats the same Hebrew phrase, “the fountain of living waters,” and the same root for forsaking. It makes the departure from the source explicit again, showing the first evil in Jeremiah 2:13 as the break beneath the empty substitute.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us